Assessing my efforts

I didn't intend this to be my food blog, more of an opportunity for me to openly explore living a different lifestyle. If you read my family blog you know that my dad died of stomach cancer a year and a half ago. Watching him go through his illness really impacted me because it was my wake up call. I'm overweight myself, but more importantly we're raising four young women. Over the last two years I am working hard to slowly phase out as much processed food as I can. I actually think I'm at the point of having to go hard core because we're really only down to a few things..... now I say that, but reality is that my husband came home with frozen pizza and corndogs for dinner tonight because I had one of our daughters at her OT session. Since dinner was his to do tonight he took a shortcut. He knows my desires to eat whole foods, or at least use original ingrediants. So, I guess as a family we're still working on this. Since I'm a teacher and home in the summer this is always a good time to tweak our habits.

So here's an assessment of my new habits:

1.) I am actually taking the shopping bags with me, not leaving them on the hook by the door, or in the car.

2.) I have consistantly bought fruits and veggies from the local farmer's market. I am learning to blanche and freeze veggies, and have quite the stock of corn and beans. Now, why do I think this is important? It goes way beyond eating locally for me, although that is important too. A conversation I had with a dear friend scared the crud out of me.... he works at a plant that irradiates food. Apparently most every food is zapped at some point in the process to kill bacteria/germs. I thought I wasn't really touched by it (except my meat that I don't have a local source for) because I buy organic, but he said that gets zapped too. I wonder how much radiation we can handle before we become affected.

3.) I am growing a small garden of veggies this summer, and enjoying my daily tomatoes at the moment, but losing the battle to rabbits when it comes to my pepper plants. Our pear trees will have a lot to offer in late August, but our peach tree was stripped by the deer because it is so small. Next year I will have to put a fence around it, and probably the lemon tree as well. I have an apple tree out front, but I don't know what kind it is, or how to use the fruit - it seems to be VERY sour to me, so I'm clueless on that front.

4.) I'm actually already making some presents for gift giving times this year, and I'm knitting and sewing - nothing major, just stuff for the girls.

5.) I'm paying double (okay, more) on car bills to get them paid off almost 2 years early, and then will start in on the credit card - also the orthodontist will be paid off early too. If one of us end up losing a job we have a lot of things we can cut out, but we aren't in that position at the moment, so I'm trying to cut as many extra monthly bills as possible.

6.) I'm about to get rid of all plastic in my kitchen. I've been buying glass bowls, and stoneware baking sheets. I don't know that whatever clay my stoneware is made from is any better, but I'm NOT using aluminum for anything anymore, and hope to end my dependence on plastic. The down side is that these things are very heavy for our daughter with only one "normal" arm to lift, but we'll figure something out.

7.) The kids are doing well with less TV. The rule is that they can't watch until after 6:30. I do find them watching it in the morning if they get up before me, but they'll easily turn it off and find something else to do. This one will definitely continue into the school year.

Overall not bad.... I'll post soon on my new goals to meet, and a "to do" list.