The Adventures of the Reese's Pieces Gang

Many of my friends have asked how I can "afford" to eat healthy organic food and feed 6 growing children. Here are some simple suggestions that anyone can follow to start heading down a path of healthier eating.

Realize that cheaper does not equate to healthier. Have you ever really read the ingredients on a box of 12 cent macaroni and cheese, hamburger helper, or a can of ravioli? Nothing but WHITE Flour, processed foods, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, chemicals and food colorings! HOW can this be healthy for your family???

Choose to get educated! Read some books on health and nutrition that are NOT written by the FDA. Nourish Traditions by Sally Fallon is a great place to start only because the woman is very thorough on covering everything from fats, to vitamins, minerals, fruits, veggies, dairy, etc. She lists a TON Of sources and other reading materials that you can cross reference and do further research on. The very first book that got me thinking about nutrition and how it effects your health was by an organization that promotes the Hallelujah Diet, http://www.hacres.com/. I am not in agreement with their philosophy that we should never eat meat. However, they do have a lot of good info on why what we eat is making us sick or unhealthy. You can also check out sites like tropicaltraditions.com to find out about Virgin Coconut oil. You can also google pastured beef vs. commercially raised beef, pastured chickens vs. commercially raised chickens. The Weston Price site has a ton of info on milk. That ought to be enough to get you started! :-)

Make baby steps as you shop. Try to stay to the outer circle of the grocery store. Fill your cart with mostly produce and USE IT!! Fix a salad of some sort for dinner every night! When you go down the cereal isle (if you HAVE to buy cereal) Look UP and/or at the organic stuff. Don't buy any cereals that have sugar or high fructose corn syrup and food colorings in the list of ingredients. Try Old Fashioned oatmeal or organic cereals. As you start down the baking isle buy a bag of the organic cane sugar rather than white supper processed sugar. Grab a bag of whole wheat pastry flour or whole wheat flour and mix it into the white stuff you have at home to start getting used to brown baked goods. Buy BUTTER not margarine. You can find a lot of research that shows that since margarine was praised as the choice over butter, heart disease & cholesterol have only gone UP. Buy the REAL stuff, your heart will thank you!!

Spring is right around the corner, at least maybe it is where you live, we are supposed to get 4-7 inches of snow tomorrow. Anyway.... go online and find out where the local farmers markets are in your area. Go shop there and find some farm fresh eggs & produce. You'll be supporting local farms which are a dying art rather than the commercialized farming which primarily produces GMO corn & Soy... yummmy..... NOT!! To find farmers markets in your area you can visit http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/, click on "finding local foods" and you'll be sent to a site where you can enter the area you live and find farmers markets.

I'll try to list more tips on transforming your kitchen into a nutritional, flavorful, feasting area as I travel down this path myself. We are still using up foods that I have purchased or been given before making the choice to change our eating habits. You'll see evidence of that in Monday's menu.

So until then....... did you eat your salad today?