Real Food

Since 2007, our family has been on a natural, organic and healthy food quest.  Over the past few years we have done this successfully for a while and have fallen off the bandwagon many times.  I gotta say, it was much easier to do this with only 4 mouths to feed.  Unfortunately, no matter whether we have 3 mouths to feed or 5, its something that I believe in and we must just do it!  We will cut back in other areas, but I strongly believe that my children need to eat "real food" with "real ingredients".

Part of eating real food on a tight food budget means that you are no longer to buy convenience foods.  Whether its organic or natural or not, it costs a WHOLE lot more than the national brands AND a whole WHOLE LOT more than making it from scratch!  The promise is that this takes TIME!  I don't always have time or the desire to bake at all hours of the day every week!  I am getting better...... but it does get old!  ;o)

At the end of last summer we began to explore the options of becoming a "farmer buying family".  What that means for our family is that we began to research what can we afford to buy locally?  So, it took a while for us to convince each other that this was financially worth it and we made the plunge, a year later, and began buying local, non homogenized, grass eating cow's milk. This was a HUGE step because we went from paying grocery store prices for regular whole milk to buying "specialty" milk.  The cost is quite a bit before AND it does take effort.  Hubbie goes and picks it up for us every week.  Its not as convenient as driving to the store to pick it up!!  But the milk is good and its a great feeling to be able to give our children this gift of milk without anything added or taken away or from unhealthy cows.

A few weeks ago when Hubbie went to pick up our milk, he noticed a lady sell fresh eggs!  He texted me and asked if I was interested!  We definitely were but most of the co-ops around the area were charging $4 a dozen.  That was too steep for me to pay....especially since one breakfast of eggs or omelets usually used 7 eggs!  So, when he said that the lady only charged $2 for a dozen, we jumped on it!  The eggs are delicious!  So much different than store bought eggs!  And the eggs have a shelf date of 45 days!?!  Crazy!!!  Also, TMI, I'm sure, but usually when we eat eggs, they tend to upset my stomach in different ways!  Eating the fresh eggs, no effects!!!  There is definitely something to eating fresh!

Earlier this year we bought a deep freeze.  This was in hopes of eventually stocking up on "farmer" (who live outside, eat grass and bugs, no hormones,etc) chickens and cow.  We are in search of someone to buy a half of a cow with us.  Just last night I purchases a share in a chicken co-op.  Once a month we'll go and pick up 4 whole frozen chickens from a local farmer.  The cost is substantially higher to what I was paying for Tyson boneless skinless chicken breasts at Kroger (.99lb to 1.99lb) but I was out of chicken and I couldn't STAND to feed my children the other meat.  We will boil these chickens, get off all the meat and I think I'll freeze it to be used in casseroles and salads.  I'm afraid that if I leave it as a whole bird in my freezer that it'll never get used because of the work that it takes on the day that I need to use it, so I need to make this chicken easy and accessible.

Another step that we've taken over this past summer was to no longer buy "kid friendly yogurt".  What that means for us is that we no longer bought the character yogurt.  It didn't matter which kind we bought and whether it was a national brand or the grocery store brand, the yogurt just wasn't real yogurt.  It was loaded with TONS of sugar and no little to no nutritional value.  I was spending TONS of money a month on yogurt and it wasn't doing a bit of good for my children, so we quit that quickly!  I began buying tubs of Stoneyfield yogurt.  This has been wonderful because I was already buying it for Buggy when we made the switch to it for the bigger boys.  It has taken them some time to stop asking for the other yogurt.  We don't even walk past that part of Publix anymore.  We go straight to the organic/natural section when we need yogurt and they've stopped asking about the other kind.

We are also trying to find alternatives for foods that we "must" have.  Things such as deli meat.  I had started buying the Hormel lunch meat about a year ago.  If the package says caramel coloring on the outside of the lunch package, I do not buy it!  And all the others did....so we made that switch a while ago.  Unfortunately, after doing more research, the Hormel isn't the best stuff either.....so we'll be making another change this month.  I read an article on a blog a few months ago (I wish I knew which one, but I Google search "eating organically and naturally on a budget and lots of wonder helps are found) that buying lunch meat from the deli's counter at your grocery store is actually a cheap and good way to eliminate "bad ingredients" in your deli meat.

