What We are Eating Update

Hello everyone!  Today I thought that I would give you all a update on how we are doing with our new food guidelines that we started following last summer/fall.  We are still in the learning stages and DO NOT claim to be perfect or even good at eating healthy.  We are just trying to improve our way of life one tiny step at a time.  Our food journey started with me wanting to lose some weight, BUT it has slowly become more than that.  After changing the way we were eating we realized that it made us feel better too.  We noticed we had more energy and I noticed that I got less upset stomachs (something that I would get off and on before we switched).  Also a big thing that happened is we fell in LOVE with good quality food.  Cooking and baking have become hobbies for me, and McKay likes to try his hand at a few things too (such as my birthday cake) and it is a good thing that we both enjoy it so much because we have definitely been doing a lot of it these days as we cut out more store bought things with a billion of ingredients and replacing them with homemade goodness.

Another bonus of eating healthier that I am not sure that I mentioned last time is that I have slowly quit my fast food addiction.  Guys this is sad to admit, but I LOVE going out to eat.  Fast food, fancy dinners, a quick pizza, or just ice cream.  I love it all!  Back when we were first married it was usually a once a week thing.  When I was pregnant with Adalyn it became a 1,2,3, and sometimes 4 times a week!?  Scary!  No wonder I put on so much weight!  (I promise we didn't go into debt for it since we were both working, but we sure spent lots of money on it).  After Adalyn it went back to a 1 or 2 times a week thing, but we still did it a lot.  But now that we know what real food tastes like I have slowly wanted to go out to eat less and cook more.  Fast food seems like a waste of money because it doesn't taste that good and the kids keep us from going anywhere nice too often so we now eat out about twice a month.  Our budget thanks us for that. :)

We have still been doing the same things that we mentioned in the previous post , and then we kind of took a break from trying new things while I had baby Jensen.  We were still trying to eat as good as possible, but just doing what we had already been doing.  But the past few weeks we have both been thinking about it and we have made a little more progress (baby steps right?).

1. Find Organic foods.  This one didn't really happen, but I want to document my efforts.  So as I researched healthier foods I kept coming across that it was important to eat mostly organic fruits and vegetables because of the harmful chemicals on the other stuff.  So I began searching for stores/ farmers markets that sold local organic foods here in Idaho in January.  Well since most of the state is covered in lots of snow for a good chunk of the winter my search did not come up with any positive results.  Basically my options were buy from the small selection of organic foods at the grocery store (that were not locally grown) or have food shipped to my house for a small fortune.  Neither option is that great so we are just working with the foods that the grocery stores carry.  Hopefully we will survive with them for the winter and then enjoy fresh produce in the summer. 

2. Homemade tortillas.  Oh we LOVE these!  I really like this recipe because it has a total of 3 ingredients and it is whole wheat.  At first I was very intimidated by the idea of making our own tortillas because I thought that it would be WAY time consuming and that they wouldn't even taste that much better than store bought ones.  It went along with the idea that time is money and making my own tortillas was not worth the "cost" that it would take to make them.  Well they are time consuming, but not terrible.  Yesterday I made them for the second time and we were able to cook, eat, and clean up in less than 2 hours and that included the rest of the meal that I made.  So I would just suggest doing it on a night that you don't mind being in the kitchen.  The first time I made them McKay was gone and Adalyn was sick.  BAD combination and I may have said that I would never make them again...  But then I thought about it and realized that I just needed to plan better.  Oh and as far as taste, they are DELICIOUS and SO much better than the store bought ones in my opinion. Easy and oh so yummy (especially yummy when they are fresh and warm).  We will always at least double the recipe so that we have more leftovers for breakfast and lunches.

3. Homemade pasta noodles.  Background story... McKay bought me a really nice pasta maker for Christmas this year... and just like the tortillas I did NOT want to make my own pasta because of how time consuming it is.  So I didn't really enjoy that he got me the pasta maker, but he was excited about it so I figured it could just become his project that he would occasionally cook of us on the weekends.  Well last weekend rolled around and we were trying to come up with something to do for a little "date" night.  McKay suggested that we try making pasta and I agreed to help out.  I was expecting it to take ALL night and be a very involved process.  But once again I was proved wrong and even though it took a little bit of effort it was manageable (even with two kids to care for at the same time).  The results tasted so yummy especially with this Alfredo sauce made with cauliflower.  Adalyn LOVED the noodles (raw and cooked) and she at almost all of the leftovers from it for the next several days.  It was definitely nice to have the pasta maker to speed up the process, but not necessary.  I still won't be making my own noodles every time, but we will probably do it often.

Here is our fun night of making pasta-  While we cooked Adalyn used her kitchen to do a little "cooking" herself and then she would feed her food to Jensen.  So fun to watch her "play" with him.  They are going to be great friends.

 

4. Kid friendly snacks/foods.  So it has been a slow process on getting Adalyn to eat healthier.  Kid friendly foods are just commonly the refined sugar things and sometimes it feels like the healthier things are a little more work.  she still can't eat raw fruits and vegetables very well so everything needs prep time.  Dinners and breakfasts have gotten easier because she just eats what we eat and she has surprisingly gotten less picky over time.  She will now eat most vegetables that we give her and knows that if she doesn't want to eat what we are having then she gets to go hungry.  It is amazing how she will eat just about anything when she is hungry enough. :)  We kick the Nutragrain bar addiction months ago especially after reading about how harmful artificial dyes are.  She now loves snacking on grapes, raisins, and bananas.  But graham Crackers are also still around... If anyone had any suggestions of healthy snacks for on the go with toddlers I would love to hear them.

Well there are some of the things that we have been trying.  We are also still trying LOTS of new recipes, but we have cut it back to only 2-3 a week.  :) It is fun to start having a new recipe collection that my family loves.  Tomorrow it is pumpkin chocolate chip muffins with spelt flour and a spinach and wild rice salad for dinner.  yummy!                

P.S. to prove even further that we are baking lots around here (or maybe we are just tired of being stuck inside this winter), here are a few pictures from Monday night's Family home evening where we made sugar cookies and talked about our ancestors (family tree and all).  Not so healthy, but still fun.  Good thing I sent all of the cookies with McKay to work the next morning or I would have eaten half the batch myself!

Have a great night!