Day 15

Been pretty busy the last couple of days.  I'm trying to do a complete overhaul of our lives, changing not only what we eat, but drastically reducing the amount of chemicals in our home while simutaniously saving money by making my own natural products (like cleaning supplies, toothpaste, shampoo, deoderant, etc).  Of course, this isn't something you can change overnight, and the initial cost of ingredients can be expensive (but cheaper in the long run).

Yesterday I sold a camera lens for a pretty good amount of money and I promptly invested the money in my kitchen.  First, I went to the Farmer's Market and Whole Foods to get our groceries for the week.

This was my haul from the Farmer's Market.  I went to a larger one this time, it was pretty enjoyable.  The chicken and beef are organic, the vendor was really nice... he also sells raw milk for $7 a gallon, he gets it from a local Amish community!  (50 cents off if you bring your own gallon jug).

After I had food, I started hunting for kitchen supplies.  When you're preparing food in tradition ways, you suddenly find yourself in need of various kitchen appliances that you previously never gave a second thought to.  Like a tortilla press, for example.

I'm pretty frugal - we live on a tight budget and I was raised to live within my means.   I am all about thrift stores and craigslist, not only to save green, but to be green, too.  Buying used reduces waste and saves money.

The first thing I found was a popcorn maker.  My whole family was excited about this.  To celebrate, my son and I popped a big bowl and read a library book together, The Popcorn Book.

I learned that popcorn kernels should be kept cold to retain their moisture, so we transferred our bag into a glass jar and stored it in the fridge.  The popcorn itself reminded me of when I was a kid and my dad would always pop our own popcorn (never microwaved bags!) and smother it in salt and melted butter.  Mmm, it was so good.  I'm more than happy to pass this tradition on to my own kids.

The next thing I purchased was a cast iron skillet.  I was really excited about this, I've always wanted one but never splurged on it because I already have pans and they're fine.  But teflon is not fine!  I tossed our teflon into the trash (thankfully we have a few pieces of stainless steel already, and now this awesome skillet).  I did buy this brand new because it was actually cheaper than the used one's I found on craigslist.

I also found this ice cream maker, and I got it for 50% off it's original price.   The family was excited about this as well.  I also have happy memories of my mom's homemade ice cream (SO GOOD), and I am pretty anxious to make some.  Of course, you won't find those colorful sprinkles or artifically-colored cherries in my kitchen.  You know that shiny coating on sprinkles?  Well, they get that glaze from the secretions of the female lac beetle. The substance is also known as shellac and commonly used as a wood varnish.  Yum, right?

Last but not least, I bought a 3-crock slow cooker.  I thought this seemed like a fantastic idea, given that I could cook dinner and 2 side-dishes with minimal effort, or tomorrow's breakfast, lunch and dinner all at the same time in seperate crocks.  When I'm pressed for time, this will come in handy.

Speaking of crock pots, I stuck my organic, free-range, happy, bug-eating chicken in the crock pot today with some water.  I slow cooked it all day until it was falling off the bone.  So delicious.  I saved and froze the broth to use later, probably to cook beans (beans are more flavorful & nutritious when cooked in broth rather than water!)

I still have some cash left and I'm buying a food processor off craigslist with it tomorrow.  It will come in handy for so many things.  I'm getting my kitchen "up to speed" for traditional cooking.  In the meantime, next weekend my friends and I are setting up a booth at a flea market.  I'm hoping a make a good chunk of cash to start gathering ingredients and supplies to make all my own homemade cleaning solutions.

Still need to find a tortilla press...

