Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Some Success and Some Fall, Not Completely, Flat

Some things worked beautifully and some not so beautifully during this week of unprocessing.  Stir fry from fresh veggies - beautiful.  Bread made with inactive yeast - not so beautiful.

This week confirmed my idea of NOT shopping the farmer's market on the weekend.  I must get into the habit of doing it during the week.  With the craziness of shopping aside, this weeks food was delish!

1st up - Random veggie Stir Fry.  My husband said he could never do frozen from a bag stir fry again.  The zucchini, squash, broccoli chicken and onion on top of rice was excellent. Crisp, fresh and all in season.

The second meal...started out as a great idea. Fajitas.  Red peppers, bell peppers, onion and beef.  Really what could go wrong.  Oh yeah....homemade tortillas.  I attempted this blogger's recipe.  Sounded easy enough.  They were a complete disaster.  Yummy, but not very fajita make-able.  I have to work on making the dough balls larger and flatten, flatten, flatten.  



My homemade salsa was a hit though.  Better than anything store bought my oldest said.


We also learned a lesson with snacks.  It is easy enough to keep ready made cereals and crackers and the like always stocked, but with unprocessed foods I have to plan! (Lesson learned!!) My weekly shopping trips and subsequent snack prep have just barely covered us from week to week.  Lesson for this week, make snacks on Sunday and Wednesday so I have enough to eat going into the weekend.

Homemade pancakes was one of my favorite snacky foods.  We had it instead of graham crackers for our first of three breakfasts (my kids can eat!).  



As if to read my mind about eating unproccessed foods  my gym posted these pictures on their Facebook page.  

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Planning, planning, planning

Week 1 was fabulous!  I think this is my favorite challenge yet!  It is something I've always wanted to do, eliminate processed foods.

You know how you're suppose to shop on the outside of the aisles at the supermarket; where the produce and dairy products are?  I always thought I did a pretty good job at it.  My first grocery shopping trip was truly an eye opening experience as I only walked down two aisles; one for popcorn and one for diapers.  Everything else was on the outer aisles.

At the Grocery Store with my boys!
\
Secondly, I was shocked that some of the items I thought were "safe" weren't.  Why does my colby-jack cheese need food coloring?  Why does yogurt have sucralose and sodium benzonate?  So we decided to stick to organic foods whose ingredients are all recognizable.  This also stirred the "what does unprocessed mean?"  It clearly does not mean sodium benzonate?  We decided that items like natural and/or organic peanut butter, yogurt and cheese were allowed.

Planning was really key to make this week a success.  Not only did we have to meal plan like we normally do, but we had to give consideration to what we were going to substitute all the crackers and pretzels my kids snack on.  It's not like they eat oreos and bonbons all day, but we really did want to find substitutes to the processed foods they do eat.

Last weeks meal plan included grilled chicken kabobs, broiled fish with corn on the cob, and chicken Caesar salad (which just ended up being chicken salad).  Snacks for the kids (and us) were peaches, carrots and other seasonal items from the market.  We also made granola bars and muffins and had peanuts and yogurt.

Overall a great week!


Saturday, June 2, 2012

Junes Challenge - Unprocessing!

I am so excited to start June with unprocessing.  What is unprocessing? 30 days of eating no processed foods.  On one hand, its a little scary, on the other hand I'm excited to see what changes I will make to my family's meals and snack options.

Before I get into June's challenge, I want to explain my absence.  I'll write a recap on my March's reading challenge, but both April and May were heavy event days at work and while I had ideas, I wasn't able to plan for them.  

Lesson learned?  You bet!  I have to take time to plan all of my 30 day challenges and anything I want to incorporate into lasting changes or turn into habits.  For me, Intentional change takes time to plan.  

Ok..so onto unprocessing....

As a single adult living on my own and making my own meals I rarely utilized quick and easy meals.  No Hamburger Helper, no Kraft macaroni and cheese, no spaghetti and meat balls.  I just didn't see the appeal.  I would much rather make spaghetti and meat sauce before I pulled out a can of Chef Boyardee.  

This didn't translate so easily once I had three kids.  While I didn't resort to quick meals, it took lots of trial and error (and Chick Fil A) before I figured out that meal planning was the key. 

Now I want to take it to the next level. I want to minimize the amount of processed foods in our house.  No Honey Maid Graham Crackers (the kids 1st of 3 or 4 breakfasts), no Classico Marinara Sauce, no Lay's Potato Chips.  Mind you, we really don't have a lot of foods in the house that are processed, but I really want to further decrease what we do have.  So June's Challenge is a 30 Day kick starter.  

The rules - we will use perishable items that are in the house, i.e. I have a loaf of bread that needs to be eaten.  If we are unable to go completely unprocessed we will choose foods that are minimally processed and use natural and organic ingredients.  No more yellows 5 & 6. :)  As with all my rules, these are rules that my family and I are choosing to live with this month, but we will allow for special occasions or dining outside of the home.  

SO JUNE - Here we go!

Picking up goodies for this weeks unprocessed meals at the
Farmer's Market.


Going back to lessons learned, the first thing I did was plan.  I planned this week's meals with unprocessing in mind.  Then I took inventory of what weekly items we buy that are processed (remember those Graham Crackers?).  Pinned a few things on Pinterest and built a shopping list for the gorcery store and for the farmers market.  I am armed an ready to be unprocessed.