We have a bread machine at home, and we went through this awesome phase where we made our own bread and pizza dough. We still make our own pizza dough, but we gave up on baking bread.
Why?
The loaves are too tall, yet short (length-wise). You can't make a sandwich and fit it in a sandwich bag. We tried cutting the pieces of bread in half and stuff, but it just looks lame and is kind of obnoxious and the bread is all crumbly and ... frankly, I felt too lazy to figure out how to work it. Maybe I could just put the bread machine on a "dough" setting, then bake the bread in the oven in a longer pan, so the loaves could be shaped a bit more like what you get at the grocery store.
When we lived in American Fork, there was a Sarah Lee bakery outlet down the street (you can buy older loaves of bread at a huuuuge discount) and it didn't seem worth it to me to bake my own bread when it was still really cheap to buy it at the outlet.
Then there's also Costco, where you can get tasty bread cheaper than the grocery store. And we weren't students any more, so I didn't feel the need to scrimp on bread.
Then one day, something happened. My brother introduced me to Dave's Amazing Bread (or something along those lines) at Costco. It was like this super-heavy loaf of bread full of nuts and seeds and what have you and IT TASTED AMAZING. When I wanted to feel really special, I would go out and buy that bread and eat a sandwich and feel like I was in heaven. Then we moved to Austin and they didn't sell Dave's bread (or pepperoni. It was a sad day in the Dewey household.)
Anyway, I had to find a *new* kind of bread to eat. I had been watching my food documentaries and whatnot and decided I wasn't going to buy white bread any more (it's a start.) I bought some Orowheat, then decided that Costco's whole grain wheat bread was good enough. One day, I noticed this organic-natural-sprouted-wheat-something bread and decided to try it. It was soft and tasty and the best bread I've ever eaten (as far as non-artisan bakery-type bread goes, anyway). But it was $7 for two loaves, and the loaves weren't as big as the Kirkland (Costco) brand bread, so I didn't buy it very often.
In my church, I'm an "Activity Days Leader". That means that twice a month, I do an activity with the 10- and 11-year-old girls in our ward (congregation.) Last month, a woman in our ward did a bread baking activity with our girls at her house. It was fun, and I made pizza rolls with the dough I brought home. We used regular flour and ground our own flour with her wheat grinder and she even let me use some of her flax seed meal ... and it just seemed so healthy. And we had fun kneading our bread and letting it rise. (Thanks, Katharine, you'll probably never read this but I love you.)
After thinking about all of the weird preservatives and additives in today's food, I decided to compare the ingredient labels of the bread I buy and the bread I like. The $3.50/loaf bread had ingredients like, "Flour, wheat flour, sunflower seeds, oil." and I thought YES THAT IS WHAT BREAD SHOULD BE MADE FROM. Then I pulled out my Costco bread and had my heart ripped in pieces. Luckily, all of the difficult-to-identify ingredients were after a "contains less than 2% of the following..." label. Where would I even find "cultured corn syrup solids" if I wanted to put it into my bread?
I felt torn. I want to be frugal, I want to be healthy, I felt like I was being pretty healthy buying whole grain bread from Costco. None of the regular grocery store bread looked appetizing, anyway, and it wasn't any cheaper. But am I seriously going to be one of those people who buys organic $3.50-a-loaf bread? Next thing I know I'm going to be buying $8 watermelons at Whole Foods! So, what, am I frugal or cheap or am I turning into some kind of
organics-obsessed hippy? (By the way, my father-in-law's granola is
very tasty.)
Maybe I should be baking my own bread again. Maybe I should suck it up and put forth the extra effort to bake bread in a pan shaped the way I want it (because it's so hard to press the "dough" button on the bread machine, then transfer it to a different bread pan and bake it in the oven.) But, oh, it's going to be so hard to perfect a recipe I like.
At any rate, I went to Sprouts (the equivalent of Utah's Sunflower Markets ... now they're owned by the same company!) and bought a bunch of bags of seeds and nuts from the bulk section (why don't more grocery stores have bulk sections? We need Winco in Texas!!) and a bag of flax seed meal. Some day, when I feel brave, I am going to attempt to make my own version of that natural organic whole grain bread. I might let you know how it goes. ;)
There's my inner monologue for the day.