Day 12

Yesterday I came across a "healthy" version of pig in a blanket.  I don't know if hot dogs wrapped in bread are ever really "healthy" but they are certaintly a meal my husband and son are familiar with, and a recipe will all-natural ingredients is better than one without!  We used Applegate Farm's Organic Beef Hot Dogs and they weren't too shabby.  My husband ate his with organic pasta (white flour, so I didn't eat them) and a loaf of this rosemary bread he picked up.  I couldn't identify any of the ingredients as unnatural, so I ate some too.  I also cooked up some green beans.  Out of all of this food, my son picked the hot dogs out of the bread and ate only the meat.  Pretty typical. :P

I tried making yogurt with the last 3/4 cup of yogurt I had.  I found a recipe that didn't require the use of a crockpot, so I tried it but it was an utter failure.  The yogurt completely failed to set.  I will try again, and probably use the crockpot method.  Hopefully it works out better.  My daughter really loves yogurt, so if I could make my own, I know it would save us some money.

My son has been kind of funny lately.  I guess he is picking up on the "organic" talk.  I tried giving him a box of raisens and he said, "Are these organic?  I only eat organic raisens."  And they were organic, but he still only ate, like, 2 of them.  This morning when I poured him water he said, "Is this organic water? I only like organic!" ha.  It worked in my favor tonight when he really wanted to eat a spider-man popsicle from the ice cream man.  I explained the red dye used to color the ice cream is like poison and can cause cancer and offered some organic ice cream instead (it still had some processed ingredients, but no food coloring at least!) and he jumped all over that.  He didn't want the spider-man ice cream anymore. ;)

I was reading about all the health benefits of lemon and decided I could easily incorporate more lemon into my diet by squeezing it into my drinking water.  I drank six huge glasses of lemon water today.  I've had nothing but water and milk to drink for the last 12 days and it was extremely refreshing to have some flavor to it.  Over the course of the day, I had eventually consumed the juice of an entire large lemon.  Definitely need to buy more lemons.

Day 10

I went to Sprout's first thing this morning to buy some dry black beans.  I soaked them in a bowl of filtered water in a cooler in the back of my car while I took my son to his playgroup & swung by the Farmer's Market for some tomatoes (I also scored a huge bag of green beans for $2.00!)  When I got home, I simmered the beans in boiling water for 45 minutes.  Added some organic frozen corn (cooked, then cooled), diced tomatoes and cilantro.  Black bean & corn salsa.

It was good!  I ate it with organic blue corn chips.  Next time, I'll squeeze some lime juice over it.

My next project for the day was "poptarts."  I was really skeptical about these because the dough is nothing but whole wheat flour, salt, butter and plain yogurt.  I was really curious what it would taste like.  I mixed the ingredients, rolled the dough out, cut them into squares, and added an organic 100% raspberry jelly.  (I looked at the back of a seriously ridiculous amount of organic jelly brands to find the most natural one I could).

I layered another rectangle of dough on top, pressed the edges together with a fork, and baked.

The very most outer edges were really crispy and didn't have much flavor, which made my first couple bites disappointing.  But by the time I got into a little bit, it was soft, flakey, sweet and overall really good.  It definitely satisfied my "sweet" craving, even though it didn't even have sugar in it (other than the natural sugar of the raspberries).  Next time, I think I will make them a little thinner, a little smaller, and try out some other flavors (how oh how will I mimic brown sugar cinnamon?  maybe coconut palm sugar and cinnamon? hmm)

I realized today I've been feeding my daughter a lot of fruit, so I made an extra special effort to get veggies in her:

I steamed carrots, cherry tomatoes, green beans and broccoli, then we pureed them with that marinara sauce I made the other day.  She ate the whole bowl!

I watched a documentary on Netflix today called Forks Over Knives.  It was promoting full-on veganism, but other than the "all animal products are evil" aspect, it was still informative and interesting.  It reaffirmed for me why I'm doing this.  I've been having a hard time with my son, but thinking about his health in the now AND in the long-term really motives me to keep trying.  Tonight he ate scrambled eggs and a slice of sprouted-grain whole wheat toast with peanut butter!  It was nice to see him eat (and enjoy) something that is good for him.

