Change that mainly has to do with buying & eating more real food and less of the fake junk that's in a lot of the things I used to buy at the grocery store.
In the past, I've kicked around the idea of going au naturale when it comes to our diet, but I've always come up with plenty of reasons not to....
"Cooking dinner for my family is hard enough without having to throw out half of my standby recipes and cook everything from scratch."
"Organic food is way, way too expensive."
"It's impossible to avoid all of the chemicals, so why bother?"
I'm not exactly sure what changed, but it was partly some articles like this one I've been seeing that made me mad. Like, write-a-letter-to-a-congress-person-mad. Except I'm pretty sure they won't care.
(Now's where I get up on my soapbox for a minute. Bear with me...)
I've never been one to buy junk food for daily consumption in our house. I'm pretty picky about giving my kids healthy food. I read labels and try to choose things without a bunch of sugar and salt and other unpronounceable things. But apparently when a label on a can of green beans says "green beans and water" it really means "green beans and water and toxic chemicals in the packaging that are swimming around in your food." Isn't that obnoxious?
Okay, enough soap box. Back to my plan...
I've decided that it's time to take some baby steps. Really, little, tiny, baby steps.
A tight budget and an entirely new outlook on food purchases don't always get along, so here are the changes I'm making that I think we can handle to start:
- Only milk that is hormone free. (At 3-4 gallons a week, organic milk will have to come later).
- Buy organic produce as much as possible, which means cooking and eating things that are in season.
- No more canned food. (This one's a killer...canned tomatoes have been a good friend of mine for a long time).
- Avoid msg and other nasty junk, which is in more stuff than you'd think. Ranch dressing included.
So that's it. We're turning into one of those all natural, organic type of families. Yikes!
I'm planning on blogging about some of the trials and triumphs of this new endeavor of ours, and I'm really, really hoping that you'll have some ideas that will help.
Because frankly, I'm terrified.
6 comments:
Oh no!!!! I'm not sure how I feel about this post???.... j/k (kinda) Good for you. I pray the Lord will bless you for your efforts. But no canned tomatoes?!?! How will you survive? Seriously!? If you cut out butter, then it's friends off. :):):)
Not that this has anything to do with eating healthy, but Sean came home with some pig meat (nice) we bought 1/3 of a pig. Well his co-worker thoughtfully gave him some extra little goodies from his freezer one of which was some extra breakfast sausage. I was cooking it up and I'm like - dude, Sean this smells weird. He's like - it smells fine. I'm like - Sean it looks weird. Anyway...come to find out it was venison. NOT A FAN of venison. blahhhhh... Anywho... all this health talk brought up memories of Sean wanting to live off the land with one of the ways being eating deer. No thanks. Not for me.
We also prescribe to the healthy eating lifestyle. It can be very expensive, but it is just a really good feeling when you are loading your organic and natural foods on to the conveyor belt at the store. Also, with only healthy stuff around the house to eat, you are kind of stuck eating healthy. We do about half of our produce organic, and try to get as much stuff domestically grown. Even though a lot of the fruit from Argentina and other places in South America looks so good. We also get all of our dairy organic (although we don't quite drink as much milk as your family). Also, organic juice and tofu. We also eat very little beef, and do vegetarian meals a couple times a week. Salads, soups, broccoli nuggets, spinach and artichoke pizza with or without sauce. If you want to eat less meat, check out the movie Food Inc. and find out where our food comes from and how scary <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/12/monsantos-gmo-corn-linked_n_420365.html:>Monsanto</a> is.
It seems that I too have a bit of a soap box.
PS I have subscribed to your blog.
Hey Kevin (and "hi" to Kristy, too of course!) I have a question for you. We are working on switching to a more natural diet in our house, too. Most of what I am buying now is organic, and we have joined a CSA. We buy organic milk, and I have been reading a lot about it. I have come across some interesting info on raw milk. Have you read much about it? You seem pretty well-informed about all of this so I would be curious to hear your opinion. Hope you guys are well!
Jamie
Jamie, I don't really know about raw milk. They do sell it at the grocery store we go to, but we have never tried it. On one of the shows I listen to the host goes on and on about how much better it tastes. A friend of mine also used to have it all the time when he was a kid and he said they always had to boil it before they drank it.
Sara--a friend gave us some elk meat one time, and I had the same problem with the breakfast sausage. The plain ground meat was fine in chili or tacos, but the sausage was disgusting. Texture of ground beef, seasonings of breakfast sausage. Not a good combo. And as far as I'm concerned, butter is natural and as such, a-ok. Costco even carries big packs of organic butter. Thank you, Costco!
Kevin--Thanks for the info. I am pretty much finding that the more I learn about what's really in food the more inclined I am to move to the country and grow all my own. Any time you want, feel free to pass along recipes/ recommendations because I'm feeling a little handicapped when it comes to my weekly meal plan right now.
Jamie--Maybe we should become neighbors and then we can take turns milking the cow. =)
Check this out for info on organic dairy products. I guess I better start looking for another brand!!(Costco is listed here too.)
http://www.cornucopia.org/dairysurvey/index.html
Jamie
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