Making better food choices - one week at a time!

A friend of mine had mentioned the blog "100 Days of Real Food" to me a while back, but just recently I found it while looking for recipes on the internet the other day.  The idea of eating more real food has been on my mind for the past couple of years.  I'd love for our diet to look much more like food the way God created it, not the way it's been "created" in a plant. We've done better in some areas, but it's just kind of hard - processed foods are just so much easier, faster, and sometimes cheaper!  Plus, trying to get our kids (3 and 1) to just eat SOMETHING has been my goal as of late.

About two years ago, Daniel and I tried The Daniel Plan.  The food part of it is pretty similar - "real" food, less highly processed food products.  We went all out.  We trashed or gave away everything in the house that was on the avoid list.  For example, we got rid of anything that contained high fructose corn syrup... it was in a lot more products than I expected!  However, I've learned that the all-or-nothing approach to anything is a recipe for failure - for me at least!  I'll do great for a couple weeks, but then once I mess up and/or get lazy, it all goes out the window.  I think the root cause of this is my perfectionist tendencies. (Thank you to the FLY Lady for helping me figure this out! "To Mop or Not to Mop; But First")

So when I came across the mini-pledges on the 100 Days of Real Food blog, I was immediately interested!  Instead of going "cold turkey", you just tackle each challenge one week at a time, for 14 weeks.  Drastically changing our diet was (1) not going to last long (knowing myself), and (2) not going to go over well with the kiddos!  You have the option to build each week onto the next or just tackle each challenge one at a time.  My plan is just take them one at a time, but to try to incorporate what we learn each week into our normal routine.  Less pressure = more likely to succeed! :)

Each week's challenge/pledge will start on Monday mornings.  Since I decided on this during nap time yesterday afternoon (Monday) and hadn't talked to Daniel about it until he got home from work, we started with dinner last night.  So this will be a slightly shorter week.

Week 1 Pledge: Two fruits and/or vegetables at each meal - breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Dried fruits and fruit juices don't count.

Monday's dinner was a new recipe, Unstuffed Pasta Florentine.  It's basically 100% whole grain pasta with spinach, a creamy sauce and 3 types of cheese.  It was pretty good.  Emma did fair, but Andrew only took a bite or two.  We have a one-bite rule, so they have to at least try it!  We had fresh strawberries for dessert.  I couldn't find whole grain rigatoni (the only had the regular kind), so I substituted it for a box of 100% whole grain penne rigate pasta.

Tuesday:

• Breakfast for the adults was 2 eggs (omelet for Daniel, scrambled for me) with chopped green bell pepper, turkey sausage, cheese, and salsa.  I also added chopped tomato to mine.  The kids will eat some of my scrambled eggs, Emma especially, but she wasn't awake yet when I was eating this morning.  So this morning the kids had french toast sticks, banana and apple.  Neither of them were really in the mood to eat their fruit this morning, though.
• Lunch for the adults was leftovers from last night and fruit (grapes for me).  The kids had a homemade lunchable (lunch meat, string cheese, wheat crackers), grapes, and an orange.  They ate at school today, so I don't know how well Emma ate, but Andrew's daily report said he ate "all" of his lunch!  Probably because he was super hungry he didn't eat well this morning!
• Dinner: the plan for tonight is another new recipe, Sun Dried Tomato Grilled Chicken & Vegetables.  It uses a store-bought dressing as a marinade, which definitely does not follow the real food "rules", but the focus this week is just 2 fruits/veggies at each meal, so I'm not worrying about it.  I already had it in the fridge from another recipe, so I need to use it up anyway.  We're on a budget here, people! :)  It's got red and green bell peppers, so that could count as two different veggies, but we'll probably have strawberries after dinner again tonight.

Our fruit and vegetable bins are pretty full, so I plan to just figure out breakfasts and lunches as we go for the rest of the week.  I have dinner for the next two nights planned, but I'll need to figure something out for this weekend.  Wednesday night will be leftovers since we don't have much time for dinner because of church that evening.  And Thursday will be tacos with Easy Slow Cooker Refried Beans, cheese, sour cream, cilantro, and corn tortillas with kale chips on the side.  We'll probably include some onion or bell pepper in the tacos to increase our veggie count--and make it more like a fajita!

Any great recipes we should try this weekend?