Okay, so I went a little over board when I first decided this is the road we were taking and my first shopping trip was EXPENSIVE! I spent $350 on mostly perishable food in one day. I think I was trying to replace everything in my house to organic and vegan in one day. Bad planning on my part, but we also had been scavenging for food for about a week while I tried to find recipes I thought my family would eat, so that I could take a complete list to the store. (So that means we were HUNGRY!)
Well, I've been doing some research on local farmer's markets and I've found a better way. One of the things I found is Bountiful Baskets. It's a produce co-op, and I spent about half of what I would have at the store, and I placed my order online and picked it up early this morning in under 20 minutes, including drive time. It's as local as possible and 100% organic. I am very excited to have found this.
I also found a cool little downtown street market on Friday mornings. I haven't physically checked it out yet, but online it seems very promising. It's for local crops and also small specialty suppliers for natural products.
I had another food victory, though different than the previous one. I didn't have a specific recipe in mind last night for dinner and I was afraid we were going to splurge again on eating out. (It's really expensive when you want to eat out, but still want to have a semblance of nutrition, or find anything vegetarian that's not just a dumb side salad that's not made with quality ingredients.) So I just started cutting up vegetables - I sauted some garlic and then added a little water and softened some onions in it, and then started grabbing vegetable after vegetable, washing and slicing and throwing them in the pot. Potatoes, carrots, bok choy, celery, to name a few. Then I filled the pot with water til it covered everything, threw in a vegetable bouillon cube, and some lentils and Voila! A very simple, but delicious, dinner that my children gobbled up, had seconds, and asked for thirds. It's not the easiest thing in the world to train children that are used to eating processed foods, to eat their vegetables. It's equally difficult with husbands too! ;) But he is on board with better health and he added the veggies to the mac and cheese he made for the girls yesterday. So as much as I tease, and sometimes vent, he really is a good support, and has not complained once about some of the concoctions I've put in front of him, even though I've thought some were really terrible.
I feel so blessed. :)
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