I've always been the last one to jump on a trend. Food isn't any different. Last year, I started out the year cooking all of our food from scratch. That lasted until almost Thanksgiving, when I gave up the ghost and started making processed food. So, I'm no stranger to cooking from scratch, but even then, I didn't make a huge effort to avoid certain things. I figured that just the fact that things weren't coming out of a box was good enough. And on the one hand, it was, at least I think so.
So about 6 weeks ago, I decided to overhaul our eating habits. I wanted to start menu planning and cooking from scratch again, but this time it started because I started reading the website 100 Days of Real Food. Now, on that website, they are STRICT about it. All organic, no processed food, only eating in restaurants that follow this, if they do buy processed food it has less than 5 ingredients, and no fried food. I didn't think being that strict was doable for us, but I thought that we could incorporate some of the ideas. For the first time in my life, I am buying organic food if I can. Even meat, for the most part, is coming from an actual butcher that has a local farm. I'm trying to buy fewer processed things. We've almost completely stopped eating chips, and our frequency of eating out has greatly decreased.
One thing I love is that this idea isn't about giving up whole food groups at all. Gluten, dairy, fats, carbs, proteins, etc - all on the table, often in delicious combos. The thing we've cut way back on is preservatives. No diet food. No frankenfood approximations of real food. Fewer sodas (although I just can't totally quit Diet Coke, I have cut way down).
So, it's been 6 weeks - how's it going?
Pros
- The food is GOOD. Ok, there have been a few regrettable recipes. But that's all part of experimentation. Dave and I think our tastebuds have been reprogrammed a little, in a good way. McDonald's is still consumed if it just isn't practical to do anything else, but it doesn't taste nearly as good as it used to. A lot of packaged food - I bought a frozen dinner for lunch on Saturday - it wasn't nearly as good as it would have been 6 months ago.
- I'm not eliminating anything. I make it using minimally processed ingredients. Most of the time, the real food is more filling, so we eat less of it.
- If I do make something decadent, I make it decadent. If you're going to have chocolate pudding, I don't make the low fat sugar free stuff out of the box. I make a cooked, from scratch, use the dark chocolate version. And I eat 1/2 the amount I would have eaten from the boxed stuff because it's a lot richer.
Cons
- It's somewhat time-consuming. I cook for most of the day on Sunday. This makes all of our breakfasts and dinners for the week. I wouldn't have time to make almost everything from scratch any other way.
- It is more expensive, sorta. My grocery bill is higher. On the other hand, we waste FAR less food than we used to and we eat out less, so I think it balances out for the most part. Still, cost is a factor, so I'm not saying this is totally feasible for everyone.
So, this isn't meant to be preachy. We are far from perfect. There are a couple of things that I cannot make better than the processed version, so I don't try. One thing is salad dressing. I LOVE ranch dressing. I have started buying the kind that at least is found in the refrigerator section and has more real ingredients. I also don't want to take the time to make homemade chicken tenders in the quantity that we consume them. In fact, I did try to make a batch one time. It took a long time and in the end, Ian refused to eat them. So, all of our other chicken dishes are homemade, but not the breaded tenders. Oh well.
And that is what's been going on in the Bailey kitchen right now. Halloween was fabulous and Thanksgiving is coming. Temps are falling and my sanity is still intact! You guys, I've never had my sanity this far into the fall semester in recent memory!! Maybe I'll make some Pioneer Woman chocolate pudding to celebrate. :)