I would love to make the switch for cheese, but it just is NOT financially possible.  We eat too much cheese every week.  I did start buying cheddar cheese to cut instead of cheese slices.  The Kraft cheese slices aren't REAL cheese and I can't stand to think about my children ingesting that wiggly piece of cheese like substance.   Of course, the kids want to gobble it up SO much quicker than the cheese slices so I have to limit the amount of cheese they eat some days!!!

Another thing that we've begun to do is make green smoothies.  I think I've intended to write about our green smoothies for a while.  Towards the middle of summer I began to do research on eating good foods.  I wanted to get some good vitamins in my kiddos body and didn't know how to do it.  My kids don't eat the greatest....well, my OLDEST doesn't eat the greatest.  I can get my younger kiddos to eat lots of veggies and fruits.  My oldest has to be forced or bribed to eat just about ANY fruit or ANY veggies.  So, we began to search out green smoothies.  I found this recipe and it is quite good!  You really do not taste the spinach.  If you did, I wouldn't serve it to my kids, because it would be a waste!!!  I do buy organic spinach because spinach is on the "Dirty Dozen" list.  We were making these for breakfasts for a few months.  Here lately I've begun making these for snacks after nap.  It eliminates their munchies and hopefully don't spoil their dinner.

We have a long way to go....but simple things such as making cakes and cookies and breads from scratch, we have begun.  We really never bought mixes or meal boxes before, but I do buy boxes of Annie's mac and cheese.  I don't mind giving the kids that mac and cheese.  We also stopped buying the kids spaghettio's or soups with characters and I have only bought the kids Annie's canned spaghettio's for the kids.

I mentioned the Dirty Dozen list.  We can afford to buy all those items organic every month.  We just can't....so we wash as best we can and pray for the rest!  If you read over that list, its amazing how many of those "most contaminated" list we DO eat A LOT of....and out of the "not so bad" we don't eat that much out of that list...not on a regular basis.  Except for bananas and broccoli (which we buy frozen).  Not so good....so, we have made little steps and hopefully we can continue to make small steps in the right direction.

Its kinda funny how Bubbie is picking up on our changes..... one day when we passed McDonalds, the kids asked if we could go.  I'll be honest here, Hubbie and I really tried to avoid "The Golden Arches" before watching Food Inc, but after seeing that leftover parts of chicken are cut up, soaked in AMMONIA and then sent to meat packaging plants ALL OVER the U.S. as a meat filler (GROSS) and then researching more into what was REALLY in those chicken nuggets, I made an executive decision... No more McDonalds!  When Bubbie asked why, I told him about some of the stuff that I had learned about foods.  Once we got home, I showed him the taping of Jamie Oliver's show and how he had made chicken nuggets look good no matter what was in them.  Bubbie was disgusted.  Now he is convinced that only the chicken nuggets at McDonalds is bad!  ;o)  Its funny how he digests what we talk to him about and how it comes out... its usually MUCH different!

Eating out is something that Hubbie and I strive to do less of.  We will do good for a while and then fall off the bandwagon.  Slowly we have eliminated certain places because of food that is served or the cost for the quality of food.  Chick -fil- A is a place that Hubbie and I are confident about eating at.  We use to work there and know what is served and how it came into the restaurant.  Another place that we've found kid friendly and Momma approved meals at is Publix.  They have begun to offer kids meals in their deli.  The items in the meals have natural products in them such as Stoneyfield yogurt, organic cheese sticks, etc.  I feel safe knowing that the kids are eating good food.  We do pay a tiny bit more than you would at McDonalds for a happy meal, BUT I feel like its worth it and similar to what I would feed them at home.

I tell Hubbie all the time that I wish I could walk into a grocery store, with my list, buy anything we needed/wanted and be done.  Not having to worry about cost or choosing between real food or something similar loaded with crap or covered in yucky stuff.   I can dream.  One day I want our family to live off our land as much as possible, buy local and not have the need to enter a grocery store very much.....  I guess I can keep dreaming....