Monday, July 16, 2012
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Food Entry #5: Weird stuff about dairy products
I can accept that yogurt is probably going to contain high fructose corn syrup. I don't eat enough yogurt to care. Yet. ;)
But my friend Jeannie told me about all the weird stuff they do to milk. I'm not talking about the hormones, I'm talking about the stuff they do to process your milk and make it whole, 2%, 1%, or skim. Whole milk is just homogenized milk from the cow. With 2%, they take out some of the cream. But when you get to 1% or skim milk, they do a whole bunch of weird processing crap to the milk and you end up with something that is almost a Frankenfood. You might be able to Google it?
Sure, skim milk is fat free, but honestly, is the fat in your milk the devil? the culprit of obesity? I doubt it. Kids need fat in their diets to grow their brains, and things like fat and protein keep us sated. So I will keep eating my avocados because I believe that over time they will keep me more full than fat-free crackers. When I eat fat-free stuff I get hungry and want to eat more of it.
Anyway, apparently when they make skim/1% milk, they have to add stuff to the milk to make it whiter. That sounds a lot like sawdust in my food to me. I can't quite bring myself to drink a lot of whole milk because I've been drinking a LOT of milk lately and don't feel comfortable drinking that much fat personally, but I've switched from skim to 2%. Maybe that's why I drink so much more milk now than I used to - it actually tastes good!!! Skim milk tastes like cardboard!
Last November, I was shopping for something like sour cream at the grocery store. Since I had made my discoveries about peanut butter and ketchup, I decided to check the ingredient labels for the national and store brands. I don't even REMEMBER what was on the ingredient list for the store brand sour cream, but it was like twice as long as the more expensive natural brand, so I ponied up the extra 20 cents or whatever to buy the sour cream that had the ingredients "cream" and "enzymes" and not a bunch of other things I think they labeled "fillers" or "stabilizers" or something.
Part of me wonders if I can even trust ingredient labels anymore. Wasn't there a time where the HFCS producers wanted their product labeled just "sugar" because there's such a huge stigma associated with the name "high fructose corn syrup"? Well, yes, because high-fructose corn syrup is not C6H12O6. In fact, I'm not even sure "sugar" is still essentially C6H12O6. I can only hope. O.o Does anyone know?
Long story short? Check the ingredient labels again. When I buy Sugar Blasted Cocoa Bombs from the grocery store, I know what I'm getting. I know the chocolate syrup I buy for Carmen contains HFCS. But I was surprised when I found it in most of the ketchup at the store, and most of the applesauce, and ... and ... and. I was also surprised to see a long ingredient list for one brand of sour cream and not another. So get yourself informed and be mindful of what you're buying and eating, because all brands of types of food products are not necessarily similar. Sometimes they are food-like substances instead of food, even when you're not looking at something that is obviously processed.
One last thing: Use butter, not margarine, even though margarine is so cheap and tempting. ;)
But my friend Jeannie told me about all the weird stuff they do to milk. I'm not talking about the hormones, I'm talking about the stuff they do to process your milk and make it whole, 2%, 1%, or skim. Whole milk is just homogenized milk from the cow. With 2%, they take out some of the cream. But when you get to 1% or skim milk, they do a whole bunch of weird processing crap to the milk and you end up with something that is almost a Frankenfood. You might be able to Google it?
Sure, skim milk is fat free, but honestly, is the fat in your milk the devil? the culprit of obesity? I doubt it. Kids need fat in their diets to grow their brains, and things like fat and protein keep us sated. So I will keep eating my avocados because I believe that over time they will keep me more full than fat-free crackers. When I eat fat-free stuff I get hungry and want to eat more of it.
Anyway, apparently when they make skim/1% milk, they have to add stuff to the milk to make it whiter. That sounds a lot like sawdust in my food to me. I can't quite bring myself to drink a lot of whole milk because I've been drinking a LOT of milk lately and don't feel comfortable drinking that much fat personally, but I've switched from skim to 2%. Maybe that's why I drink so much more milk now than I used to - it actually tastes good!!! Skim milk tastes like cardboard!
