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| Snow ice cream!!! They ate it ALL. It even had some dirt in it :) |
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| Allergen free vanilla cornbread - super yum with coconut sugar! |
I am short for ideas at noon and think...I have to do something. I take a couple over-large hormone infested, chicken barn raised, GMO grain fed, boneless, skinless chicken breasts out to defrost and shake my head over the difficulty in feeding a family healthy meals on a budget.
Jump forward to 5:00pm, about 30 minutes past my optimal "start" time for making dinner. I am sitting in the recliner, googling on my iphone about adequate calcium intake for children and have two boys on my lap who are both holding books up to me, "read mama", "can you read this mom?". I really just want to read the abstract from the journal article, but realize I'm being negligent in my kitchen and my boys' reading education. I read four books and get out of the chair after tickling them out of my lap.
Five-ten and I'm looking around the kitchen...hmmmm, what am I going to do with two chicken breasts and a family of four???
I decide on chopping them up, frying them in various spices and adding them to noodles in a sauce. This rest of the pros and cons of my cooking dialogue are best put in numbered format.
Pros about my dinner:
- frugal - only uses two chicken breasts
- 6 cloves of garlic - very anti-infective and immune boosting
- olive oil - cold pressed, natural, healthy oil
- water kefir - good probiotics
- apple cider vinegar - organic, with "the mother" (aka - good bugs) - lots of good said about it
- brown rice noodles - better than using white rice pasta
- sea salt - more mineral content, no processing
- homemade sauce - no processing or additives
- peas
- salad
- homemade salad dressing including organic vinegar and olive oil and loads of garlic
- note above rant on the quality of chicken breasts
- "oh, I think we eat too much rice, probably causing gastric cancer. It isn't even organic."
- sea salt - "oh ya, I keep meaning to read up on sea salt quality and iodine" Do I need to supplement my family's iodine for thyroid health?
- canned tomatoes - probably BPA lined, added salt and calcium chloride (do we need it?)
- white sugar added to my tomatoes simmering. Should have used natural or low glycemic option?
- non organic salad
- frozen peas too often - need more variety
- apple cider vinegar packaged in a plastic bottle - probably leaching chemicals...
Does anyone else analyze their food like this? Or am I just obsessive?
3 comments:
I do, too. Ugh. However, to balance the guilt of several years of cooking meals for the family that were not as healthy as I believed at the time, I discovered today that if you throw a big wad of fresh spinach into the blender with fruit, yogurt, egg, etc., you can't even taste the spinach. I felt like I discovered something amazing - I can eat a vegetable without even having to taste it! :) The spinach wasn't organic, but I refuse to let that damper my enthusiasm. The yogurt was store-bought (with SUGAR, but in my books that's better than artificial sweeteners). Some day I'll learn to make my own yogurt. :P
Just remember - there are probably healthy minerals in the dirt that got into the snow ice cream. hahaha Surely the minerals would counteract the minute amount of BPA that possibly leached into the tomatoes. ;)
Took your advice on the garlic and loaded the cheese toast with fresh minced garlic last night. Potent stuff! Should have given some to P to chase anyway the sniffles!
I know, I've been there, Jaime. It can be so difficult in our society to eat 100% healthy, even 80% healthy! As my naturopath used to say to me, "don't sweat the small stuff". If it is good sea salt, it already has iodine. Just keep it simple and don't worry about the rest. There are hypos on every internet article and magazine cover that warn against so many things, that if we pay attention to them all we will become obsessed and hypochondriacal ourselves! Eat simply, eat cleanly, 80% of the time if possible, is probably the best motto. By the way, if you are concerned about canned food products, search for brands that do not contain BPA in their canned goods. Eden Organic is one, but they can get expensive. We try to limit canned food, but tomatoes are an exception so I am trying to buy more Eden brand products when I "can". (ha ha) BPA is everywhere, it really can't be avoided. Many receipts contain BPA now. We just do what we can and trust God for the rest. Detoxing from time to time and drinking plenty of water is responsible... but trying to avoid every harmful thing is going beyond responsible. Besides, the stress we cause ourselves will kill us first before the actual things we're stressing about! So, keep up the healthy eating, just do whatever you can within the limits God has given you, whether it is time or financial or other. Maybe just keep a list of the biggest offenders for reference and don't worry much about the other stuff. You are doing SO much better than the average mom who constantly gives her kids pop and candy and other nutritionally void snacks...with pizza or hamburgers for dinner because she's too tired to cook. I keep a mental list of easy to fix meals for nights when I'm too tired. Nutritious pancakes, BPA canned beans and white rice skillet(smile), baked potatoes with toppings such as canned chili or bacon or sauteed onions or sausage. I'm also trying to make larger portions of food for dinners, so leftovers are a possibility more often; or a big pot of soup or stew on the weekend to use through the week or to freeze for those nights. Sorry for the long comment!
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