Month of Food, and other ramblings

As I think back over the past month, it almost seems as if it was a month of food. I guess I better explain that. Sometime around the end of March, I started realizing that I needed to change my eating habits. I've tried before, and failed (or relapsed) before, so I knew I couldn't do it on my own. I'm not even concerned about my weight, just that God has only blessed me with one body and I need to take better care of it. We've already been grinding our own wheat and making our own bread, so this month we decided to venture out into homemade tortillas, hamburger buns and we even tried English muffins once. It's working out okay, but it is definitely a learning process and I'm sure it will get easier with practice. There have been a lot of things this month in the kitchen that we've learned on the go. We figure if we want to see if something works or if we can do something, we can try it once and if it doesn't work, try something else.
Also, we just need to try to be healthier in general. (For me that includes trying to go to bed earlier, which I've not been very good at this week or right now, for that matter.) I don't know whether poor diet had anything to do with it, but we were awfully sick several times throughout the first few months of this year. It seemed like someone was always sick and we would never get better. All us girls had the flu, and then Katie and I relapsed. Then the kids got some weird stomach virus where they would throw up once (usually late at night or early in the morning) and be fine the next day, eating and playing normally, etc. Usually it was only one kid sick at a time, and they would go anywhere from 4 to 10 days before throwing up again. I even started keeping a lot of it all. The doctor says it looks like it was just a virus they were passing back and forth, and I think maybe we are finally past it. Katie threw up once about 10 days ago, and it was about 12 days before that the last time anyone threw up.
Anyway, this post is supposed to be about food, so I'm sorry I got off onto that yucky tangent.
I've never been one to spend much time in the kitchen at all. I usually let Matt handle all that since he's a stay-at-home dad and also because he just knows cooking better than I do. However, this month we decided that we wanted our family to eat more natural, whole foods, in as close to their natural state as possible. We definitely want to avoid anything containing hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils, or high fructose corn syrup. I've been reading a lot of labels this past month. There's also another newer fat I found in a cracker label at Walmart called interesterified fat. I am sure that any attempts to chemically modify my food can't be good for me. Even things like Smart Balance buttery spread are pretty refined and full of chemicals. It's amazing to me the amount of chemicals that are in our foods. We've decided to get rid of the Smart Balance and stick with regular butter (but in very limited amounts) and olive oil. Yes, the butter may have saturated fats, but at least it's not full of chemicals. I mean, we can actually make butter in a jar ourselves just from cream and nothing else.
We all had our annual checkups this past month and we are all in good health, except that Matt & I both have low HDL. We are to take fish oil supplements (mine are the prescription variety) and eat more of the good kind of fish (salmon, tuna, sardines). (We already eat it about once every week or two, but we need to increase that.) We've been using a ton of freshly ground flaxseed lately too in our smoothies and baking. We are also to exercise more often to see how that helps, and go back in three months for a recheck. The new neighborhood nearby has a small park that we can walk to in 7 minutes and let the kids play on the park equipment while we walk the attached quarter mile loop a few times. They are within sight/hearing the entire time (the brief time our backs are to them, we could still here them). It's a neighborhood park and it's at the end of a deadend street, so there is really never anyone there during the times we go except us anyway. It's really quite nice.
Back to the food thing... I work for a grocery store chain, and I've always bought all our groceries there. I do like to support them. There aren't many options here for shopping other than 2 of the chain I work for, one Walmart and one independent grocery store. We usually shop the independent one for produce as they have better produce and better prices too. We usually stop by on Sundays after church and also pick up a rotisserie chicken. It's good for lunch and then for soup the next day, and it's cheaper there than where I work. In an effort to shave some money from our grocery budget, so we could buy better cuts of meat and more fresh produce, we made a really long list (on a spreadsheet) of the staples we are usually buying and did a bunch of price checking where I work, Walmart and Sam's. This took several hours to accomplish. Then I worked up calculations for unit prices for comparison sake, and ended up with a list for the grocery store, Walmart and Sam's. Sam's is a bit far away, so we plan to stock up every 2 months on the staples that are cheaper there. I don't really like Walmart and have never bought groceries there. I knew that where I worked might be a bit more expensive than Walmart, but I didn't really it was such a big difference. I am sure they hope to make it up in excess unplanned purchases in other areas of the store, but I have a plan to avoid that. When I shop (and I will have kids with me when I shop every other Friday morning), I will buy groceries first and frozen too. Then if I need anything else in the store, I will get it. By then the kids will be getting antsy and I'll have frozen food in the cart, so I can't shop as long elsewhere in the store. If I want to buy something not on the list and it's more than a few dollars, I will have to wait two weeks until my next trip. That is how it is supposed to work in theory anyway. We'll see how it actually works, LOL! This also gives the kids some incentive to save their allowance if they know they'll be going shopping with mom every other week.
