A busy week

Hello blog readers. I am sorry I wasn't around any this week. I ended up being super busy with various activities and I failed to blog. Some of the things I was busy doing were making whole wheat bread, making homemade ice cream, making granola bars, etc. My new bread maker is amazing!! The loaf turned out wonderfully and popped right out of the pan with no hassle at all. Such a pleasant change from our old breadmaker.

I've been reading up a storm. I finished

Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture by Shannon Hayes and it was a fantastic read. For the past year I've been beating myself up over not going back to work. I used to be a preschool teacher, before I had the girls. However trying to go back to work now that girls are in school full-time has been impossible. I can't find a job that works with the kids school schedule, is part-time, and flexible. My husband keeps telling me that there is no reason for me to hurry back to work, or to even go back at all, but I kept feeling guilty, like I should be bringing in more money. After reading Radical Homemakers, I can finally let my guilt go. I am doing important work here at home, raising our girls, maintaining the home, baking and cooking from scratch, and managing our household. It's totally made my feel at peace about our decision to have me stay home.

 

 

After I read Radical Homemakers I picked up another book called

Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity by Emily Matchar. I am currently reading this book, I am nearly finished with it. This book has been great at showing me that I am not the only one out there choosing to be a Modern Housewife. Maybe in our area this type of lifestyle is rare, but it is actually gaining momentum around the country. It has also helped put my guilty feelings aside for not working outside our home. I can see that the other side is not always greener. I am starting to see that my side of the fence is just fine, in fact it can be great!!

 

This is all just a new process for me. I am using my blog to help me work through my adventures in being  Modern Homemaker. It isn't for everyone, I totally understand that, but I really truly think that it is for me.

Weekend Retreat

Hello blog readers! Our family took a fun little trip to my in-laws cabin in the mountains over the weekend. We went out on my in-laws boat, we relaxed in the cooler weather, and enjoyed each other's company the entire weekend.  We saw some wild life also, a bob cat was sitting in the sun on my in-laws drive-way, and a buck walking along the road on the way home. It was a great trip to end our summer vacation. My hubby starts teaching again tomorrow, and my girls go back to school next Thursday.

In regards to food, we didn't do as good as I had hoped we would over the weekend. I did pack up fresh fruits, vegetables, and didn't buy the usual candy. We did go to Costco right before our trip, and we got some healthy foods like coconut oil, dried fruits, and organic lettuce, however we did get apple strudel bars, which are clearly not real food. We did better than we used to at Costco, but we still need to stay away from the bakery area.

This morning I made a large batch of homemade whole wheat waffles for our freezer, so we will have quick and easy waffles for breakfast once school starts. I also took the fresh strawberries I got at Costco and rinsed them with my water/vinegar solution, I find that when I do this the fruit lasts much longer.

I am thinking about us having steak salad for dinner tonight with some leftover steak we have. I may hard boil up some eggs because the kids have been begging me for more hard boiled eggs. I also need to make some granola bars/lara balls/ or muffins soon so hubby will have something to take to work for breakfast.

Overall as you can see we are still a work in progress. We are trying to balance our new eating habits, with our finances, trying to eat well and healthy, but without our entire paycheck going to our food budget. It's a balance that we are still trying to get the hang of. I am happy with the progress we have made thus far, and will continue to try our best to change our eating habits for the better.

They don't make it easy

Hello blog readers. We just finished up tonight's dinner and I thought I'd pop on here and tell you about my last two days. Monday night I was meeting friends at Starbucks. I did some research beforehand and was worried initially about what I could drink/eat there that was real food. When I arrived it took me less than a minute to find Evolution Fresh fruit smoothies. I flipped one over and read the ingredients and quickly saw that I found what I was looking for. I got the apple berry flavor which had 2 apples, 1/3 Mango, 34 blueberries, 3 1/2 strawberries, 22 raspberries, 1/10 coconut, and 1/4 of a banana. The ingredients were clean and it tasted amazing! I paired that with a real fruit bar and I had a healthy snack to enjoy with my friends. Winner!!

The next night we went over to my in-laws and were out pretty late. I worried what we would do about dinner, and I had a right to be concerned. My husband started looking for real food friendly options in town and then came the shocker. Baja Fresh, which is a Mexican restaurant that I love, serves grass fed meat. They also make everything fresh there, and don't even have a freezer in their store. I had no idea!! I just knew I loved their food. So we drove over to Baja Fresh and got our usual. It was delicious, and I felt even better about dining there knowing that they were trying to serve the best quality of food to their customers.