Last November, I was shopping for something like sour cream at the grocery store. Since I had made my discoveries about peanut butter and ketchup, I decided to check the ingredient labels for the national and store brands. I don't even REMEMBER what was on the ingredient list for the store brand sour cream, but it was like twice as long as the more expensive natural brand, so I ponied up the extra 20 cents or whatever to buy the sour cream that had the ingredients "cream" and "enzymes" and not a bunch of other things I think they labeled "fillers" or "stabilizers" or something.
Part of me wonders if I can even trust ingredient labels anymore. Wasn't there a time where the HFCS producers wanted their product labeled just "sugar" because there's such a huge stigma associated with the name "high fructose corn syrup"? Well, yes, because high-fructose corn syrup is not C6H12O6. In fact, I'm not even sure "sugar" is still essentially C6H12O6. I can only hope. O.o Does anyone know?
Long story short? Check the ingredient labels again. When I buy Sugar Blasted Cocoa Bombs from the grocery store, I know what I'm getting. I know the chocolate syrup I buy for Carmen contains HFCS. But I was surprised when I found it in most of the ketchup at the store, and most of the applesauce, and ... and ... and. I was also surprised to see a long ingredient list for one brand of sour cream and not another. So get yourself informed and be mindful of what you're buying and eating, because all brands of types of food products are not necessarily similar. Sometimes they are food-like substances instead of food, even when you're not looking at something that is obviously processed.
One last thing: Use butter, not margarine, even though margarine is so cheap and tempting. ;)
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Food entry #4: Looking at more ingredients
Back to the original topic.
It's not just peanut butter that's weird. I can only find one brand of ketchup that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. Maybe I should call these Frankeningredients, if I've got Frankenfoods. Did you know they didn't introduce HFCS into foods until the 90's? And when did the obesity epidemic start? Could that correlation possibly mean anything ...? I don't know, but I have a really hard time believing most of the population of the United States suddenly became gluttons and lost control of their appetites. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the foods we're eating aren't the same foods we were eating as recently as the 80's. Now we've got wussy tomatoes and laboratory-produced sugar and oils. Oh joy, I know this can only end well!
A friend recommended the book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I bet this book will talk about a lot of the issues I'm kind of skimming over. This is part of how she described it: This new one is about nutritional science and how it has driven our food choices for decades and brought us to the point where the grocery stores are full of "food like substances" instead of real food, and when we use vitamin and mineral supplements to get what we need instead of food. Remember when the nutritionalists told us to eat oat bran, then not so much oat bran, then no carbs, then more carbs, then no meat, then more meat, then wheat, then no wheat, blah, blah blah. The whole history of that is in this book, told in a fascinating way. I've got it on hold at the library, and I. Can't. Wait.
By the way, the ketchup brand is Hunt's. The grocery store still hasn't figured out how to make non-HFCS ketchup.
Edit: I had to buy more ketchup earlier this week, and it looks like the grocery store has started carrying plain ol' ketchup, too!! Woohoo, way to respond to consumer demand!!
On Saturday, Mark and I decided we wanted to buy some applesauce to get more fruit in our diets. Mark is allergic to a TON of fruits (we think it's like all pitted fruits with arsenic in the seeds ... apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, plums, apricots, etc. but not strawberries, other berries, citrus, bananas, etc.) but not when they're cooked or canned (? why are canned peaches, dried cherries, and apple pies okay?) so I figured applesauce is a good fruity thing we can all eat. We were trying to decide between brands of applesauce when we thought, hey, we should look at the ingredient labels! And guess what? HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. EVERYWHERE. Except in the "no sugar added" applesauce, which is .5 cents more per ounce, but only contains apples, water, and ascorbic acid. Luckily the grocery store HAS figured out how to make applesauce out of apples, so we don't have to pay a brand-name premium for it.
Another thing you wouldn't expect to contain HFCS? Soy Sauce. I think Kikkoman's is the only brand we know of that doesn't contain it. Costco carries Kikkoman soy sauce. You can make stir-fry every day! And teriyaki sauce is just made of soy sauce and other ingredients. Save money and make your own teriyaki sauce.