I used to buy the groceries on Friday or Saturday night when I got off work, but I actually think it's good to bring them with me (though harder to shop). We've had a lot of meaningful conversations about ingredient lists on labels as well as marketing issues while we shop. We recently discussed how all the processed foods aren't very nutritious, and looked at labels to see big long lists of ingredients and talked about how we don't really need all that in our bodies. We also talked about how the companies want our money, hence, they want to persuade us to buy their product. They do this by making them look colorful and interesting (perhaps with a favorite character) and advertising to children to make them want to beg their parents to buy that product. (Incidentally, the advertising comment is with regards to what I've heard others say, as we rarely watch television other than PBS shows for the kids.)
Do you know, I used to have a real problem with eating late at night and eating a lot of fast food and eating out a lot. Up until about 5 weeks ago, I would buy a pint of Ben & Jerry's every week or so when I shopped for groceries. Since we've all been eating healthier and very limited refined foods, I really have no desire for any of that processed food. I'm not dieting at all, and I'm not often hungry (and if I do get a bit hungry before a meal, perhaps that's good to experience what it really feels like). I have never and will never be able to change my eating habits on my own, so I know I can only be doing it through God's power, as he has the power to change anyone, if that person is willing and open to allowing God to move in their life. So, I have to give praise to God for taking away my desires for unhealthy food and replacing it with the desire for nutritious, wholesome food, and giving me more of an interest in helping out in the kitchen, which I do feel that Matt appreciates.
We have also been trying to do a bit more bulk cooking, and I have a list of the foods we are trying to make from scratch and/or bulk cook to have some to freeze.
This post is really long, so I need to be ending it. I want to come back later (hopefully soon) and type out some of the recipes we've been using and a list of the items we've been making from scratch, and whatever else I can think of to say (perhaps something about our gardening efforts as well). I also want to write more about our efforts to work on teaching our children (and ourselves) diligence through daily chore lists for the children and a daily task list for me. It really is true that they learn best by example, which really gives me pause sometimes to rethink some of my rash responses when they push my buttons. I must remember our rule for the week... "In this house, we speak quietly and respectfully with one another."
Also, we've been trying to institute regular morning quiet times (devotionals) for our family and praying together, though this is an area we also need more diligence in. I especially like it when we have a bit more time in the mornings and we can pray together and talk about God together more and praise God through singing together, but we've only been able to do that once or twice in recent weeks. I'll bet we could do it more often if we purposed to do it more often though. This is definitely something to think about.
We have upcoming plans to attend a couple of homeschooling conferences. One is local to our state, and is a great time to be inspired by a variety of speakers as well as check out lots of curriculum options in person. This year we have decided to bring our oldest daughter, as I would like to show her a few options I'm interested in and let her help me choose which one she would like to do. I think she's getting old enough and mature enough now to give us some feedback into what she wants to do, though I do think only we as parents have the wisdom to make the final decisions. Anyway, the other conference is out of state, and is for the main curriculum we use. We've been before in the past, and been wonderfully blessed. They only have these conferences every other year, and it really is more like a spiritual retreat, and wonderful for fellowship, inspiration and motivation. Steve and Jane are excellent speakers, and we look forward to meeting old friends again.
As my parting words, I will give you a "taste" of my next blog post. These are the staples we've been making on our own lately. I call them staples because I like to have them on hand (or the ingredients to make them always available).

Pancake Mix
Blueberry Syrup
Homemade White Sauce
Ten Minute Enchilada Sauce
Crunchy Granola
Hot Roll No Rise Dough
Bill's Blue Cheese Dressing (wonderful but in moderation only)
Super Easy Guacamole
Morning Glory Muffins
French Bread (haven't made yet, but it's planned for soon)
Whole wheat tortillas
Sweet tortillas
Mom's Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Salsa Ninety Nine (mild)
Cinnamon Almonds
Homemade bread
Homemade yogurt

I'll post later with recipes (or links to recipes) and more information about all this.

If you read this far, God bless you for your perseverance! :)

P.S. Remember I mentioned I wasn't dieting, but merely trying to eat healthier and avoid refined/processed foods? Well, so far I've lost 11 pounds, and that wasn't really even my intention! ;-) Oh and in the midst of all this busy-ness with regard to trying to figure out food prices, recipes, bulk cooking, etc., we've had 3 kids in T-ball/softball this year, all on different teams, and up to 3 games a week, in addition to church for the kids on Wednesday. We are extremely grateful that we started our school year in June to allow us to take our "summer" break during April and May during ball season! This also made it easier for us to all get our checkups this month. :-)