Today I got it into my head to go to the local Farmer's Market. I needed a few things, namely meat and honey. When we arrived the girls got to taste test some fresh blackberry and strawberry kiwi jam. Both kinds were good but we bought the blackberry kind. I can't wait to make my own jam. I just need my garden up and running again, oh and some blackberry plants.

Then we grabbed some organic white peaches, some cherry tomatoes, and lastly some honey. I spent more money than normal, but we also got some really good quality stuff. I couldn't find the meat guy. Maybe we were too early for him. I need meat for this weekend so I am kind of between a rock and a hard place. But otherwise I am glad I went.

However I will say that this new lifestyle is much harder than the normal just buy everything at the grocery store. I have been to one place for my eggs. Another place for fruits and still I need to go somewhere else for meat. Everything is more expensive, and it takes longer. I can see why people turn a blind eye to trying to eat organic/healthy/local. I am not ready to give up. This is something I made my mind up about. It's just going to take a bit to get in the groove of things.

A deeper look into where our food comes from

Hello blog readers. Still reeling from the disturbing facts I read in the book The Omnivore's Dilemma  I started to search for more information about where our food comes from. This brought me to another book called Every Twelve Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight by Timothy Pachirat. After reading a brief synopsis of the book I decided that I am not sure I can stomach to read it yet. What I did find was a book I could handle  Folks, This Ain't Normal: A Farmer's Advice for Happier Hens, Healthier People, and a Better World       by Joel Salatin I'm about half way through the book, and Joel makes the book easy to read. His conversational tone makes you feel like he's right in front of you, sharing about his farm, his family, and most importantly food grown and made the right way. 

I also watched the documentary Food, Inc. today and there was Michael Pollan talking about some of the things he touched upon in his book The Omnivore's Dilemma. There was also Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farm. There were definitely some disturbing information given, and show, but nothing too graphic. I'll admit it I cried during part of it. It was another wake up call to me about how I should use my money to show big business what kind of food I want in my home, and that means local, healthy, and respected. 

We looked into a Meat CSA last night. My husband fully supports this, although it will be a lot more expensive to get our meat from a local source, rather than the grocery store where I usually get it. It will mean some changes to how we eat, less meat for every meal, but at least the meat we do eat will be meat I can enjoy, and feel good about. 

Lastly since I need to start dinner soon, I wanted to say that we drove into the next town and I picked up a dozen fresh farm raised chicken eggs. They were four dollars for the dozen, more than we usually spend for the big pack at Costco but I am excited about giving them to my family. Just opening the carton and seeing the rainbow of different colored eggs showed my girls that something was different about these eggs, and I am sure they are going to taste different too. Taste like happy eggs, and happy chickens, taste like we are eating something wholesome and good. 

                         

The Omnivore's Dilemma

Hello blog people. Last night I ended up downloading The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I have read a couple of his other books previously, but I shied away from this book because I thought it might be too technical for me. I was wrong. I not only found the book to be very down-to-earth and easy to understand, but I learned so much from it. Too much in some ways because I am not sure I can ever look at eggs the same again. The atrocities that Michael uncovers in the book are heartbreaking. I had no idea that chickens were treated so poorly. I guess I had my head in the metaphorical sand before, but now my eyes are open wide. If you haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it, but be aware that you may never look at your food the same again. I bawled my eyes out after I finished it. And now my mind is reeling as to how to change the way our family eats and where can I find a place to get our meats that the animals are treated with some respect and humanely. It's a big task on top of already trying to change the way we eat, but I can't let these things I've read be unread, or ignored.

The first step is getting eggs elsewhere. This is the one thing that I know I can change immediately because where we live their is a store that sells local, organic, free range happy chicken eggs. I have never before felt the need to buy these eggs, until now. It may be a little out of my way, and a little more expensive, but it is worth the effort and the price. So this week it's on my to-do list.

Let me fill you in on the other stuff. My ice cream maker arrived, and it is the last of my birthday appliances. Now I just need to get on the ball and make some homemade bread, homemade ice cream, and some homemade Lara Balls. My week is pretty empty, finally, so I should be able to get one or two of those things accomplished.

This morning I made whole wheat waffles for the family and I served it with butter and real maple syrup. I froze the extras so we'll have easy breakfasts for the upcoming week. I am slowly but surely changing our pantry from a junk filled one, to a real food one. Bye-bye bisquick, hello whole wheat flour. I also need to get some coconut oil, for baking, and cooking.