Did you know that just about every brand of ranch dressing contains MSG? Even the ranch spice packets have MSG in them. I think Newman's Own ranch dressing doesn't contain MSG, but I have a hard time finding it at the grocery store and I think it's kind of gross. So I haven't had ranch dressing in a long time (good for dipping carrots and celery ... it's been a while since I've had those plain, too.) I've switched to vinaigrette dressings, because salad dressing (or dip) is the ONLY way I will eat lettuce. And celery. And carrots. I used to get depressed reading stuff online about how lots of salad dressing ruins the low-calorie thing about vegetables. Then I realized, you know what? Who cares about how may calories are in the salad dressing? IT'S GOT YOU EATING VEGETABLES. Because, you know, if I'm not eating a salad, I'm going to be eating Oreos. True story.
It's not just peanut butter that's weird. I can only find one brand of ketchup that doesn't contain high fructose corn syrup. Maybe I should call these Frankeningredients, if I've got Frankenfoods. Did you know they didn't introduce HFCS into foods until the 90's? And when did the obesity epidemic start? Could that correlation possibly mean anything ...? I don't know, but I have a really hard time believing most of the population of the United States suddenly became gluttons and lost control of their appetites. Maybe it has to do with the fact that the foods we're eating aren't the same foods we were eating as recently as the 80's. Now we've got wussy tomatoes and laboratory-produced sugar and oils. Oh joy, I know this can only end well!
A friend recommended the book In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. I bet this book will talk about a lot of the issues I'm kind of skimming over. This is part of how she described it: This new one is about nutritional science and how it has driven our food choices for decades and brought us to the point where the grocery stores are full of "food like substances" instead of real food, and when we use vitamin and mineral supplements to get what we need instead of food. Remember when the nutritionalists told us to eat oat bran, then not so much oat bran, then no carbs, then more carbs, then no meat, then more meat, then wheat, then no wheat, blah, blah blah. The whole history of that is in this book, told in a fascinating way. I've got it on hold at the library, and I. Can't. Wait.
By the way, the ketchup brand is Hunt's. The grocery store still hasn't figured out how to make non-HFCS ketchup.
Edit: I had to buy more ketchup earlier this week, and it looks like the grocery store has started carrying plain ol' ketchup, too!! Woohoo, way to respond to consumer demand!!
On Saturday, Mark and I decided we wanted to buy some applesauce to get more fruit in our diets. Mark is allergic to a TON of fruits (we think it's like all pitted fruits with arsenic in the seeds ... apples, peaches, pears, nectarines, cherries, plums, apricots, etc. but not strawberries, other berries, citrus, bananas, etc.) but not when they're cooked or canned (? why are canned peaches, dried cherries, and apple pies okay?) so I figured applesauce is a good fruity thing we can all eat. We were trying to decide between brands of applesauce when we thought, hey, we should look at the ingredient labels! And guess what? HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. EVERYWHERE. Except in the "no sugar added" applesauce, which is .5 cents more per ounce, but only contains apples, water, and ascorbic acid. Luckily the grocery store HAS figured out how to make applesauce out of apples, so we don't have to pay a brand-name premium for it.
Another thing you wouldn't expect to contain HFCS? Soy Sauce. I think Kikkoman's is the only brand we know of that doesn't contain it. Costco carries Kikkoman soy sauce. You can make stir-fry every day! And teriyaki sauce is just made of soy sauce and other ingredients. Save money and make your own teriyaki sauce.
Did you know that just about every brand of ranch dressing contains MSG? Even the ranch spice packets have MSG in them. I think Newman's Own ranch dressing doesn't contain MSG, but I have a hard time finding it at the grocery store and I think it's kind of gross. So I haven't had ranch dressing in a long time (good for dipping carrots and celery ... it's been a while since I've had those plain, too.) I've switched to vinaigrette dressings, because salad dressing (or dip) is the ONLY way I will eat lettuce. And celery. And carrots. I used to get depressed reading stuff online about how lots of salad dressing ruins the low-calorie thing about vegetables. Then I realized, you know what? Who cares about how may calories are in the salad dressing? IT'S GOT YOU EATING VEGETABLES. Because, you know, if I'm not eating a salad, I'm going to be eating Oreos. True story.
