Archive for Eating Healthy
Some Encouragement Before We Start the “No More Excuses” Series
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I really appreciated that so many of you left comments sharing your thoughts, struggles, and insights as to why eating a healthy diet may be difficult for you or for others. I have experienced all of these same feelings and shucks, I still do sometimes.
I have definitely not “arrived” when it comes to this healthy eating journey we’re all on. My family does not eat a completely healthy diet at all times. There are many times that I compromise on what would be the best choice to feed my family. There are times I pull out cereal because I can’t make myself get out of bed in the morning to cook the breakfast I have planned. There are times when, while I totally know better than to buy the chips with hydrogenated oils in them, doggonnit, I want them anyway and I don’t care what’s in them, so there. (Which is why you should never dangle a Nacho Cheese flavored Dorito in front of me. I will eat it. I love those awful things.)
Doritos aside, there are many areas of healthy eating I haven’t mastered yet. And guess what? I don’t even know if I want to master them. How’s that for a bad attitude that sort of flies in the face of my “No More Excuses” intro post? I don’t love eating completely raw foods. Fermented foods, while they are great for digestion, aren’t my favorites. And soaking grains? I’m beginning to find that practice very annoying and am therefore becoming a bit rebellious about it. There, I said it.
I’ve run the gamut of emotion on this healthy eating journey I’ve been on for the past several years. The biggest feeling: Guilt. Now that’s a fun one.
Guilt when I don’t feed my family perfectly. Guilt when I don’t feel like cooking. Guilt when I know I could be doing better. Guilt when it feels like other moms are feeding their children a healthier diet than I’m feeding mine. Guilt when I read about what someone else is doing, but I just don’t feel like I want to go there yet.
Which is what leads me to the point of this post: Please do not let anything I share on my blog, and specifically in this new No More Excuses series, overwhelm, frustrate, annoy, or otherwise make you want to throw Doritos at me. (On second thought…) :)
I want to share my thoughts in the No More Excuses series to encourage you to consider how you might be able to feed your family a healthy diet and help you know that it is possible for you. But let’s also subtitle it the “No More Guilt” series, because we women have to stick together. We may all be in different places in our healthy eating journey, but we’re all on the same team. No comparisions allowed. No guilt. No pressure. Just encouragement and ideas, sharing and inspiring.
And maybe, the occasional Dorito. Someone stop me.
Why Aren’t You Eating a Healthy Diet?! Part 1
Posted by: | CommentsI’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but eating healthy food is really, really expensive. It also takes too much time to prepare, and besides that, all healthy food tastes like cardboard.
Those are a few things you might want to say to me if you’re interested in picking a fight. Not that I like to fight…unless you offer me a light saber or a plastic sword, of course. ;)
Trust me, I’ve heard all of the excuses. Shucks, I used most of them myself back before we began our healthy eating journey. I hated spending money on food. And I thought eating a healthy diet meant that I had to live on rice cakes, fake sugar, and some sort of fat-free cheese like product. (Let us all now pause for a moment of simultaneous gagging.)
Yes, I’ve used all the excuses to avoid eating healthier foods. I have had all the fears. I thought I would get fat if I ate high fat foods. I thought we would go broke if I stopped using coupons for all the ”food” I typically purchased at great discount. I thought my kids would hate eating healthy food and feel deprived of their favorite snacks, meals, and treats. I thought cooking healthy would be complicated and beyond my realm of knowledge in the kitchen. Plus, I had no idea where I would find healthy food in our small mid-western town.
But as I was learning more about eating a good, balanced diet filled with whole foods, I realized that something needed to give. I needed to do this for my family.
Therefore, I did a lot of research. I sought the help of friends. I learned that good healthy food is a great investment for my family’s health. I dug deep and found that there are healthy food sources all around me – I just had to know where to look. And I learned that healthy, whole food actually tastes amazingly better than anything else that comes out of a box or a bag.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be writing a series exploring the top ten excuses I hear from people about why they don’t eat a healthy diet. I’ll work to debunk all the myths you’ve ever heard about health food, and offer you hope if you are holding back on eating a healthy diet because of some excuses of your own.
As we begin this series, I’d love to know: What are your biggest hang-ups with eating a healthy diet? What are the excuses you use or hear most when it comes to eating twinkies instead of broccoli? If you had to make a top ten list of reasons you can’t eat a healthy diet, what might be on your list?