Well it's the weekend and I have things to do. Enjoy your night and have a fresh and fruity day tomorrow!

Monday Musings

Hello blog world. I'm back from a busy weekend of pool parties, and too much sun. I enjoyed myself overall although eating pizza two meals in a row back-to-back was not the best thing ever. I think it will be a while before I have another pizza craving that is for sure. I'm happy that Miss D was able to play with her friends again and that I could set up another play date for her tomorrow morning. I am thankful for having just two kids, because I am not sure I could manage to keep up with three or more kids busy social lives.

Anyway onto the eating. The weekend was a bust with all the pizza, but I did manage to drink and enjoy my green tea every day and that was a plus. Forget soda the green tea is working nicely for me right now. Tonight for dinner I am making a big, delicious salad with chicken, and veggies galore. So looking forward to eating that soon.

I went ahead and ordered my new ice cream maker, so I can start making real ice cream as a treat for me and my family. I still haven't gotten to use my new bread maker. I thought I'd have the time today, but I got caught up at work and didn't make it home early enough. That also blew my plans for chicken in the crock pot, but now I'm thinking Wednesday for that.

Well that's about it for now on the real eating front here. Have a wonderful evening!

Shopping at the grocery store

Hello! Well as nice as it was the last time I posted here I am two days later and I am hot, hot, hot!! It's supposed to get up to around 106 degrees in the next few days and I am not happy with that at all. I cannot bake when it is so hot because it heats up my entire house. Thankfully my husband likes to BBQ so our dinners usually don't heat up our house because he cooks outside.

I received my brand new bread maker yesterday and I am itching to use it. I'm thinking Monday of next week I will do my first batch of whole wheat sandwich bread. I'm hoping the reviews on Amazon were correct and this bread maker will be a Winner and work for us for many years to come.

Today I went grocery shopping. Miss R and Miss D came along too. I find that shopping with the girl's is so much longer and harder than when I go alone, but then again I'm sure all Moms think that not just me.

I had a list of things we needed and I stuck to my list. Our vegetable drawer is filled with green beans, carrots, celery, green peppers etc. So many delicious vegetables for soups, stew, and salads. I also picked up two whole chickens on sale that I am going to use for a crock pot chicken recipe that I found on Pinterest yesterday.

Today we are headed to a birthday party so I don't need to worry about dinner tonight. Have a great weekend!!!

Little changes

Hello! I don't know about you, but from where I am sitting it is a beautiful sunny day. Not too hot, which is rare where I live, but just the perfect amount of heat and sun for a summer day. I spent the morning with my two daughters Miss R and Miss D. Miss R is ten, and she's really becoming more independent and responsible lately which I both appreciate and enjoy. Miss D is seven and she's still my little girl, even if she doesn't always act like she wants me around. She's funny, and silly. For example she wore her Halloween cat ear headband to my in-laws for dinner last night. She really has her own style and doesn't care what others think. I should take a page from her book sometime. I think I care TOO much what people think of me.

Anyhow I spent the morning with my two favorite girls shopping for school clothes, and birthday party presents. We ended up at Target and I started browsing the food section because Miss R really liked these dried mangoes that we bought there a few weeks ago. They are the simply balanced variety and except for a little added sugar, which I am not super happy about but I can deal with it, the mangoes were otherwise perfectly healthy and followed my real food rules. However I was disappointed to find that almost all of the other Simply Balanced foods they sell were not five ingredients or less, and/or without preservatives of some sort. Annoying. Don't market yourself as healthy, but then not meet the criteria. Sure you may be a little healthier than the other brands, but you're not getting my money, because you still don't measure up. Try again Simply Balanced.

I did pick up some Organic Green Tea. I like to drink Diet Soda normally, not too much maybe a small glass or two a day, but realizing that it is horrible for me I am going to drink Water, Green Tea, and 100% fruit juice. So bye-bye Diet soda, hello a big old pitcher of green tea in my fridge right now. It sounds great in the summer, and I've gotten used to drinking water wherever we go. My only issue with the tea is I like it sweetened, I am going to start at 3/4 cups sugar per pitcher, and wean myself down to as little sugar as I can handle over time. I can't go cold turkey, so I am taking the slow and steady approach.

Our cherry tomato plant has a small cherry tomato on it, and many more blooms. I personally don't like raw tomatoes, but Miss D eats them like they are candy. It will be nice when all those blooms start producing and she can just pick what she wants daily.

