Posted by Hannah Rae on Jan 18, 2010 in
Life in the Stubborn house Week 1 of our familiy’s better eating is done. Phew! Besides the fact that I am having to be a lot more creative and spend more time planning our menus, I have come out relatively stress free. The other members of the family are adjusting surprisingly well, but they are still skeptical about making this a long term plan. Hubby person expressed last night that changing our eating seems like another stress on top of everything else right now. I bought him no sugar added fudge-sicles today. 
So here are the major changes we have made on our road to healthier bodies and minds.
- No white sugar….and ESPECIALLY no high fructose corn syrup. Sorry corn industry, but your commercials lie. My boys brains have enough challenges without having to figure out how to process your corn product. Our substitutes at this point include honey, stevia, and sweet n low (I know, I know, but even my nurtition teacher said that if you choose an artificial sweetner, this is the safest. And don’t even get me started on the evils of sple*da) I am looking into agave nectar etc…and still trying to figure out how to convert to healthy baking for treats. The biggest change for the boys has been letting go of their sugary breakfast cereal, but I am making my amazing home made granola tonight, so I suspect they will forget all about their cocoa-whatevers.
- No white flour or potatoes. This one was really easy because we eat a lot of whole grain things anyways. I’ve started making our own bread in our handy dandy bread machine, and even found a great recipe to make our own hamburger buns. We are also already huge fans of sweet potatoes, so I am finding all kinds of new ways to use them. Do you have any favorite sweet potatoe recipes that don’t call for a butt-load of extra sugar?
- Replacing unnecessary carbs with vegetables whenever possible. This one we are still working on. We do eat a lot of salads though, and I found out that our local restraunt supply store sells baby spinach for a ridiculously low price. Like $5.99 for a 3 lb bag. You can’t even get a lb for that at the local grocery store. That’s a whole lot of spinach. I’m trying to like green smoothies, but…ick. Trying to figure that out.
- Choosing lean proteins instead of red meats. Again, this was not difficult because we eat a lot of chicken already and were already choosing ground turkey for things like sloppy joes and spaghetti.
So that’s the general plan. I am so thankful that I love all kinds of veggies and fruits already. Good job, Mom and Dad!
A huge help for creative ideas has been Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. There’s a recipe in there for home made ketchup, which, sadly, is a huge source of HFCS. Ick. But I LOVE ketchup!!! I’ll let you know how it is. Anywho, I love that book.
So, all you healthy eating families out there, share the wealth of knowledge. What do your meals look like?
Blessings!
Hannah
| Tags: cooking, The SAHM Adventure
Posted by Hannah Rae on Jan 10, 2010 in
Life in the Stubborn house …don’t come to the Stubborn House.
Starting tomorrow, this families eating style is totally changing. We are starting out with some simple rules, and trying to add in more and more good as we eliminate the not so good.
So we have cut out all white sugars and grains. We already eat a lot of veggies, but we are going to try to replace grains with veggies whenever possible. This will be easier in the summer because fresh produce is very hard to come by in the U.P. in the winter. My personal goal is to keep things as low glycemic as possible to help with my body’s particular needs.
Hubby Person is really excited for this change….mostly. He knows I have the will power to make sure that nothing gets into the house that shouldn’t be, which is both good and bad. He was just asking me about cookies. Does this mean no cookies, like, forever? I told him that maybe we can put a day on the calendar every month or so when we can have a cookie day.
How do all you health conscious mamas do it?
My 16 year old’s reaction in the grocery store was quite funny.
“Mom. We are out of bagels. We only have like 1 onion one left.”
“Okay, well we can get these whole grain ones. They look really good.”
“What? What do you mean? We can’t get the other bagels any more?”
“What part of ‘no white flour or sugar’ was confusing to you?”
His mouth dropped open and stayed that way for quite a while. Hehehe.
Anywho, any tips or veggie-full recipes would be AWESOME! We aren’t cutting out meat, although we are replacing red meat when ever possible, so recipes with meat but lots of veggies would rock!
Blessings!
Hannah
| Tags: cooking
Posted by Hannah Rae on Jun 1, 2009 in
Life in the Stubborn house I’ve always loved fire…the controlled kind: Fireplaces, bonfires, wood stoves. There is nothing more comforting or enticing than the smell of good wood smoke, especially on a cold UP night. The kind that freezes your nostrils when you take a sniff.
One of my favorite parts of our house is our fireplace. It’s huge, for one, and made of beautiful sunset-colored sandstone. Spring in the UP means you never know if you are getting a 70 degree day or a 40 degree one. Today is the one of the later. So, with the help of the boxes left over from my hubby’s latest technology venture, I have a blazing, beautiful fire.
Our next door neighbor is a logger and has unlimited supply to wood. He cuts it himself and said that if we ever want any, to feel free and take some, he just needs money for the gas for his chainsaw. It’s AWESOME!!! Wonderful hardwood logs at my fingertips.
So, another Hannah tidbit is that the American frontier in the 1800′s is my favorite period of history. I LOVE frontier living. One of my favorite things to watch on TV is the annual Chuck Wagon Cookoff on Food Network. I love to see how people made really good food out of such simple ingredients and without any of our modern technology.
So, I did a little searching on the old Internet on what kinds of yummy things I could make in my fireplace. What I can up with was mostly discouraging how about labor-some and dangerous this kind of cooking is. I was nearly discouraged until I remembered these cool little devices that my MIL always takes on her camping trips. There are recipes galore for these things. They are easy, mostly safe, and VERSATILE!!! YAY!!! I’m inspired to order a few. It is summer time, right? (Although our weather hasn’t figured it out yet.) We WILL have bonfires!
Anywho, check them out and let me know of any other ideas on how I can best utilize this wonderful wood-burning resource.
| Tags: cooking
