Fight Back Friday

I recently came across the Food Renegade blog when a friend sent me the link to the book she wrote thinking I might be interested in it (I was, in fact when she comes out with her one for kids I may get one or both of them). I really love the blog. She seems to feel very similarly to be about diet and nutrition, but she’s a better writer and has been much more successful at actually putting it into action. My goal is to eventually eat that way, but I could make a million excuses why we don’t yet. (My own willpower is one of the biggest ones!)

I do feel very good about the changes we have made already. Compared to when I first moved away from home and was living with my best friend (we had Hamburger Helper several times a week), or when I first moved in with Kris and was so broke one day literally the only food in our cupboards was one bag of (white) spaghetti (we thought buying processed foods was cheaper than eating whole foods at the time), we have improved immensely. The majority of our foods are cooked from scratch including making our own broths, our pasta is organic rice pasta, we’re growing our own veggies and bake most of our own breads, last month we went in with some friends on a side of pasture-raised beef (and plan to continue buying that beef as well as free-range chickens from now on), and so on. Most of the canned food and soup in my cupboard has been there for years, bought with intentions to use it, then easier or healthier homemade versions were discovered and the cans have sat there unused. They need to be donated or thrown out.

There are some things I’d like to still change that would be easy to change. For a while I’d stopped buying white sugar completely and was only using sucanat, but I have started buying white sugar again. I’d like to go back to using sucanat for most things again though. I also want to use more whole grain flour in my baking. I find it very dense though, and don’t like the texture, so still mix it in usually with about half white flour. A friend gave me some tips for using whole grain flours that I’m going to try.

I also don’t know much (if anything) about fermenting foods. We use Tamari instead of soy sauce, but I don’t even like pickles. I want to learn more about it as a method of preserving foods though, especially since we will hopefully have lots of food to preserve at the end of the garden season this year.

I have a huge sweet tooth. I love chocolate, and though (generally) I bake my own brownies and cookies and muffins, they’re still sugary and carby. I love fruit and in the summer I will eat berries when I have a craving for something sweet. I recently made this chocolate pudding and it was so delicious and incredibly easy. We haven’t had pudding in ages because I couldn’t bring myself to buy those packages, but I assumed making it would be difficult (and full of dairy). More and more, I’m starting to find relatively healthy, dairy-free versions of all my favorite snacks and treats.

One of our biggest obstacles to eating well (and especially since Kris and Meredith are both allergic to dairy and I definitely have lactose intolerance) is going out. It’s easy to keep dairy out of the house, but I can’t stop other people from eating it. I don’t mean going to restaurants, that’s actually fairly easy, I mean going to other people’s houses or just being out with friends. Also, many dairy alternatives contain soy instead, which we also try to avoid. Meredith wouldn’t understand why all the other kids at a birthday party (for instance) are eating cupcakes and she can’t have one. I also don’t want to avoid going to friend’s birthday parties. We do talk to Meredith about food, and about how dairy makes her feel. I don’t want to force her to eat (or not eat) certain foods, as I think (from experience!) that that can cause some food issues in the future. More and more often, all she needs are gentle reminders about how certain foods might make her feel later and she will make different choices. But with other kids eating the food she wants, it’s harder. Currently, I feel good enough about most of our food choices most of the time that I’m okay with her occasionally eating that kind of thing though.

With the dairy thing, eventually I want to try raw milk. A friend let us try a bit of the raw milk she gets. Meredith saw it and proceeded to drink two or three cupfuls in one sitting, and then was peeing every 15-20 minutes for the rest of the evening. At least she liked it. We’re going to wait until we’ve been good and been off dairy completely for a few weeks, and then try again but not letting her have so much at once, or perhaps starting by making our own yogurt or butter instead of drinking the straight milk at first.

As you can see, the Food Renegade blog really got me thinking about our diet and the way we eat again. She hosts a blog carnival called Fight Back Fridays, and I think I’m going to try and join in every week. Click the link for more information. I’m hoping by reading the other blogs that join in I’ll learn a thing or two, and that  writing my thoughts or sharing recipes every week will help keep me motivated. I’ve only been to one of the blogs that has joined in so far this week, and already learned an awesome tip for making dairy-free whipping cream. I can’t wait to try it! Whipping cream is one thing that I really miss.

Related posts:

1. Changing up the Menu