Menu Overhaul

I feel like it is my job as the mom - the primary grocery shopper, meal planner/cooker, adult providing meals and snacks - to research healthy foods and feed them to my family. Several times before I've attempted to overhaul our diet only to get tired, stressed and out of time or off the budget and go back to feeding us things I am not proud of doing. If you've known me for a while you know that I am not good at cutting myself any slack, I am pretty all-or-nothing and I get frustrated and quit easily.

As we started 2011 I had many nights awake with HK to think about things I'd like to change during this year and one of the first things is what/how we eat. One of the things that I realize is that some of the problem is my all-or-nothing thinking and getting frustrated and quitting. Because Jared isn't home until really late family dinners are not an option on the week days. Those nights it is much easier for me to eat before or after the girls and just feed them at their table. However, I do believe that eating together is super important so the girls and I are going to start dining together, even if that just means that I am eating fancy peanut butter toast that I made quickly. I really really want us to eat less processed food and more fruits and veggies. We're still going to eat cookies and ice cream but we'll make more of them ourselves. I want to expose the girls to new foods a little at a time over the next months and hopefully we'll all learn to reach for a bag of nuts before a bag of chips. My hope is that, with ups and downs, over the course of the year we'll be eating healthier foods 2012...with no tears and no whining and no feeling like we're missing anything.

There are several websites that I've followed for a while and books that we've read that I wanted to share  a few of them here. Many of our friends I know have the same goals so I hope that these can help you too.

Summer Tomato is a great site with TONS of general information. If you want to sum it all up quickly she made this quick flow chart. Sad to say that much of what we eat is "at your own risk".

source

http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/ - this mama is amazing! A year ago they were Chickfila junkies like we are. They did some research and decided to slowly change how they ate as a family, trying to eat real food (vs non-processed "fake" food). They did that and then decided to try "100 days of real food" ie - take all processed food out of their diets for 100 days. They accomplished it with a 3 and 5 year old. However, it took the mom doing lots of research and spending a lot of time in her kitchen. After the 100 days was over she responded to readers comments that real food is a great ideal but is super expensive. So, now she's wrapping up "100 days of real food on a budget). Her family of 4 spends $125 a week on groceries - less than a family of 4 on food stamps would have to spend.

She posts lots of great recipes and several like the pancakes, cream of mushroom soup (so that you can make casseroles without the can condensed soup), mac and cheese for the kids, kale chips (hk loves these), banana ice cream we have tried and all really liked. If you're interested there is a recipe tab on her home page that is broken down into categories. She's got tons of great information so plan to spend some time if you check it out.

Homemade Granola Bars  - look through the comments, there are lots of good changes you can make to suit your family best

In Defense of Food and the The Omnivores Delima  are two of the main books we read  - such incredible, eye opening information

Have you heard of this? Healthy homemade bread in 5 minutes? I had been wanting to try this for a while and got the cookbook and ingredients for Christmas (thanks Mom!). It really is simple and there's a whole book of recipes to try. If you don't love one "flavor" then flip the page and try another. My first try wasn't my favorite, Jared thought it was fine, but the second one I tried is yummy! My hope is that we can stop buying bread with 20 ingredients, most of them I can't pronounce, and make our own bread with 5 ingredients that I know where they came from.

So, there you have it. No big changes this month but hopefully a year full of commitment on my part with careful shopping, budgeting and planning. I'm learning to batch cook and freeze meals/ingredients. There is no doubt that this will require more of my time - and I HATE being in the kitchen - but hope that this is something that makes as lasting impact on our health and lives. And ps- if you come over for dinner one night I promise we're not going to throw weird things on your plate!