TarynTumbleson: DAY FIVE… STAYIN' ALIVE!

DAY FIVE…. STAYIN' ALIVE!

Today was a great food day! We're getting better at planning ahead so our kitchen time is decreasing, leaving more time for fun stuff!

For breakfast we ate the banana bread we made the night before. My dad didn't care for it at all. The rest of us warmed it up and put a little healthy butter on it and we thought it wasn't too bad. Considering we were used to eating banana bread with chocolate chips, this was not an easy sale for the brothers. We think next time we make it, we need to add peanut butter, dried cranberries or some type of chopped nut.

For lunch we had spaghetti and meatballs. We used Galassi natural pasta sauce (a little spendy… $4.99/jar) and made our own meat balls. We put the sauce/meatballs in the crock pot before church. For spaghetti noodles we used half corn spaghetti and half whole wheat noodles. The two different colored noodles looked pretty! We also baked Alexia Focaccia Italian style rolls from the organic freezer section. That is something we will probably never buy again! We also steamed fresh green beans and served them without any seasoning. We've never used a lot of extra seasoning or salt on anything we eat so me and my brothers are used to eating things without the extra sodium. The sauce was delicious (a little spicy but the boys didn't seem to mind). Despite the cost, we plan to use it again as all five of us liked it.

This afternoon, we followed the recipe for berry sauce from 100 days of real food. We used it in milk to make "berry milk." It was good, but it didn't make very much. We all agree we are going to try it with just strawberries next time.

We were in a hurry for supper, so we whipped up some scrambled eggs, reheated left over (planned overs as my grandma would say!) potato skins, assembled our now favorite fruit kabob, celery with peanut butter and raisins (ants on a log) and a few fresh cherries. We sprinkled a little freshly grated cheese on our eggs as a special treat.

Today I also read a post on 100 days of real food about how even if you never give your children highly processed junk food they'll still somehow manage to get plenty of it from outside sources. It's everywhere… parades, holidays, treats at school, church or after sports activities, the library, birthday parties, visiting grandma's, playmates, the sucker from the bank or grocery store, Halloween, and the list goes on and on… even at my youth group meeting tonight, they served root beer floats and passed around a bucket of candy for everyone to take a piece as a reward for answering questions correctly! I was a good girl and didn't consume either item :-) I also went to the movie theater and managed to survive an entire 2 hour movie without candy, popcorn or pop. It is possible…I just did it!

For a bedtime snack, we had some raisins, grapes and a lara bar with almond milk.

A few thoughts for today…. plan ahead as best you can with your menus and meal plans. We took THREE trips to the grocery store this week! Although my mom was excited to find different flavors of Lara Bars tonight (carrot cake, apple pie, cashew cookie, key lime pie and lemon bar) so it was a good trip. Another great thing is that we have found our food waste is minimal. We are eating at home so much we are getting through everything. Because buying natural and organic products or some of those odd ingredients we didn't already have in the pantry can get expensive, we are being extra careful not to over buy and only get the quantities we need. So far this week, my mom estimates she has spent $350 in groceries. Keep in mind we had to restock a lot of items in our pantry to start fresh but that is still a lot of money. We hope to see that get less and less as we get smarter with using things in season, use items from our own garden and be better planners by buying things on sale, clipping coupons and comparing prices between stores. Although that seems like a lot of money, we have bought some very high quality and healthy foods. We also have to consider that on average my family used to eat out about 3-5 times per week at a minimum of $30-$50 each time. When we choose to eat at home, we know exactly what is in our food and it is all fresh.

We have some really exciting meals planned for the next 5 days….! Stay tuned!