Friday, May 20, 2011

Diet Change Part 2

I've receive a lot of feedback on our family's diet change. I just wanted to post some of the information that has helped me out. One of the best movies I have ever seen is The Beautiful Truth. This was really an eye opener for my husband and I. I was pretty health conscience before watching this movie but did not do a ton of research so I can honestly now say I was niave to what I thought was healthy. I had heard of MSG but didn't know exactly what it was until I saw this movie. I then proceeding to check out a website http://www.truthinlabeling.org/ which has a document that lists other product names of MSG. This really helped my husband and I look at what was in our house and helped us understand and reread labels on foods.
I get mixed feedback on doing gluten free. The most common response I get is, "Wow, that must be really hard." We did gluten free because of my son and it was a super easy change for home eating. Eating out and at other peoples homes/parties is a bit more challenging but we came up with a game plan. We don't eat out and we bring food with us to everything and every place we go. I checked out a few books from the library and bought the Gluten Free For Dummies book. This really helped get me started. My favorite website for recipes it http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/. I appreciate that someone has done the foot work in experimenting and have had good success with the recipes on this website. We have now been gluten free for 4 months.

My husband and sons still eat meat products. I on the other hand have chosen to go vegan. This is a personal choice for me and my body agrees with it. I still cook eggs and meat for my family. They still eat diary too. I can see that is what they need and I respect that. I mix in quite a few vegan recipes that they all enjoy. My youngest son surprises me and likes almost anything I make.

Another beautiful addition to my life was adding a garden to our home. We live upstairs and have a lanai on the top of the house. With the help of my neighbor I've been able to successfully start a small container organic garden. Her blog is http://akitchengardeninkiheimaui.blogspot.com/. Knowing what seeds to plant, when to plant them, what fertilizer to use as well helpful watering tips helped me get off on the right foot. It's refreshing to see my garden in the morning and be connected to the process of growing your own food. I'm not self sustainable however the little bit we've been able to eat from our garden feels very rewarding. Also it's a great stress release to garden too.

I also connected with several local organic farmers that I buy from directly. It feels great to know where our food is coming from and also support our local farmers. When we sit down at dinner and I can say almost all or all of our dinner is locally grown is feels amazing! I'm also in tuned to watch what it grown seasonally. My next step is to start to buy locally grown coconuts in bulk. I'm excited to learn to open a coconut on my own.
All of this has also saved us money. By buying locally, making most of our food from scratch and growing some of our own it's more work for me but less money that we have to spend. I like knowing what ingredients are in our food too as well as that the ingredients are organic. I look forward to learning more and exploring more recipes.