The week is flying by. I cannot believe it's Wednesday already. I had to mentally check myself that it was in fact Wednesday today. We have a busy weekend planned with two birthday/swim parties to attend, and a game night. It'll be here before I know it. So much to do, but I admit I love it.

Time to get off my computer and get back to it. Have a fresh and fruity day!

High's and Low's

Yesterday I started out with a renewed resolve. I ate a healthy real food breakfast, lunch, and even dinner. Things were looking great for me yesterday, but then right around eight-thirty I lost it, and ate junk. Butterfinger cups were calling out to me. And the flaming hot cheetoes were SO freaking good but I don't even want to think about what they are made out of. I have to realize that this is a process and I am just starting out. It's going to get easier and easier. The first thing that needs to happen is for me to get the last of this leftover junk food out of my house. So today when my brother came over I sent the majority of the leftover junk food home with him. Bye-bye flaming hot cheetoes, and red licorice, and honey roasted peanuts. I did keep the last package of butterfinger cups because we waited nearly a month for Target to get them in stock and I couldn't just let them walk out the door. I'm bad I know.

Okay but before I make myself sound like I totally blew it, I did order my brand new bread maker today off of Amazon. This is the one I bought: Bread maker.

I'm so excited for it to arrive and for me to test it out. Hubby is hankering for some sour dough bread too. I am not sure if I'll be able to manage that but in time we may be eating some freshly made sour dough rolls. YUM!

We'll get fully into the swing of healthy eating once I am able to go grocery shopping and then I can stock up on all the real food we need. Until then I am making due with what we have which isn't that much stuff, but we only have to hang in there until next week.

Tonight we're celebrating my Father-in-law's birthday which you know is a fantastic thing since he was diagnosed with Stage 4 kidney cancer last January. Last year things were looking bleak, and thanks to Sutent which is a powerful drug he is on, his cancer is pretty much in remission, as close as you can be to remission with his type of cancer. So we have a lot of celebrating to do.

Tomorrow starts a fresh new day, and I plan to make good decisions until then, keep on living Fresh and Fruity.

One year Real Food eating challenge.

My family and I had a fun-filled trip camping for the past four days and now that the dust has settled and we're back at home, it's time to get back on track with our healthy real food eating. We DO have leftover snacks and treats from our trip, which I won't just throw away because it did cost us some money to buy, but as the things are eaten up, mainly by the kids, I do not plan to buy any more junky food.

The really eye opening thing is that after one night of indulging on S'mores, and other treats I felt positively miserable not only for the rest of that night, but into the next day and night too. It just goes to show that our bodies want to eat healthy, and not all this processed crap that we continue to keep feeding ourselves on a daily basis.

I have a birthday coming up, the big 36, and I have some plans to buy some real food appliances. Such as a new ice cream maker, a new bread maker, and possibly a new dehydrator. I am committed to making a real food change and sticking to it. I'd love to come back to this blog a year from today and see how well we did, and what the challenges were, and what the rewards were.

I know it won't always be easy, especially around the holidays, but I am going to do my very best to make positive changes to how our family eats, and I'm hoping to grow a lot of real food, and learn a lot about myself along the way. This could be the first real step for something that really matters, our families health. I will try and document the highs and low's so people can get a true and accurate understanding of what it is like to go Real Food.

So what are my Real Food Rules?

1) Do not eat anything with more than five ingredients on the nutritional label.
2) Do not eat anything with words that I cannot understand or pronounce on the nutritional label.
3) If my grandma wouldn't recognize something on the shelves then I shouldn't consume it.

There's my starting point. Now it's time to make it a reality. I'd say wish us luck, but it's not going to take luck, it's going to take willpower and planning. We're going to make this plan a reality starting today we're going Fresh and Fruity and we're not looking back. Until next July 21st and then I am totally looking back. =P

A rocky start

My intentions are the best, however my execution has been lacking in regards to healthy living. I'm being honest here that I haven't been eating as many real wholesome foods as I would like. The problem isn't the weekdays where I can control everything and plan our meals out, it's the weekends where we are out and about and our options for lunch are all swimming in sodium and preservatives. If only there were more healthy whole food options out there in restaurant form. One cannot live on Chipotle alone.

The good news is that we have upped out fruit intake and have tried to eat a veggie with every dinner at home. I've even lost a little weight without even trying. However the changes, the big ones, are still to come. We have a camping trip that starts tomorrow and it lasts four days and then it's time to get down to the nitty gritty with our whole healthy eating resolve. You know after we gorge ourselves on smores and other delicious concoctions of nutritional perversion. I'm giving you real, truthful honesty. I may want to eat real food but the crappy food still does have a hold on me. I'm hopeful that will change, that I will hate vanilla zingers and flaming hot cheetoes but that time is not yet here.