Day 9

I soaked whole oats and walnuts overnight last night, then added raw milk, free-range eggs, pure maple syrup and coconut oil this morning.  I mixed well and baked in a small pan for 45 minutes.  It was pretty tasty!  I was expecting it to be more "crunchy" -- like apple crisp, I guess? -- but it was pretty much the same consistency as a regular bowl of oatmeal.

My son woke up with the sniffles and a cough, so I really wanted to get some healthy, fresh fruit in his body.  I blended together fresh-squeezed orange juice, raw milk, blueberries, fresh watermelon and a splash of maple syrup to sweeten.  I called it "Super juice!" but he wouldn't even try it. :(  I've been making "flavored milk" drinks like this the last few mornings and I really like them.  They're not thick like smoothies, but they're creamy, sweet, yummy and healthy.

I was frustrated most of today.  My son just isn't coping well without processed foods.  Nothing about this has been easy for him and every day is a battle.  It's exhausting and disappointing.  He ate a bowl of brown rice today, but I had to lie and say it was white rice and it only looked brown because of the soy sauce.  I thought this worked well when he asked for a second bowl, but then he said, "This isn't my regular white rice, mom..." and wouldn't eat anymore.  Bah!  Other than the rice, he ate peanuts, cheese and an apple today.  For dinner, he actually ate mashed potatoes (surprising).  I just feel like he isn't eating enough and I worry about his growing body.  On one hand, I want to see him eat to supply his body with nutrients, but on the other hand, I don't want those nutrients to be artifical and processed.  I'm trying to be patient, but it's hard.  I just keep praying he comes around and this gets easier!

Day 7

I made pancakes this morning.  I had intended to soak the flour in buttermilk overnight, but all the information I was reading said "cultured buttermilk."  And I'm wondering, is the buttermilk I buy at the store ok?  Or does it have to be buttermilk made from raw milk? I have no idea, and I have no "authority" to go to and ask (I'm totally winging this, remember?)  This morning, when I was mixing the whole wheat flour with the organic buttermilk I bought, I did notice it said "cultured buttermilk" on the bottle.  So that's probably okay, right?  I probably could have soaked the flour in that, I think.  Lame!  Oh well, when I saw my family actually eating the whole wheat buttermilk pancakes, I was happy.

Whole wheat buttermilk pancakes, pure maple syrup, fresh blueberries, grapes and canteloupe, free-range scrambled eggs, and a mixture of fresh squeezed orange juice & buttermilk with pure maple syrup and vanilla to drink.  This was a really delicious way to start my day.

 My processed-food-addict son was having a not-so-natural kind of day and was begging for goldfish crackers.  I had remembered seeing a recipe online for homemade goldfish, and I found another blog where a lady had modified it.  I followed the modified recipe.  It was simple: whole wheat flour, butter, and cheese.  I had to add a splash of raw milk to get it into a dough, it was too dry otherwise.  I rolled it out and used some tiny alphabet cookie cutters I have to make Alphabet Cheese Crackers.

But it was difficult and time consuming to get the dough out of the tiny letters, so I switched to a tiny heart cookie cutter instead -- much easier and faster.  I call them "I Heart Cheese Crackers."

My son wasn't thrilled about them and wouldn't even try them because they aren't shaped like fish.  I tried them though, and they taste like goldfish!  Except they taste superior to goldfish because the cheese flavor is way better.  Hopefully my son will come around soon.  He's missing out.

For dinner, we had quite a feast.  My father-in-law treated us to Alaskan King Crab & my husband cooked grass-fed steaks & hamburgers.  Some friends brought over a dish of organic aspargus with bleu cheese and dried cranberries, as well as a large platter of organic mozzerella cheese with slices of organic red and green tomatoes.  We had many full and happy bellies by the end of the night. :)  Unfortunately, there are no pictures of this beautiful meal because I didn't want our friends to think I was a total weirdo for photographing food. >_<

Day 6

I found a woman near my home who houses raw milk, raw cheese and eggs for a farmer outside of town.  I can just order it and pick it up from her instead of driving all the way out to the farm.  It felt a little weird at first: I pulled up in her drive way, took what I wanted out of an ice chest, and left some cash in a box.  I kept looking around wondering if the neighbors were watching me.