Cooking Healthy Meals When the Meal Plan Fails
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Click on this link to see a full, detailed list of the freezer, fridge and pantry items I try to always keep on hand, but I find that if I at least have the following ingredients, I can throw together a nice variety of meals with very little planning involved:
- Wheat or other grains (to grind into flour)
- Milk
- Eggs
- Whole Wheat Pasta
- Butter
- Tomato Sauce
- Cheese
- Frozen veggies
- Fruit (fresh and frozen)
- Canned Salmon
- Canned Tuna
- Hamburger Meat
Here’s a list of simple, nourishing meals I can make with these ingredients:
- Pancakes and scrambled eggs – using this pancake recipe, but skipping the soaking part
- Italian Pasta Bake – without meat if I don’t have time to thaw and cook hamburger
- Salmon Patties with frozen veggies
- Creamy Mac and Cheese with frozen veggies
- Tuna Casserole – using the creamy mac and cheese recipe with a can or two of tuna
- Fried eggs with fruit smoothies
- Quesadillas – if I have tortillas on hand
- Hamburger patties with vegetables
None of these meal ideas take much time or energy to make, nor do they create much of a mess in the kitchen. I love having these ideas as “back up” meals for those times when I fail to stick with the menu plan. (And now, I’m going to go get a chicken out of the freezer for tomorrow.)
What are your favorite meals to fall back on when your dinner plan falls through? What ingredients do you like to have on hand for meals like this?
Working Ahead for Healthy Food Convenience
Posted by: | CommentsFor the past two weeks during our Funky Fresh Kitchen series, we’ve talked all about getting your kitchen cleaned out and organized, getting rid of unhealthy foods and working toward making your own healthy foods from scratch. One thing I didn’t cover during the series which has become a very imporant way for me to keep my kitchen organized and healthy is making healthy foods ahead of time and freezing them for quick meals.
Whole Wheat Waffles are great to make ahead and
put into the freezer for a quick, healthy breakfast!
Having foods like healthy burritos, whole wheat waffles and homemade pizza pockets in the freezer to pull out for quick meals has been a life saver for me many times. This week, I plan to work on putting a few more healthy foods into my freezer for quick, convenience items. Here’s what’s on my list to try making this week:
- Turkey Sausage
- Homemade Beef Bologna (I’ll be adapting the recipe)
- Homemade Spicy Beef Pepperoni (I’ll be adapting the recipe)
- Hashbrowns
- Giant Breakfast Cookies
At the end of the week, I’ll be back with an update on how my extra cooking times went. I can’t wait to try those new bologna and pepperoni ideas!!
Care to join me in trying to get ahead just a little bit? Think you might have time to make just one extra dish or item for your freezer for some healthy convenience? Leave a comment letting us know what you’re up to in the kitchen. I love hearing new ideas!!
P.S. I’ve got a new “Make Ahead Meals” recipe to share with you later this week!
Homemade Beef Summer Sausage
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My personal Funky Fresh Kitchen “Make it Yourself” Challenge was to make Homemade Beef Pepperoni, using a recipe I found at Tammy’s Recipes. I read through all of her reviews before trying the recipe and many of them suggested that this tastes more like Summer Sausage than Pepperoni. I completely agree – it does taste much more like Summer Sausage. But no matter what you call it, we all really loved the flavor.
I kept having to remind myself while we were eating (one entire log of sausage in one sitting) that we didn’t need to feel guilt or hold back on eating this. We have, on occasion, purchased beef summer sausage from the store to eat on the run. The boys love it, but I’ve always been hesitant because the store-bought sausage is so full of MSG and who knows what. To now have this recipe in my hip pocket to make as a healthy, convenience food for my family is super exciting!
And did I mention that it is crazy easy to make? Yes, practically effortless. I used our healthy Grass Fed Beef and made five pounds of this wonderful meat, which tastes good with cheese and crackers or on sandwiches. I put our leftover meat in the freezer to use later. This is going to be a perfect grab and go snack to take to soccer games this fall!
Making this summer sausage was a three day process (although not time consuming or difficult). On the third day, after we got to smell it cooking on low heat all day, we were thrilled to eat it with cheese and fruits and veggies for dinner. Awesome!
Next, I’d like to try Tammy’s Spicy Pepperoni, which sounds like it has more of a pepperoni flavor. Score! Now we can have healthy summer sausage and healthy pepperoni too!
Does your family like summer sausage and pepperoni? You’ve got to try Tammy’s recipes!
