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Archives

Another Round of Randomness

July 23, 2008

Encouraged by your comments after my last post of random topics, I’ve decided to bless you with allow myself a totally random blog post every once in a while.  So, I randomly chose today to write again about some of our random activities…

1.  I finally finished looking through curriculum catalogs, made my list, checked it twice, then a third time, and then placed my orders.  I finally just had to close the catalogs and put them away so that I would quit finding more and more awesome books that I wanted to order.  Tomorrow I’ll share our list of books with you!!!

2.  Tuesday we picked up our Azure Standard order for the month…but not without a little drama.  The truck driver called me Monday (because I’m the top of our group’s calling tree) to tell me that he would be at the Walmart parking lot on Tuesday at 9:15 am.  I called everyone, then we all met at the appointed time.  Then he never showed up.  Turns out, his truck had broken down and he had called to tell me that he would be late…but I missed the call somehow.  Bummer.  So, we finally figured it all out and went home…and then came back to pick up our order that evening after his truck was working again.  Poor guy.

Anyway…just in case you’d like to stare at my groceries for a while…here you go:

azureorder2sm.JPG

Here we have five pounds of Landmark raw white cheddar cheese, three jars of Hain safflower mayonnaise, six pounds of butter, two jars of Natural Value peanut butter, one can of olives, one container of Nancy’s whole milk yogurt, five pounds of carrots, five pounds of oranges, a jar of olive oil, five pounds of peas, and three packages of mixed veggies.  The boxes you see are 10 pounds of whole wheat spaghetti noodles and 10 pounds of whole wheat penne pasta.  Partially pictured in the background are two really cute little boys.  They did not come with the order, but they are very sweet and delicious.

3.  I’ve taken the time to read a few Karen Kingsbury books during the past couple of weeks.  I usually don’t really have much time to read, but with school starting soon, I decided to allow myself a little chill time.  So, I went to the library and checked out some good reads, then neglected a bunch of housework for a few days so that I could enjoy some books.

4.  You do not want to enter my bathrooms right now.  (See #3.)

5.  Malachi is totally into microphones, and creates one out of anything he has in his hands.  I have been interviewed by and asked to sing into many a Lincoln Log lately.  Last week at a garage sale, we found a real toy microphone for 50 cents.  You would have thought we gave him the moon. 

6.  Let’s just take another look at that box of penne pasta.  Now that’s a lot of pasta.

azureorder22sm.JPG

7.  Elias wants piano lessons.

8. When I was a little girl I got one of those “Doll Head” thingies that sat on a little stand so that you could fix her hair and make-up.  You know what I’m talking about?  Well, I enjoyed it thoroughly for about two weeks…and then my brother used the lip stick pencil and drew a thick, bright pink line from the top of her forehead to the bottom of her neck.  He truly thought that it would scrub right off, but it never, ever did.  Ever.  But I’m over it now.

9.  Asa and Justus are in a musical that the city is putting on this summer, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.  They are in the children’s choir and are having such a wonderful experience.  Anybody ever seen this musical before?

10.  I think it’s weird that we call small towns like the one I live in a “city”. 

11.  Last Friday I let each of my boys pick one friend to take to the bowling alley.  (Remember the free bowling passes we have?)  Matt wasn’t able to go with me, so it was just me and the boys.  Now, let’s do the math (and try to figure out WHAT in the world I was thinking when I made this plan).  I have four boys of my own, and each of them chose one boy to take along.  That equals a total of eight boys…ages as follows:  three, three, five, six, eight, nine, eleven and twelve.  How many arms did I think I had?  Simply figuring out who needed what shoe size at the beginning was just about enough to make me turn around and go home.  At least the no smoking ban has officially been put into place this time, so we did not come out smelling like the deep fat fried cigarettes we smelled like last time we were there.

12.  I should not continue to come up with random thoughts at 11:32 pm.  Especially when I need to get up and bake for the farmer’s market tomorrow.

13.  We keep getting rain and other severe weather right when it’s farmer’s market time.  I like the rain, but not when I’m trying to sell pretzels. 

14.  There’s a 30% chance of rain tomorrow. 

15.  Seriously, I’ve got to stop.  What random things are going on with you?!

Getting Real with Food, pt. 8

Catch up on the rest of this series here!

In my latest post of this series, I talked about some simple ways for you to make some changes in your diet in order to begin eating healthier.

I also recommended that you start taking a good look at the labels on the food you buy. 

Today I’d like to share a few ingredients that you should be alerted to when you see them on a food label.   The big NO-NO list.  Try to avoid eating foods with these ingredients…at all costs…don’t even get near the stuff…avoid it like the plague…run far, far away!  (Or…maybe we’ll be realistic and say…try really hard to not eat it most of the time if you can possibly help it...)

Okay here’s the biggie no-no list:

Hydrogenated oils

High fructose corn syrup

Food dyes

Artificial sugars

I’ll explain these poisons no-no’s in more detail in the next post of this series…but first let me admit to you (so that you don’t feel overwhelmed…maybe) that sometimes our family puts some of this into our mouths.  They are found in MANY, MANY “foods” out there, and they are very hard to avoid!!  So, don’t despair…just do your BEST!  (Isn’t that the point of this whole eating right thing?  Do your best!  That’s it!)

Notice something about each item in the No-No list.  None of them are REAL FOOD!  (Remember, we’re working toward eating real food, right?!)  They might have started out as real food (might have)…but after undergoing several processes of “this and thats”…they usually end up being some form of freaked out chemical when it’s all said and done.  (I made that up all by myself, “freaked out chemical”…like it?)

And then these freaked out chemicals are mixed together with other ingredients (that we may or may not recognize)…put into a box, usually with a label telling you how good it is for you…placed on a shelf and sold to you as “health food”.  Or at least as ”a part of this balanced breakfast”. 

I promise to explain each of these no-no’s in my next Getting Real With Food post…because I think it’s got to be frustrating for you to hear me tell you to avoid them, but not really tell you all of the reasons why.  It’s just that I feel like the explanations of each of those terms deserve a blog post of it’s own…and I really don’t want this particular blog post to go on for three years.  :)

But, I will tell you this.  The process those ingredients have gone through to make them become the freaked out chemicals that they are effect your digestive system in ways that are really scary.  When food digests poorly…every organ in your body is effected negatively.  Beyond that, these ingredients have the power to change the healthy cells in your body to become unhealthy cells.  The cells around your heart…the cells around your brain…

Here are just a few of the foods that contain at least one, if not all of the ingredients in the no-no list:

Pop and candy (Well, we probably all knew that.)
Juice that isn’t 100% fruit (Although sometimes there’s food coloring added to the 100% juice too.  Grr.)
Peanut butter (Choosy moms choose…hydrogenated oils?  Grr again.)
Cereal (I have been shocked to see that almost ALL boxes of cereal have both high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils in them.  And food coloring.  Even the ones considered to be healthy cereals.)
Crackers (Grr to Shabisco and Beebler.) (Names have been changed to protect the guilty.)

Unfortunately, that list could go on and on…but I’ll stop with just those few. 

Remember though to focus on making small changes!  YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHANGE EVERYTHING AT ONCE!!! 

Also remember…REAL FOOD tastes so good!  Really, really good.  (Much better than the “food” provided for you by Keneral Zills and Mellogs.)

Hope to see you back here at WeavenlyDomeShakers…WAIT…  Why am I changing MY name?  Guess I got on a little carried away there…

Hope to see you back here at HeavenlyHomemakers for more Getting Real with Food encouragement!

Find more Works for me Wednesday here.