What We're Eating Now

I've been getting a lot of questions about what--if anything--we're eating now.  Since we're both firmly convinced that processed foods are better OUT of our diet, we are really trying to stick to the diet, though a few exceptions have been made:

*  We each get a Diet Pepsi on Fridays.

*  I can use commercial broth for Soup Night....or at least until I lose my fear of the pressure canner and start canning my own broths.  The fact that I did not blow up the house when I canned pumpkin doesn't seem to have lessened my fears any.  Probably because I know my potential for such things--boeuf bourgignon may have scarred my forearm for life.

*  We can have commercial chicken noodle soup if we are sick.  No faking.

*  We are slowly working our way through using up some of the "illegal" stuff still lurking in the pantry.  It has to be in limited amounts, and we won't be buying any of it again, but as we are NOT independently wealthy, we're going to use it since we bought it.

*  Colored American cheddar has been forgiven for the food coloring & has been allowed back.  Ditto black olives.  A year without olives I could live with.  A lifetime--no.

*  We're not cooking with cream for a very long time because it has MADE MY BAD SIDE.  A product calling itself "cream" and masquerading in the dairy case with such simple things as "milk" and "eggs" would, one would presume, be cream.  Whipping cream is, in fact:  cream (milk), carrageenan, mono- and diglycerides, polysorbate 80.  The bastards.  That means we had a few inadvertent "cheats" last year even AFTER I figured out the olives, pickles, and cheese "whoopsies."  I'll have to look into that one further to see if to get cream in a liquid (non butter) state if one has to be there right at the time of milking, or if it is just a "whipping cream" issue, but cream and I are not currently on speaking terms.

*  The more I have studied food and food history, the more I am convinced that much of our information is slanted toward products that can pay to advertise in the source providing the "nutrition" information.  I noticed a recent article in a health magazine mentioned all SORTS of products one could buy to add more fiber to one's diet.  Know how to add fiber to your diet?  Add pumpkin.  And beans.  And legumes.  And quit pealing fruit & vegetables.  BUT, I don't think pumpkin has much of an advertising budget, so it wasn't mentioned. 
   
My assumptions are that we can
     A) get most--probably ALL--the nutrients we require from actual food.  If our ancestors managed to survive for thousands of years without "nutritional supplements," we probably will as well.
     B)  To get everything we need, we need to eat a wide variety of foods.

SO, yesterday I made a little chart for us (Andy is SUCH a sport).  Every week, we need to have the following:

eggs
beans
nuts
fish
shellfish
beef
chicken
whole grains
brown rice
blueberries
winter squash
yogurt
green tea
tomatoes
flax seed
onions
garlic
quinoa
citrus
apples
hot cereal

The list is probably a little bit arbitrary, and I left some things off that we eat so regularly that I didn't bother to include them--like soy & spinach--though I may add them just so I get to check off a couple things very quickly.  (checking things off is just SO satisfying)  We're trying to cover a wide variety of proteins, grains, and colors.  The list is going to push us a bit, as I in general--in case I haven't mentioned it recently--loathe eggs, and could live the rest of my life quite happily without green tea. 

This morning, I fixed steel cut oats with toasted hazelnuts for breakfast, so check off nuts & hot cereal for the week.  (YAY!)  We're not counting that as whole grains because the oats are, in fact, cut (presumably with steel), so some of the nutrients may have been lost.  When WE say whole grains, we don't mess around.  It's the whole stinkin' grain here or NOTHING.

We had chicken yesterday, so that is THREE things down--18 to go.......