Funky Fresh Kitchen – The Make it Yourself Challenge
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What helped me most during our healthy eating journey was realizing that while we were changing the way we purchased and made food, we were not trading Cheesy Velvetta Dip or Jello Pudding for a boring diet of tasteless rice cakes and bland green things that I’d never heard of. I simply found new ways to create our favorite foods. We didn’t have to stop eating peanut butter, pasta, pizza, tacos, cookies, pancakes, mac and cheese and burgers – I just needed to learn to make them in a healthier way.
Look through all of our recipes (scroll through the drop down Recipe Menu at the top of our site) to find long lists of Bread and Breakfast recipes, Main Dishes, Side Dishes and Snacks, Desserts, Condiments, Dairy Products – so many recipes that are easy to make, kid friendly, and healthy – all at the same time! Life does not end once you’ve decided to throw away your boxes of Partially Hydrogenated High Fructose Corn Syrup Red Food Dye #40 (otherwise known as the cereal that claims to be a part of “this complete breakfast”).
I know that not everyone enjoys cooking and creating in the kitchen as much as I love it. I mean…I love it. That has made this transition easier for me. But even if you don’t love cooking, there are some very simple foods you can make that aren’t difficult at all – and they just might replace (in a very delicious way) some of those “foods” you threw out the other day.
Your Funky Fresh Kitchen Challenge for today includes choosing one food item that you can make from scratch that will replace a less healthy option from the store. For instance:
- Homemade Peanut Butter
- Homemade Ranch Salad Dressing or Dip
- Homemade Yogurt
- Homemade Taco Seasoning Mix
- Chewy Granola Bars (make ‘em with your favorite ingredients!)
- Whole Wheat Graham Crackers
- Healthier Cheese Dip (a Velveeta/Rotel Knock-Off)
- Whole Wheat Vanilla Wafers
- Chocolate Syrup for Chocolate Milk
- Cheeseburger Macaroni (so much better than Hamburger Helper!)
- Homemade Vanilla Extract
- Homemade Poptarts
Those are just a few fun ideas to get you started. Look through all of our recipes, or look elsewhere on the web (or in your favorite cookbooks) for a recipe you can make that replaces an unhealthy variety of one of your favorite foods. I promise you that all of the above listed ideas are super easy to make. You can make peanut butter in five minutes with only a food processor and some peanuts. Making your own salad dressings is one of the easiest changes I made in my healthy kitchen. Take a look at this post called Five Minutes to Cultured Dairy for inspiration on making your own yogurt and other dairy products. Making Homemade Mac and Cheese takes the same amount of time as using the boxed stuff. Let go of the unfounded fears that cooking from scratch means that you’ll rub blisters, break nails and faint from exhaustion.
Pick one (or five!) and make it a project. Leave a comment on this post telling us what new recipe(s) you plan to make yourself. (No, it doesn’t have to be a recipe from our Heavenly Homemakers site – you can pick anything that will be best for your Funky Fresh Kitchen!) Your comment will serve as your entry in the giveaway for one of five $10 gift certificates to our Shop. Then, after you’ve completed your Make it Yourself project, come back and leave another comment sharing the results. (This will be a second entry!) Share with us – Did you like the new recipe? Did it work well for you? Was it easy to make? I can’t wait to hear about all your Funky Fresh Kitchen projects!
Let the Make it Yourself Challenge begin!
(As for me, for a long time I have wanted to try to make Homemade Beef Pepperoni – a recipe I found at Tammy’s Recipes. I challenged myself to make that this week and YUM! I’ll share more about it next week. I’m so excited – I made homemade pepperoni!!)
Updated Funky Kitchen eBook Price
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The first 100 Do the Funky Kitchen eBooks for $1.00 have sold out, but as you can see we are a wild and crazy bunch, as we have increased the price by a whoppin’ 50¢. You can now purchase Do the Funky Kitchen eBook for just $1.50 - available for the next 150 purchasers!! After that, the price will continue to creep up little by little throughout the week. Take advantage of this deal while you can! (Update: Only 9 left!)
Once those are sold out, you’ll find the next 200 books for only $2.00 each. That’s still less than half price. Time to get funky in your kitchen!!
Funky Fresh Kitchen – Join the Fun!!
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I haven’t attempted to turn a cartwheel since I was in my early twenties. I actually almost pulled a muscle just picturing myself turning a cartwheel today. BUT, I am so excited about the next two weeks I really am tempted to do some flips. After a lot of emailing, planning, organizing and brainstorming, I have a lot to tell you about. Where should I start?
