TarynTumbleson: DAY NINE! Eat to Live, Don't Live to Eat

We can hardly believe we are done with Day 9 of the 10 day pledge/challenge. We fully admit by the end of Day 2, we were all looking at each other and saying "we're never going to make it!" We joked about ordering a pizza on Day 11 from Pizza Hut. Well, here were are a week later and we're all hesitant to go back to our old food habits, ways of thinking about food and nutrition in general. The saying "Eat to Live, Don't Live to Eat" is a whole new approach to food that we plan on keeping. There are MANY things we plan to continue, which I will summarize at the end of the challenge.

We're a toast family. We like toast for breakfast, snack and bedtime snack. We had toast and natural strawberry spread, a banana and a glass of milk for breakfast. We took an unexpected trip to town around lunch time, which normally would have resulted in ordering a pizza, picking up fried chicken or grabbing a subway sandwich. Today my mom and I shared a LUNA lemon bar, a few triscuits and water to hold us over until we got home for a late lunch. The boys were "starving" so my dad fed them leftovers (we have plenty!) and they were satisfied with that.

For lunch, we didn't get to make what was planned, but still pulled together something that met the rules of the pledge. We had Cuban Sandwiches (recipe from Whole Foods). The Cuban sandwiches included canola mayonnaise, whole grain mustard, nitrate-free deli ham, nitrate-free salami, Jarlsburg Lite cheese, and a thinly sliced dill pickle, on a whole grain baguette. My mother was very happy to use her panini maker she bought from Pawn America! We also ate plain pita chops, unsweetened applesauce and carrot sticks. The unsweetened applesauce now tastes very sweet to all of us. It really is interesting to see how our tastebuds change when you fully take away sugared products.

We had a busy afternoon of playing outside, getting Trey to his activities and working around the house. We all took a break to snack on frozen grapes on a kabob (red grapes taste great frozen… black grapes were not as good frozen as they are fresh.) The boys were still hungry and hot so we snacked on the frozen apple juice and frozen greek yogurt w/strawberries we made the night before and put in the new silicone ice pop makers. What a HIT those were! We have great plans to make smoothies and try other 100% juices in them for daily treats.

Supper was VERY time consuming. Tonight was a perfect example of poor planning. It took 30 minutes to wash, peel, chop, slice, dice and prepare the ingredients for the meal. The main dish was Ham, Asparagus and potato skillet (Whole Foods recipe) with Herbes de Provence for seasoning. We topped with crushed croutons from whole foods and freshly shredded monterey jack cheese and put under the broiler for a few minutes. It was very good! The best part was my brothers could pick through the ingredients like they typically do with any "hot dish" and eat what they liked. We also made mini whole wheat popovers (100 days of real food recipe) and they were enjoyed by all 5 of us! We actually have a real popover pan so we hope to try jumbo whole wheat popovers in the next week or two. For our fruit, we cut cantaloupe with a mini star cutout… Ty kept saying "I want more stars." I think I should major in marketing. We also had Apple Pilaf (Whole Foods recipe) which was an interesting new side dish.

Tonight I survived another movie at the theater without any popcorn, pop or candy. I brought my own triscuits and water. The boys had greek yogurt and a bowl of Organic honey O's cereal with a glass of milk. My mom ate the last homemade granola bar! We have plowed through those. That is a recipe we found on our own and if you want it, message me and I will email it to you.

Thoughts for today….. I really don't have many thoughts other than I feel like this has been going really well. We have learned a lot in 9 days and will definitely be making some changes in our kitchen, when we eat out and what we put into our bodies in general. We have learned (and been very disappointed) to find that many labels are deceiving when they read "low sugar" or "low fat" because often they have many other ingredients that are terribly unhealthy for our bodies.

I also read a really interesting blog tonight about a women who investigated if Subway really has "real food." WARNING! If you enjoy Subway and don't want to know, don't read this…. but if you want to know really what is happening behind the scenes…. read on.
http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2012/06/12/food-babe-investigates-is-subway-real-food/