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.