For those of you actually keeping up with my blogging, I sincerely apologize for the lack of updates. My excuse, such that it is, is that I decided not to make another post until I finished reading and reviewing the book that BloggingforBooks.com sent me. Rather than the desired effect of me finishing the book and quickly posting another spellbinding blog, the decision resulted in a wonderful delaying tactic. And I still don't have a review to post.
Now past the over-baked crust and on to the meat, cheese, sauce and grease of this pizza pie of a post. (I don't name these things the way I do for no reason)
My son has been sick lately. If any of you are friends of mine on facebook, you might have seen a post regarding this phenomenon. He was sick again today, and ended up going to bed much earlier than normal, just because he was feeling yucky. I thought of making rather a snide comment on facebook--to the effect of 'Pukey the wonder-baby strikes again,' but that would be me trying to earn a couple of insensitive chuckles at the expense of my ill child. Not cool.
I got to thinking about my son's lingering feelings of 'yucky' and that got me worried about the little guy. You hear horror stores (or maybe I'm just blowing my worry for my son way out of proportion) of little ones getting sick and never recovering, much to their parents' unending sorrow. This granted me an epiphany. I realized that I'm far more worried about my little boy being sick and not waking up in the morning (over-dramatic, I know) than I am about my own well-being. I'd rather take the proverbial bullet for my son than him even so much as scrape a knee. Now, stop me if you've heard this one before, but I'd do just about anything to make my little dude feel better.
Does this mean I'm a real parent now?
p.s.: that book review is on its way...
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Exactly how real is our food?
Jayna has been doing a lot of research on the food we eat and what goes into it, and from what she's told me, it's pretty scary/nasty/toxic/evil. It's really weird how much the food we eat (and the chemicals therein) can affect us. It's not even just the issue of gaining weight--bad foods can cause digestive issues, hormone imbalances and even so far as causing depression and affecting our moods in other ways (please don't tell me that my issues with my temper are caused by my delicious red meat!) We can't really even go so far as to say that certain food groups are to blame, or that we're taking in too much cholesterol or eating too many donuts. Well, maybe eating too many donuts is a problem, but that's a blog entry for another day. It's the chemicals that are used in the foods we eat--the preservatives, the vitamin 'fortifications,' the artificial sweeteners, and even the vegetable-y oils used. So, we're trying to go on a 'real food' diet. This means that we're trying to rid our home of artificial ingredients and over processed food products. It also means we'll be doing a lot more cooking. And label reading. And food experimenting.
A lot of the resources Jayna's been reading with regards to the real food diets talk a lot about fermentation. This isn't the moonshine variety of fermentation, though--although the thought has crossed my mind--this is the kind of fermentation that takes ordinary-sounding foods and makes them healthier. Kombucha, for example: it's fermented tea. We still use the same tea bags that my iced tea machine uses, but we use a different process that adds a whole bunch of things that are good for digestion. All the beneficial little buggers in yogurt are now in an easily drinkable form, so we don't actually have to eat loads of yogurt--it gets tiresome after a while--to get all the active cultures and probiotics to replenish the bacteria in our stomachs. I'm not so sure about the other types of fermentation (lacto-fermentation in particular) by which we could make our own condiments, though, because it just kind of weirds me out.
We're also looking into farm co-ops for fresh fruits and veggies, as well as meat, milk and eggs. I know it sounds a little hippie for us to pay a farm for free range, grass-fed pork, beef, chicken, milk and eggs, but there's a lot of research that shows eating the stuff from the grocery store is more than incredibly unhealthy. Most of the packaged meat purchased from your every day--walmart/kroger--grocery store comes from farms where the animals are regularly injected with growth hormones and antibiotics, whether they need the antibiotics or not. The hormones, obviously, are to make the animals grow as big as possible in order to yield a higher quantity of marketable meat, but those hormones stay in the meat all the way to your dinner plate. The same goes for the stuff in what is actually fed to the animals--and who even knows what they're fed!
While I'm a bit reluctant to eat some of the stuff we're starting to eat, I'm trying to keep an open mind about it all and be adventurous, especially since all of it is really good for me. One of the first steps we took was to start reading the ingredients on food packages--if I can't pronounce it, I'm not buying it. Words to live by, if ever I've heard any.
A lot of the resources Jayna's been reading with regards to the real food diets talk a lot about fermentation. This isn't the moonshine variety of fermentation, though--although the thought has crossed my mind--this is the kind of fermentation that takes ordinary-sounding foods and makes them healthier. Kombucha, for example: it's fermented tea. We still use the same tea bags that my iced tea machine uses, but we use a different process that adds a whole bunch of things that are good for digestion. All the beneficial little buggers in yogurt are now in an easily drinkable form, so we don't actually have to eat loads of yogurt--it gets tiresome after a while--to get all the active cultures and probiotics to replenish the bacteria in our stomachs. I'm not so sure about the other types of fermentation (lacto-fermentation in particular) by which we could make our own condiments, though, because it just kind of weirds me out.
We're also looking into farm co-ops for fresh fruits and veggies, as well as meat, milk and eggs. I know it sounds a little hippie for us to pay a farm for free range, grass-fed pork, beef, chicken, milk and eggs, but there's a lot of research that shows eating the stuff from the grocery store is more than incredibly unhealthy. Most of the packaged meat purchased from your every day--walmart/kroger--grocery store comes from farms where the animals are regularly injected with growth hormones and antibiotics, whether they need the antibiotics or not. The hormones, obviously, are to make the animals grow as big as possible in order to yield a higher quantity of marketable meat, but those hormones stay in the meat all the way to your dinner plate. The same goes for the stuff in what is actually fed to the animals--and who even knows what they're fed!
While I'm a bit reluctant to eat some of the stuff we're starting to eat, I'm trying to keep an open mind about it all and be adventurous, especially since all of it is really good for me. One of the first steps we took was to start reading the ingredients on food packages--if I can't pronounce it, I'm not buying it. Words to live by, if ever I've heard any.
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