Laundry and Children

I Am Too Damn Good a Cook to Eat This Crap

Last year was a hard year and it took its toll on just about every area of our life.  Personally, the place it took the biggest toll  was in the health department.  Slowly, slowly I started to let go of many of the healthy eating habits that I had worked really hard to incorporate into our lives.  There just wasn't enough time for everything and it was easier to buy a box of cereal and a loaf of bread at the store instead of finding the time to make granola and bread.  Facing the fight that accompanied the insistence that the children eat fruit with lunch, just wasn't worth the effort.  Rationalizing food choices, to the point that ketchup and french fries became servings of fruit and veggies, made its way into my thinking.  I can give you a million reasons why I got lazy, but the truth of the matter is that I just got lazy and I let things slide.  And slide they did.

Well, it's a new year!  And it is time to start clawing my way back to healthy.  A few years back, when I started this health journey, I lost over 20 pounds (YEAH!) then last year I gained it all back (BOO!).  The worst part is that when I eat crap, I feel like crap.  So why do I do it?  Because it's easy?  Because at the moment of consumption the food tastes good (if not real)?  Because I am too tired, stressed, whatever to think about food?

The worst part is that I LOVE to think about food.  I read cookbooks like novels.  I can waste a whole day perusing cooking blogs.  I get giddy when I put a well made meal on the table.  A new recipe makes me dizzy.  The happiest birthday in my recent memory was a few years ago when I made dinner for about a dozen and a half of my friends.

There are not many domestic areas in which I can say that I truly excel.  I'm a crappy housekeeper.  Sometimes I think my house looks like an episode of Hoarders.  More often than not, my kids have to go searching laundry baskets for clean jeans.  I perhaps yell too much and do crafts with my kids too infrequently.  However, there is one thing that I feel like I am really good at.  I am a damn good cook.  It goes against all my upbringing to brag on myself like that, but it is the one area of my life in which I feel like I am on pretty safe ground to compliment myself.

Today it hit me like a ton of bricks...I am too damn good a cook to eat this crap! 

So today we get back to clean eating!  We get back to whole foods and real ingredients.  There will be more homemade items and less processed food.  There will be food that tastes good and makes me feel good.  No more excuses!

There is Nothing to Eat

It is not unusual for me to go a week between grocery trips.  However, that is usually when I am not thinking about going to the grocery store.  This week is different.  This week I have made a conscientious decision not to go to the grocery store until at least Saturday.  The last time I went was exactly one week ago and it was mostly to shop for my hubby's birthday party.  So, in my mind, going another week without buying "family food" was akin to Mission Impossible.

I would like to say that I am totally motivated by altruistic reasons.  I would like to say that it is because I recently learned that everyday American family throws away 122 pounds of food a month.  I want to wrap myself up in a blanket of self-righteous do-goodery, but that wouldn't be exactly true.

Nope.  The truth is that we need to make a little extra wiggle room in our budget.  I went a bit overboard with Baconpalooza (aka my husband's birthday party) and I am now forced to make it up in other areas.  I am not "too big to fail," so I have to bail out my own leaking boat.  I know, I am so old school.  Bail myself out!  Do people even do that anymore?  But I digress.

So this week, we are eating only what is in our house already.  At first I was concerned as to how I would feed a family of 6 without the opportunity to run out to the grocery store at a moment's notice.  Surely we would starve, and I was eyeing which one of the children that we would consume first in our own personal Donner Pass.  However, as we close in on the end of the week, I am happy to report that none of the children have been consumed, not even the dog.  In fact, we've eaten pretty well.

The meals are starting to get a little more creative (Teddy had dry Rice Crispy cereal this morning and Rachel had two graham crackers), but we are using things that might normally just get thrown away.  When I look in my pantry and fridge, I see how much food we really have and it is quite a bit.

Still, we have run out of milk and eggs, which has not gone without complaint.  And I firmly believe that a lack of peanut butter and jelly could cause a mutiny.  Nonetheless, we trudge onward towards Saturday.  So even though this started out as purely a budgetary exercise, it has opened my eyes to how much food is actually in the house when I find myself saying, "There is nothing to eat in this house."

"And I tell you what, now that I'm grown and have kids of my own, I understand why my mother didn't want to take three youngins in the grocery store.  I would rather take a beating with a brick stick than take kids in the grocery store.  Cause as soon as those doors slide open, those kids start begging like homeless people at Christmas time." - Jeff Foxworthy