Year of No Processed Foods - More Things We've Learned

* Many of your friends will insist that it's really THEIR turn to have you over for dinner, rather than vice versa.

* It's easy to obsess about the garden, and dreams of large tomato harvest become pretty frequent

* Everyone will say, "I could never do what you're doing," which translates into "I don't want to do what you're doing."

* Since we're not getting extra fat & calories in our food, we can have chocolate cake fairly regularly.

* This is an easier experiment to do since we DO get chocolate cake fairly regularly

* There seem to be no limits to the number of things we can find to do with cabbage.

* We get a lot less salt without processed foods

* After almost 5 months, it really has started to seem odd that we've done everything we can to make our food last as long as possible. If Twinkies are shelf-stable for 30 years, can you actually digest them???

* Few foods are really worth giving up a "cheat for." White chocolate martinis, on the other hand, are totally worth it

* Even if you are just reading labels for sport, it's best not to shout "How disgusting!" in the supermarket--even when reading the ingredients on something like Velveeta. Someone, after all, does buy that stuff.

* I'm much faster now at predicting what will be illegal. There are certain things foods can do in nature--not many of which show up in the supermarket

* Food manufacturers have even found ways to add preservatives & additives to dehydrated food--which is actually a preservation method on its own. Why exactly to they fry bananas before dehydrating them?

* If most of your diet truly is plant-based, you may have to increase your portion size.

* This really makes us question a lot of things. Why did they add food coloring to my calcium pills? Did they honestly think green makes them more attractive? And orange for the vitamins? Am I supposed to believe that they're really just like vegetables?????

* What we miss most depends on the season. It used to be canned soup. Now with summer coming on, it is probably going to be salad dressing.

* While I know it is WAY too early, there's a little hope in my heart each time I go out to check those tomato plants......:)