Low on the Food Chain

We were hoping we could find one goal for the year....we all liked that "Buy Nothing new" was a year long doable challenge. So far we haven't found one that our whole family can agree to. So just to keep things going...for January we are increasing the number of times we eat lower on the food chain.

Our goal is to eat beans and grains...or total veggie meals at least twice a week. This means no meat or dairy. I have to say this isn't exactly a popular challenge for the whole family. Nate and Ben have some serious concerns..they love meat and cheese. So we'll see how this goes.

So far, I made a big pot of black beans and we had bean and corn soup and a layered tortilla Cassandre ( like Mexican lasagna..though this did have cheese in it.) Mark made dal for tonight ( Indian lential stew)

For each dish we are rating it as a family...and they we will write in the cookbook if we would make it again. No four star meals...yet!


Photo Source: Daniel Gies

How do you eat real food?

The Real Food Festival
Originally uploaded by Food Stories

So my Mom says..."Good luck with that food thing..what ever it is you're doing." So what are we doing?

I'm doing my best to follow some of Pollen's advice about eating real food.

1. Don't buy anything your great grand mother wouldn't recognize as food. Pollen uses Go Gurt as an example. What would your great grandmother say " Is this food or toothpaste?"

2. Don't buy food if you don't recognized the ingredients ( or if the list of ingredients is over 5). Take a look at what is in Go Gurt sometime (it's hard to tell it's supposed to be yogurt)

3. Don't buy food with health claims on the package....because stuff in packages tends to be processed. And processed food tends to be changed to fit the health claim du jour. So a food will be "Low Fat" one month and then changed to "No Transfat" the next. Is that same food any healthier?

Our top two read food strategies ( as opposed to food like substances) has meant

1. Not buying prepared food in packages. We made the exception for Mac and Cheese ( though we read the labels on Annie's and Simply Organic and the list was short and recognizable)

2. Buying most of our food from Farmer's Markets and the outer aisle at the grocery store ( that's where the produce, meat, frozen veggies are) (this is another Pollen tip)