Our New Goal

An interesting side effect of Ivan's milk intolerance has been that I am starting to be really aware of what we eat as a family. And I've come to the conclusion that we don't eat very well. Well as in healthily. So I made a new goal to have us eat better. This was about a month or so ago. It's been kind of a slow transition, just because I wasn't really sure where to start.

I decided to start with lunch. Why? Because I read a thing somewhere that said what you eat for lunch will determine how you feel in the later afternoons, and most people, it said, tend to eat crappy lunches, fast or processed food, that has lots of calories but zero nutrition, etc. and that because of this they feel a slump in the afternoon around 3 or 4. This describes me very well. Afternoons are the worst time of day for me. It's when I'm the crankiest and least patient with my kids. I looked at our typical lunch menu. I hate to make lunch, I don't know why, but I always have. I have zero creative juices when it comes to lunch. I typically feel like, who cares what they're eating, lets just feed them so they aren't hungry and get them off to nap time! So it's really easy for me to just open a can of Spaghetti O's or microwave a thing of Easy Mac. So ya, I figured lunch was a good place for us to start.

For the last month or so, I've been doing green shakes for lunch. My kids LOVE green shakes, seriously. You'd think I was feeding them dessert for lunch. I usually put about two cups of spinach in the blender, then a can of fruit (home canned peaches are the best, but I like unsweetened pineapple too) with it's juice, then some sort of frozen fruit (raspberries/blackberries are my favorite). Sometimes I add an avocado if I have one. Then I blend it all up, adding either more water, or ice cubes as necessary. And that's what the kids and I eat for lunch everyday. We usually have a piece of bread or something to go with it. My kids ask for seconds. They eat spinach for lunch almost every day and they ask for seconds. Who would have thought. And on the days we do green shakes for lunch, especially if we've been really consistent for the whole week, I feel a TON better in the afternoons. It's pretty amazing.

So lunch is going well. Then we tackled breakfast. A family that Aaron home teaches mentioned to him one time that they make cracked wheat for breakfast. Aaron was interested, since we have a 50 lb. bag of wheat sitting in our food storage and nothing to do with it because we do not have a wheat grinder.She said that they just take the wheat and blend it up in their blender into small chunks. Then they stick it in boiling water (double the amount of water to wheat) and simmer it for about 15-20 minutes, like rice. Then they serve it with a little butter and brown sugar. We tried it. We love it! My kids love it. So we do that 2 or 3 times a week. Maybe eventually we can do away with cold cereal all together. That would be cool.

That leaves dinner. I borrowed a cook book from a friend called "Whole Foods for the Whole Family" that's put out by the La Leche League. I wanted to borrow it because in the back of it in the appendix it has an allergy listing section that lists a bunch of milk free, egg free, and wheat free recipes. I was really pleased with that part in the appendix. But I also really liked the rest of the cook book. It has meals separated out into breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and it has a section on freezer meals. And everything is made with almost all whole foods, and very little sugar. So I returned my friend's book, got on Amazon and bought myself a copy for $17 bucks. It came today. I planned a whole weeks worth of dinners out of it. On our trip to the grocery store today I bought more produce than I ever have before in one trip. I'm so excited!

Tonight we tried a Spaghetti Squash recipe, and it was SO GOOD!! Even my kids liked it. It tasted a lot like pizza. I thought I'd share the recipe. (Yes, this recipe has cheese in it, but we just did a portion without cheese for Ivan and he still loved it.)

Spaghetti Squash

1 2-lb spaghetti squash
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 cup mozzarella cheese
1 1/2 cup grated zucchini
2 cups tomato sauce
1/2 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
dash of pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese 

Cut squash into halves lengthwise; scoop out seeds. Place cut side down in 2 inches of simmering water in a pan. Cook, covered, for 15 minutes. Holding hot squash with potholder, run the tines of a fork across the pulp, there is your spaghetti. Mix the strands with cheddar and mozzarella cheeses, zucchini, tomato sauce, oregano, garlic powder, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Spoon back into squash shells and place on a baking pan. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes. Yields 4 servings.

It was so good. We ate it with a green salad. And if we'd had a loaf of french bread too, it would have been the perfect meal. :) I'm glad our first experiment worked out, it's giving me courage to keep trying the rest of the week. I'll keep you posted on how things go.