So I'll be back on the flip side with a renewed dedication to the cause and some detoxing to do. If your seeing my blog for the first time it's a good time to start because you're going to see the changes we make from the very bottom nutritional tier and straight on up.

Real food living 2014

Last year my father-in-law was diagnosed with stage four kidney cancer. This news shocked our family because my father-in-law seemed to be a pretty healthy man. He doesn't smoke, drinks rarely, and isn't obese. How could he have gotten cancer?! I did some digging and although we may never know what caused his cancer (thankfully he's responding wonderfully to the treatments he's on) I think that by eating a real food diet it can only help to prevent getting cancer. So we changed what we ate.

I threw out all the processed junk. I started buying real foods, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and whole milk. We felt great and it showed, but it also took a toll on our finances. Real food is not cheap food. And we were trying to get out of debt and so we made the hard decision to eating as much real food and try to pay off our debt as soon as possible. The great news is we paid off all of our debt, but we did start buying more and more junk. But that's all about to change. We are ready to begin to eat real food once again and we are willing and able to go the distance this time. Starting tomorrow we change for the better once again and I am so excited to get back to eating delicious real foods once more. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it.

The garden that never was

Hello blog world. I am back.

I'm sorry to say that our garden never happened this spring. We didn't have the money to buy the fencing materials, so we were not able to block off a place where we could grow our garden without our dog eating our plants.

However we did manage to plant a cherry tomato plant in the front yard, and it has really taken off. I would have never thought to plant fruits or vegetables in our front yard, but it actually has worked out quite well. We also have strawberries growing in the front also, we had two strawberry plants left over from last year's garden that needed a home, so I used the front yard, and they spread themselves, and are growing wonderfully now. We've had a lot of delicious strawberries from those two extra strawberry plants this summer.

The good news is that we will have the money and the desire to plant our garden this fall. Probably somewhere around October we will get the materials we need to build a fence. Then we will plant some winter vegetables, and we hope to enjoy those until the spring and then we can have a wonderful garden next year.

We have also fallen out of our good habits of eating mostly real food and the consequences of this mistake have been poor. I started gaining weight again, which is not surprising given the amount of nasty processed food I've been consuming. I thought going on a diet would help, but the truth is I've never felt better than when I did last year eating real food. I want to model to my girls eating good food and exercise and not that they need to go on diets to lose weight. They look to me to get their views of the world still, and it is important to steer them right.

I need to go to the grocery store and stock up on good real food. It's time to get back to the basics once again.

Welcome to 2014!!

It's been several months since I've posted to the blog because once our garden slowly petered out, I had less interest in blogging here. Now that the weather is warming up again, and spring is not such a long way off my thoughts have turned to this years garden. We have some hurdles to overcome though to get the Sunny Patch up and running again.

The first obstacle is our dogs. They broke into our garden last year and ate up our watering tubes. We have tried unsuccessfully to keep the dogs out of the garden. They broke into it and ate a bunch of our old tomatoes and boy did they get sick. Our options for keeping them out of our new garden are 1) Installing a real fence and gate big enough to keep our Saint Bernard out 2) Buying an electric fence to keep the dogs from trying to get into the garden.

Honestly I'd prefer to make a nice gate and fence but financially that is the most expensive of the two options. I think we are going to go with option two and see if it works. We have tried many measures to keep the dogs out, and unfortunately we have to resort to the electric fence. I'm hoping just a small zap or two and our dogs will get the picture and stay out!

Other obstacles are that we have to build additional boxes to plant in. We have one box and it worked wonderfully, only the tomatoes and squash took over the box and pretty much killed the smaller plants. We need a dedicated squash and tomato box, as well as another box or two for the various other plants and veggies we want to grow.

I'd also like to plant some boysenberries or blackberries as well. I think that would be wonderful for our garden to be able to pick some fresh berries. A new fruit bearing tree or two would be nice also. Apples perhaps, or nectarines.

I enjoyed most of the plants we grew last year. I think I will trade the squash our for cucumbers. I probably won't grow the baby carrots again. I'd like to grow broccoli, lettuce, and maybe some asparagus if we can find a nice spot for it.

I have high expectations for this years garden. I am hopeful we can find something to keep the ants away, without resorting to pesticides on our fruits like we did last year with our strawberries.

Here's to another plentiful year in the Sunny Patch Garden.