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Food entry #3 - Finally talking about ingredients
I think I'm done with my tangents. Here's what I wanted to talk
about - all the crap in our food.
Once upon a time, I felt conscientious because not only did I not eat things like Hot Pockets, but I also made most of our meals from scratch. You know, I didn't buy things like Hamburger Helper. *flexes sexy domestic muscles*
I didn't realize quite how pervasive things like partially hydrogenated vegetable oils were (aren't they mostly just in things like potato chips?), or high fructose corn syrup (just kidding, I know everything contains HFCS), or MSG. Some naive part of me thought weird stuff wasn't in our food because we're not living in the Industrial Revolution and sticking weird things in our meat and thickening our foods with sawdust. And, somehow, the cheap food should be healthy, too, because shouldn't normal, natural things be cheaper than something that has to be manufactured? Silly me! (Thanks a lot, government, for providing subsidies to food producers to artificially cheapen crap food. I also love Monsanto and everything they do for our food supply. NOT.)
One day, I thought about my roommate who introduced me to Adam's peanut butter and started wondering about things like partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Why was her peanut butter so special? Because it was made of only things like (gasp!) peanuts and salt! You have to stir the peanut butter and store it in the fridge because that's what it will do naturally if you don't add other stabilizing-type oils. I decided to check the ingredient labels on the peanut butter at the store and only buy the stuff that had, like, two ingredients: peanuts and salt. One day, Mark said he didn't like how the peanut butter separated, so I decided I could settle for peanut butter containing stuff like palm oil (at least it's not partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, right?) Unfortunately, Costco hasn't gotten the memo, and I have to buy peanut butter in small containers from the regular store because the Jif and Skippy peanut butter Costco carries contains PHVOs (heck, I'll use an abbreviation for partially hydrogenated vegetable oils). Le sigh!! The store brands still contain weird oils, so I buy Jif (which contains palm oil.)
Funny story: It seemed like about 3 months after I started looking for only natural peanut butter, several types of "natural" peanut butter started showing up on the shelf. Hm, apparently everyone else watches the same documentaries I do!
Another funny story: We also started buying and using reusable shopping bags around the time we got married (2006?) Everyone at the grocery store thought we were THE COOLEST PEOPLE EVER for having our own reusable bags. Or maybe they were jealous because we had WinCo bags (from Boise, where Mark grew up) and we didn't have a WinCo in Utah yet. Either way, I think we are pretty awesome.
Um, I promise to get back on topic tomorrow. ;)
Once upon a time, I felt conscientious because not only did I not eat things like Hot Pockets, but I also made most of our meals from scratch. You know, I didn't buy things like Hamburger Helper. *flexes sexy domestic muscles*
I didn't realize quite how pervasive things like partially hydrogenated vegetable oils were (aren't they mostly just in things like potato chips?), or high fructose corn syrup (just kidding, I know everything contains HFCS), or MSG. Some naive part of me thought weird stuff wasn't in our food because we're not living in the Industrial Revolution and sticking weird things in our meat and thickening our foods with sawdust. And, somehow, the cheap food should be healthy, too, because shouldn't normal, natural things be cheaper than something that has to be manufactured? Silly me! (Thanks a lot, government, for providing subsidies to food producers to artificially cheapen crap food. I also love Monsanto and everything they do for our food supply. NOT.)
One day, I thought about my roommate who introduced me to Adam's peanut butter and started wondering about things like partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. Why was her peanut butter so special? Because it was made of only things like (gasp!) peanuts and salt! You have to stir the peanut butter and store it in the fridge because that's what it will do naturally if you don't add other stabilizing-type oils. I decided to check the ingredient labels on the peanut butter at the store and only buy the stuff that had, like, two ingredients: peanuts and salt. One day, Mark said he didn't like how the peanut butter separated, so I decided I could settle for peanut butter containing stuff like palm oil (at least it's not partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, right?) Unfortunately, Costco hasn't gotten the memo, and I have to buy peanut butter in small containers from the regular store because the Jif and Skippy peanut butter Costco carries contains PHVOs (heck, I'll use an abbreviation for partially hydrogenated vegetable oils). Le sigh!! The store brands still contain weird oils, so I buy Jif (which contains palm oil.)