First maybe I should explain what Funky Fresh Kitchen is all about.
Fall is almost here. I don’t know if you are like me, but this time of year I’m always looking for a fresh start. I want to get into a nice, organized routine. I want to set new goals for my family and for my kitchen. I want to enjoy all the wonderful, fresh food of harvest time. I want to start baking again as the weather turns cooler. I want to try new recipes. And I want my kitchen to be funky.
Funky? Yes, funky. Functional, if you really want to be technical, but I like calling it a Funky Kitchen, mostly because it makes me giggle. (Obviously, I’m easily amused.)
Make plans to join us here for the next two weeks of Funky Fresh Kitchen fun! I have new recipes to share, I’ll be offering up some challenges (are you ready to get your game on?), I’ve got some incredible giveaways and there will be some majorly discounted items in our shop.
I’ve got so many posts and so much excitement, I’m going to suggest that you may want to subscribe to Heavenly Homemakers and/or join my Facebook page so that you don’t miss anything. Trust me, you don’t want to miss anything.
The giveaways I have lined up? Well, you may just want to join me in the cartwheel attempts after you hear about these. Are you ready?
Cultures for Health has agreed to give away an Excalibur Food Dehydrator!! It’s true. AND (yes, I am screaming here) Paula’s Bread has offered to give away my most favorite Funky Fresh Kitchen item ever: a Nutrimill!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Let us all pause now for a moment of synchronized cartwheel turning and screaming.)
And don’t forget the new recipes I’ll be sharing. Some are chocolate and some include broccoli and all of them are easy and will inspire you to make fresh, healthy changes in your kitchen. Goodness, I’m so excited while I’m typing, I’m realizing that I have forgotten to breathe. You are all still breathing aren’t you? Okay good. We can’t all pass out before we even begin all the fun.
Share this post with all your friends on Facebook and in your neighborhood and tell your sisters and cousins and friends at church and college roommates and your bff and your bff’s sisters and cousins and everyone you can think of who could and should join us as we pursue our Funky Fresh Kitchens.
To get us started, we are offering our Do the Funky Kitchen eBook (which is regularly $4.95) for only $1.00. Yes, a buck. Read my favorite tips and suggestions for achieving a funky (functional) and organized kitchen, fresh and clean for fall. But hurry – our discounted price of $1.00 will only be available for the first 100 purchasers. As of now, you can purchase Do the Funky Kitchen eBook for just $1.50 - available for the next 150 purchasers!! After that, the price will creep up little by little throughout the week. Take advantage of this deal while you can!
Watch for specials and discounts like this for the next two weeks during this Funky Fresh Kitchen feature.
Also: By leaving a comment on ANY post with the above Funky Fresh Kitchen button featured, you will be entered to win one of five $10 gift certificates good for anything downloadable in our Heavenly Homemakers Shop. Because the button is featured on this post, comments right here and now will be added to the drawing for our gift certificates! Let the commenting, the Funky Kitchen eBook purchasing, the facebooking and sharing begin!
Watch for frequent updates, new ideas and recipes, discounts and giveaways – you don’t want to miss a thing. Thanks for joining me! It’s gonna be a great two weeks!
Does Organic Food Make a Difference? (a guest post)
Posted by: | CommentsWelcome guest poster Carrie Vitt, author of the cookbook Deliciously Organic and publisher of popular food blog, Deliciously Organic. Carrie focuses on recipes using unprocessed, organic ingredients with vibrant flavors and simple dishes everyone will love. She is the wife of an Air Force Test Pilot and mother of two daughters.
If you had two girls under the age of two, and your husband, a fighter pilot, was flying cover during a war in Iraq – would you be thinking about converting your diet to organic, whole foods? I wasn’t. My life had enough stress without another distraction. But that’s what happened in 2003.
Two years earlier, after the birth of my second daughter, I began having daily migraines. I was 25. As migraines often are, they were both baffling and debilitating. I often had to lie down in a quiet dark room, which was almost impossible with toddlers to care for.
I was taking several medications to manage the pain. After two years of struggle, my neurologist suggested adding yet another daily medication to my prescription regimen, a treatment that wasn’t working anyway. I kindly rejected her suggestion and drove home thinking: There must be another way.
That same day, a tiny newsletter article caught my eye. It was about the benefits of organic foods. I knew migraines could be related to diet, so I wondered if changing to organic foods might help. I was at the end of my rope and willing to try something different.
