Intro Diet - Demolished!

Today marks day 5 on my SCD Adventure - and it's been a pretty good 5 days I must say.

I was only intending to do the intro diet for 3 days, but with a hectic weekend and no opportunity to prepare some other foods, I ended up sticking it out for 5. My staple foods for the past 5 days have included:

• Eggs
• Meat patties (I like to mix things up, so found chicken, lamb, and turkey mince for some variety)
• Chicken soup
• Roast chicken
• And, of course, chicken soup

I have to admit, I was a little skeptical at first that a chicken soup made without stock could taste any good....how wrong I was! It was delicious! I have been having about 1.5-2 cups of this for both lunch and dinner each day, and on Saturday made another 5 litres! Here is my recipe:

- 3kg chicken drumsticks
- 2 whole onions, peeled
- 10 carrots, peeled
- about 5 celery stalks
- 5 cloves of garlic, peeled
- salt to taste

I placed all of the ingredients into my brand spankin' new stock pot, and covered everything with water. It's much easier to leave the veggies whole, so you can find them when its time to take them out (you can only eat the carrots at first). I brought everything to the boil, and then allowed the soup to simmer for around 2 hours. At this point, the chicken should be just falling off the bone, and the veggies will be getting a bit soggy. I'm thinking it could be a good idea to purchase a piece of muslin that i can wrap all of the more advanced veggies in, to make removing them easier. Remove all of the veggies that you can't eat yet, and take the chicken meat off the bones (removing skin in the process). Place the chicken meat back into the pot with the carrots, and continue to cook for another 2 hours.

At the end of the 2 hours, remove the carrots and puree them. I don't have a food processor yet, so I mashed mine up as small as I could with a fork - probably not ideal, but it worked quite well as they were extremely soft. Once you have added the carrots back to the soup, it is ready to enjoy.

I had a whole bunch of people over at my house on saturday for the AFL grand final - all the while my soup was simmering away in the background. I can't tell you how many people asked if they could have some, despite the abundance of your typical 'footy grand final' type foods we had around the house. I guess a pot of home-made chicken soup beats a meat pie or bag of chips afterall. And best of all, my beloved Geelong came away with the win....Geelong Cats, premiers '11!!!

As for how I have been feeling symptom-wise the past few days, I must say I've been great! My bloating is the least it has been in the past 12 months, I have had more BMs than usual (although they are now tending toward the Bristol 5's and 6's at the moment), pain in minimal. I haven't felt this good in a LONG TIME!

I'm rather excited as it is now time for me to add in a new food. It was going to be butternut pumpkin first, however I am currently in possession of 2 extremely ripe bananas that are on the verge of going off. Although I wanted to hold back on the really sugary fruits for a while, any Australian at the moment will understand the reluctance I am feeling to throw out 2 bananas (which are still selling for around $10 per kilo). So banana it is - and here's hoping for no symptoms!