Funny story: It seemed like about 3 months after I started looking for only natural peanut butter, several types of "natural" peanut butter started showing up on the shelf. Hm, apparently everyone else watches the same documentaries I do!
Another funny story: We also started buying and using reusable shopping bags around the time we got married (2006?) Everyone at the grocery store thought we were THE COOLEST PEOPLE EVER for having our own reusable bags. Or maybe they were jealous because we had WinCo bags (from Boise, where Mark grew up) and we didn't have a WinCo in Utah yet. Either way, I think we are pretty awesome.
Um, I promise to get back on topic tomorrow. ;)
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Food entry #2: Produce, Meat, and my Freezer
While I'm talking about produce, I'm going to throw another thing out
there - did you know frozen produce is generally fresher than the
"fresh" produce out in the store? True story. Frozen stuff is frozen
when it's picked. Other produce is picked green and ripens in transit.
They also put some kind of gas on the tomatoes to make them ripen and
turn red. Gross!! So when Mark and I moved into our townhome in 2008, I
bought a little chest freezer from Costco to store frozen food in.
It's very much worth it, except our next freezer will be one with doors,
because it's obnoxious to dig stuff out of the bottom of our freezer.
Now I will move on to our freezer (oh, I'm so interesting and you know it!). We keep frozen vegetables in there (like stir-fry blend vegetables ... it makes dinner so easy!) and frozen meat. We bought a Food Saver vacuum sealer from Costco and when meat is on sale at the grocery store, I buy several packages and freeze 'em. I'm a little bit depressed right now because we're to our last pound of ground beef and I didn't notice it until yesterday. I have to think, "No making meatloaf, and if you make chili use the ground turkey, and dang, can you believe ground beef is normally like $3 or $4 a pound?!?!" But anyway. I love my freezer.
Speaking of meat, I'm still trying to decide what to do about that. I know all of the junk they feed cows, but I can't bring myself to pay so much extra for grass-fed beef (darn you government and your corn subsidies! You'll hear a lot about my disdain for corn subsidies if you talk to me, or if I get the chance to blog about it!) and I'm really afraid to BUY grass-fed beef because I hear it's so good you'll never be able to go back.
It's like how I've gotten with lunch meat. When I started college, I bought the cheapest meat I could find that still seemed like real meat (bologna could be a Frankenfood, but super-cheap ham is just as good as fancy ham, right? right????), and then after I got married I moved up to slightly more expensive lunch meat, and now there's this REALLY GOOD deli meat they sell at Costco (because, you know, it's still cheaper per pound than the nice deli meat from your regular grocery store but it's a similar quality) and I've found I can't go back. I bought some Oscar Meyer turkey a few weeks ago because we needed something to tide us over for a week before we went on vacation, and that was a mistake. The meat was slimy and weird (it was perfectly fine turkey meat!) and I have been SO SPOILED by my good deli meat lately that I can't go back to what used to be palatable. Mom introduced me to that Columbus turkey meat they sell at Costco and to me it seems so expensive but it's so good! Darn it, Mom! I'm a lunch meat snob now!
It's not like choosing between Chex cereal and the off-brand Chex-like cereal, because both are basically the same. It's more like choosing between Hershey's chocolate (or that really really nasty cheapo chocolate they sell at Easter ... do you know what I'm talking about?) and the real nice chocolate from Europe (or something). Of course Hershey's is cheaper - it's practically made of WAX. But it's bearable. And chocolate-flavored. But that's what's so hard about things like meat and produce. I really want to think it's all the same, but there's a huge difference in quality you can't see from the ingredient label.
