I love food. Who doesn’t? What a gift God gave us when He gave food flavor! And then when you combine flavors-wow! I mean chocolate and peanut butter were just meant to be together.
I also love being in the kitchen, whether it’s making dinner or baking cookies with my kids, I just really enjoy it.
You’ll notice if you stick around for long that I’m passionate about what goes into a recipe. Quality ingredients make all the difference. I didn’t always think so, but a little over a year ago my son started having stomach trouble. It went on for a while and was starting to interfere with school, etc. We took him to the doctor and after asking my son some questions and feeling around on his belly he said he believed the culprit was irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). He said it’s hereditary, which makes sense because I had struggled with it in my late teens and early twenties. Miraculously it went away after I had my son (I read later that pregnancy can cure IBS, something to do with hormones and all that). Before doing any testing he suggested we change his diet.
We knew we weren’t perfect in the healthy food area, but we didn’t eat out a lot and we didn’t let the kids drink pop unless it was a special occasion so we thought we were doing pretty good! I have a friend who’s what I used to call a “health nut.” She would talk about GMOs and processed food and it was usually in one ear and out the other. I should’ve paid more attention! One day I mentioned my son’s situation to my mother-in-law and she suggested I read the book 100 Days of Real Food. She had recently finished it and thought it might be helpful to us. I downloaded it on my Kindle and got started.
What. An. Eye. Opener.
I could hardly put the book down! She talked about the process our food goes through to get to the grocery store and it was horrifying-not to mention all of the extra fillers they add. She also talked about the importance of choosing organic when you can, especially for the dirty dozen. If you’re just starting to research this, I highly recommend her book-she even added recipes in that are really good and of course, she’s published several cookbooks since writing the original.
It took a couple of months, but we began incorporating more organic fruits and vegetables into our diet and as I began to read labels, we began to make the switch. Let me tell you, grocery shopping takes a lot longer when you’re reading every label! And they add sugar to EVERYTHING. Thankfully my son LOVES fruits and vegetables and will eat just about anything I put in front of him. If it were one of my younger two, we’d be in trouble. So while I was figuring out the label thing he got a lot of salad and cucumbers and apples in his lunch! We noticed almost immediate results-his stomach trouble was gone within two weeks of changing what he ate. Wow!
And I still make the recipes we’ve always loved, but now I use better ingredients. You’ll probably notice in the pictures I post. If you want to read more about our journey and see a list of brands that I buy to save yourself some time at the grocery store, feel free to check out this post here.
Thank you for stopping by and I hope you find a yummy recipe to try while you’re here!