Okay, so I got my gallon of raw milk:

I also went to Whole Foods today because they were having a sweet sale on their grass-fed beef.  I got three pounds for dinner tonight for my husband's amazing stuffed meatball recipe.  Previously, we've made this using articifical crap-food, but tonight he made it with all natural ingredients instead.

Grass-fed ground beef, minced garlic cloves, a free-range egg, whole wheat bread crumbs, organic parmesan cheese, chopped parsley, pesto, raw milk, sea salt, pepper, organic provolone cheese, unrefined extra virgin olive oil, and home-made marinara sauce.

So delicious!  I made the marinara sauce myself because the all-natural organic one was $10 a jar -- my wallet was weeping at the sight.  Instead, I bought 2 cans of all-natural tomato sauce (in the future, I'd like to learn how to make tomato sauce myself!) and I totally winged it.  I added garlic, olive oil, basil, thyme, salt and pepper.  It was yummy. :)

Day 5

I am trying to cram so much information into my brain, it hurts a little bit.


As if it isn't overwhelming enough to switch from boxed foods to made-from-scratch foods, trying to get my kid to stop eating fruit snacks and eat real fruit instead, and to wrap my brain around the fact that almost every food I'm used to eating has a negative (or 10) ingredient(s) in it.  Now I have to start soaking grains?  Crap.

But truthfully, I eat a lot of whole grains and I'm used to baking from scratch already, so why not take this nutrition thing up a notch.  Eating whole grains is so much better for you than processed grains, but eating soaked grains is even better.  It's just one more thing I can rub in your face.  And I think I could definitley win an argument with it.  "Oh yeah?  Well, I soak my grains!" Boom. Final word is mine.

Okay, but this requires me to take a different step, one that I've been sheepishly avoiding.  Grains have to be soaked in whey, cultured yogurt, kefir, cultured buttermilk, or in lemon juice or vinegar.  If I want to use any of the dairy methods, I need raw milk.  Thankfully I found a farm to buy it from, and hopefully I can get some tomorrow (I'm impatient and impulsive, it's a great combo, let me tell you).  But I'm terrified of buying it and having it go bad on me, so I want to have a set plan in mind to make sure I use it and it doesn't go to waste.  I want to know what I'm doing with it, what it will become, how I will use it, etc., otherwise I'll never "get around to it" and I'll kick myself in the pants for wasting $6 on a gallon of milk.

So, I suppose this should be my next step in this journey.  Taking the "cultured dairy product" dive.

~ * ~

I made whole-wheat pumpkin bread and it was a hit!  The recipe contained honey as the sweetener, but I added a splash of maple syrup.  Maple + pumpkin just sounded right to me.  Unfortunatley I didn't have real vanilla, only imitation (something else I need to pick up tomorrow!), but other than that, all of the ingredients were real & healthy.  And my son ate THREE SLICES.  He wouldn't stop asking for more!

For oil, I had my husband pick up Sesame oil at Sprouts (after having to put vegetable oil in my tortillas yesterday, boo)... and it definitely added a sort of nutty flavor to the pumpkin bread, but that wasn't a bad thing. Next time I think I'll use coconut oil.

I also baked sweet potatoes.  I was craving them for some reason.

My 2-year-old daughter has some swallowing issues and cannot eat anything that isn't pureed.  For her dinner this evening, I mixed the left over pumpkin puree with one of the baked sweet potatoes and added a generous slap of butter.   Both the pumpkin and the sweet potato are rich in betacarotene, which protects against cancer, colds and infection...  but our bodies can only convert carotene to Vitamin A when bile salts are also present, hence the butter being an important addition!  The fat stimulates the secretion of bile and helps the body convert carotene to vitamin A. :)