Now I will move on to our freezer (oh, I'm so interesting and you know it!). We keep frozen vegetables in there (like stir-fry blend vegetables ... it makes dinner so easy!) and frozen meat. We bought a Food Saver vacuum sealer from Costco and when meat is on sale at the grocery store, I buy several packages and freeze 'em. I'm a little bit depressed right now because we're to our last pound of ground beef and I didn't notice it until yesterday. I have to think, "No making meatloaf, and if you make chili use the ground turkey, and dang, can you believe ground beef is normally like $3 or $4 a pound?!?!" But anyway. I love my freezer.
Speaking of meat, I'm still trying to decide what to do about that. I know all of the junk they feed cows, but I can't bring myself to pay so much extra for grass-fed beef (darn you government and your corn subsidies! You'll hear a lot about my disdain for corn subsidies if you talk to me, or if I get the chance to blog about it!) and I'm really afraid to BUY grass-fed beef because I hear it's so good you'll never be able to go back.
It's like how I've gotten with lunch meat. When I started college, I bought the cheapest meat I could find that still seemed like real meat (bologna could be a Frankenfood, but super-cheap ham is just as good as fancy ham, right? right????), and then after I got married I moved up to slightly more expensive lunch meat, and now there's this REALLY GOOD deli meat they sell at Costco (because, you know, it's still cheaper per pound than the nice deli meat from your regular grocery store but it's a similar quality) and I've found I can't go back. I bought some Oscar Meyer turkey a few weeks ago because we needed something to tide us over for a week before we went on vacation, and that was a mistake. The meat was slimy and weird (it was perfectly fine turkey meat!) and I have been SO SPOILED by my good deli meat lately that I can't go back to what used to be palatable. Mom introduced me to that Columbus turkey meat they sell at Costco and to me it seems so expensive but it's so good! Darn it, Mom! I'm a lunch meat snob now!
It's not like choosing between Chex cereal and the off-brand Chex-like cereal, because both are basically the same. It's more like choosing between Hershey's chocolate (or that really really nasty cheapo chocolate they sell at Easter ... do you know what I'm talking about?) and the real nice chocolate from Europe (or something). Of course Hershey's is cheaper - it's practically made of WAX. But it's bearable. And chocolate-flavored. But that's what's so hard about things like meat and produce. I really want to think it's all the same, but there's a huge difference in quality you can't see from the ingredient label.
Days in the life ...
Often times I feel like my day consists of nothing but, "solve crisis, solve crisis, solve crisis, solve crisis ..." (the preschooler lost a toy, needs to go potty, or is hungry, and the baby needs snuggles or milk or to be changed) and it's amazing I manage to clean or run errands, considering I have about 10 minutes (when lucky) before I get called into another room for one thing or another. It's like having ADD!
"MOMMY, baby Mace is crying and it hurts my ears!"
"Can you give Mace his binky?"
*long pause* "Um ... nooooo ... by the way, is my lunch ready yet? And can you make me chocolate milk? And I need to go potty. And Mace is still crying."
I wish I were an octopus or ElastiGirl. ;)
According to my Facebook:
"MOMMY, baby Mace is crying and it hurts my ears!"
"Can you give Mace his binky?"
*long pause* "Um ... nooooo ... by the way, is my lunch ready yet? And can you make me chocolate milk? And I need to go potty. And Mace is still crying."
I wish I were an octopus or ElastiGirl. ;)
According to my Facebook:
Monday, July 2, 2012
Watching ingredient labels ...
I grew up thinking, "Usually when it comes to national versus store brand ... if you can't taste the difference, there's not a difference, right?"
Then I started watching things like Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, and Food Inc, and various other shows that made me
A) thankful I don't eat Frankenfoods (my affectionate nickname for things like hot dogs, Twinkies, and other processed things that are more from a laboratory than nature) and
B) kind of ticked off at the United States' food industry. Maybe if I feel comfortable (and if I stop freaking GETTING SICK and BEING BRAIN DEAD) I'll write more about that. Hoo-boy, I have a lot to say about the government's involvement in our food supply.
C) curious about the quality of the produce I'm eating due to genetic modification. For example, tomatoes have been modified so they have higher yields, but there's the same amount of nutrients in the soil for a higher yield, so our tomatoes pack less nutritional punch than they used to. (suck!!!)