At the time, I was eating lots of vegetables to lose the last 10 pounds of baby weight. I replaced my lettuce with organic – my first step, since lettuce was a food I ate most. Within a week I noticed a significant difference. The frequency of my migraines decreased and it was now easier to take care of my kids. I didn’t need any more encouragement. I next switched all produce to organic with the intent of increasing the amount of pure and untreated food in my diet, while decreasing my pesticide intake. As I dug deeper and learned more, I continued making changes in my pantry and refrigerator.
Over the next year and a half, I converted my family’s diet to whole, unprocessed organic ingredients. I felt like a stranger in a strange land. I had a hard time finding recipes that were equivalent in flavor to what we were accustomed to. Nevertheless, I avoided such ingredients as white sugar, white flour and partially hydrogenated anything. Recipes using whole grains were especially challenging. We weren’t ready to leave the world of paninis, pasta and pizza. As my husband likes to say, “We ate some terrible pancakes during the transition.” This was disheartening because I had grown up with a great love for cooking that I inherited from the women in my family.
I decided that if we were going to eat organic dishes, they were going to taste every bit as delicious as the ones I used before.
Over time, I shared with my friends and family how I overcame my health problems. Many were earnestly interested in learning more or in making changes to their own diets. I continued to tell my story, share my recipes and give encouragement through my blog, Deliciously Organic and my recently published cookbook, Deliciously Organic.
Through organic, unprocessed food our family of four was able to overcome severe asthma, eczema, IBS and migraines. No drugs – just good, natural real food.
If organic, whole foods are something you’ve thought about, I encourage you to give it a try. I hope you’ll discover, as I have, that eating food direct from the source is not only perfectly doable and beneficial but perfectly delicious! And don’t be surprised when your friends and the whole family (including the kids) say, “I can’t believe this is organic. It’s delicious!”
What to Do with Coconut Oil
Posted by: | CommentsI’m always sharing good deals on coconut oil, telling you how nutritious coconut oil is, encouraging you to try coconut oil.
Many have asked what I suggest that you do with your coconut oil once you buy it. Here are a few of my favorite ways to use coconut oil:
~Apply Coconut Oil to your Skin - Sometimes I rub it on my face or hands if I have dry patches. It is especially soothing and healing after a sunburn. If ever we accidentally stay in the sun too long, we slather our skin with coconut oil. It’s incredibly soothing, plus helps keep us from peeling.
~Use Coconut Oil to Make Popcorn – This is probably our favorite use for coconut oil. Sometimes we pop our corn on the stove using melted coconut oil in a pot with the popcorn. But, since we have an Air-Popper, we usually use that. The boys pop the corn in the Air Popper, then we pour melted coconut oil and sea salt over the bowl. SO yummy.
~Make Granola Bars – Coconut oil is fantastic in these Chewy Granola Bars. Because it is a solid oil, once it is stirred into these granola bars and they are allowed to cool, the coconut oil keeps the bars from being too soft and squishy. Plus, the coconut oil gives them a delicious flavor!
~Stir Coconut Oil into Muffins – For just about all of my muffin recipes now, I use coconut oil instead of butter. It works wonderfully and the flavor of the muffins is fantastic.
~Subtitute Coconut Oil for Butter when Baking Dairy Free – When we’ve needed to bake for someone who has to eat a dairy free diet, coconut oil is our fat of choice. It almost always substitutes for butter when baking. (Check out these Dairy Free Gluten Free Muffins that use coconut oil!)
~Bake Cakes with Coconut Oil - Coconut Oil is great used in just about any cake recipe.
~Fry Foods – Coconut Oil is a very stable oil, which means that it can be heated to very high temperatures and not become rancid or bad for you. This means that you can fry foods in coconut oil and still be healthy!!! I prefer to fry foods in Expeller Pressed Coconut Oil instead of Virgin Coconut Oil, as the expeller pressed coconut oil is flavorless. I love the coconut flavor Virgin Coconut Oil provides in muffins and granola bars, but I don’t really like my Chicken Fried Steak Strips to taste like coconut. Therefore, I use Expeller Pressed coconut oil for frying.
To learn more about where to buy coconut oil, how healthy coconut oil is, the flavors and qualities of coconut oil…read this post: Coconut Oil: Why it is Good for You and Where to Buy it.
Please share your favorite ways to use coconut oil!