D) curious about what's in REGULAR food.
So I haven't switched to organic yet or anything, but I'm really missing the garden I had back home in Utah. We had a little strawberry patch that was starting to grow TONS of berries, a raspberry bush that had finally matured (my grandma gave me a few raspberry starts when Carmen was born. One died but the others were okay!), and this peppermint plant I regretted planting because I was constantly cutting it back (even more than the strawberries) and it was trying to sneak through the fence into my neighbor's yard. =p Then every year we'd plant some tomatoes and some zucchini and other random plants. Now I go to the grocery store and the produce is generally okay, but honestly? NOTHING can beat homegrown tomatoes and strawberries.
You know what I just realized? This entry could easily get really, really long. Since I have such a bad track record of writing entries, I'm going to split it up into smaller entries about food and spread out the posts over the course of a week or something.
I've done lots of research and have learned a lot of things in the past several years (since I graduated college?) It's hard to get out with little kids in the home, so I spend a lot of time watching documentaries on Netflix (if someone asks, I could totally write an entry about my sources, but I think you might find that boring?) and reading things on the Internet to develop my opinions about everything. So if anyone asks questions in the comments section of my entries, I can go back and edit my entries (with an ETA at the end, or the new stuff in bold, or something) to answer any questions anyone has. Okay? And if you have all given up on me and nobody reads my blog any more, I guess that's fine ... I'll just blog to the ether and leave my entries untouched. ;)
Oh my goodness, I just discovered the "Schedule" button on the sidebar. Now I can write a bunch of stuff and set it up to be published later! Why did I not do this before?!
Then I started watching things like Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, and Food Inc, and various other shows that made me
A) thankful I don't eat Frankenfoods (my affectionate nickname for things like hot dogs, Twinkies, and other processed things that are more from a laboratory than nature) and
B) kind of ticked off at the United States' food industry. Maybe if I feel comfortable (and if I stop freaking GETTING SICK and BEING BRAIN DEAD) I'll write more about that. Hoo-boy, I have a lot to say about the government's involvement in our food supply.
C) curious about the quality of the produce I'm eating due to genetic modification. For example, tomatoes have been modified so they have higher yields, but there's the same amount of nutrients in the soil for a higher yield, so our tomatoes pack less nutritional punch than they used to. (suck!!!)
D) curious about what's in REGULAR food.
So I haven't switched to organic yet or anything, but I'm really missing the garden I had back home in Utah. We had a little strawberry patch that was starting to grow TONS of berries, a raspberry bush that had finally matured (my grandma gave me a few raspberry starts when Carmen was born. One died but the others were okay!), and this peppermint plant I regretted planting because I was constantly cutting it back (even more than the strawberries) and it was trying to sneak through the fence into my neighbor's yard. =p Then every year we'd plant some tomatoes and some zucchini and other random plants. Now I go to the grocery store and the produce is generally okay, but honestly? NOTHING can beat homegrown tomatoes and strawberries.
You know what I just realized? This entry could easily get really, really long. Since I have such a bad track record of writing entries, I'm going to split it up into smaller entries about food and spread out the posts over the course of a week or something.
I've done lots of research and have learned a lot of things in the past several years (since I graduated college?) It's hard to get out with little kids in the home, so I spend a lot of time watching documentaries on Netflix (if someone asks, I could totally write an entry about my sources, but I think you might find that boring?) and reading things on the Internet to develop my opinions about everything. So if anyone asks questions in the comments section of my entries, I can go back and edit my entries (with an ETA at the end, or the new stuff in bold, or something) to answer any questions anyone has. Okay? And if you have all given up on me and nobody reads my blog any more, I guess that's fine ... I'll just blog to the ether and leave my entries untouched. ;)
Oh my goodness, I just discovered the "Schedule" button on the sidebar. Now I can write a bunch of stuff and set it up to be published later! Why did I not do this before?!
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Amanda: You get two whole minutes? :) (2 likes)
It's actually easier to run errands, because then both of the kids are in the same place and Carmen can be distracted by all of the goings-on. I just have to, you know, find time to get dressed first. ;)