100 Days of Real Food weekly challenge update

We finished week 1 (2 fruits and/or vegetables at each meal) on Sunday, and it was a good week!  We received half of a spaghetti squash from a friend on Wednesday (thanks, Kelly!), so we made a chicken/veggie dish with that and several other veggies we already had.  I thought it turned out fairly well considering I wasn't following a recipe!!  I'm not normally that adventurous, but I think it was good for me.

I know it's kind of stretching it, but supreme/deluxe pizza was two of our meals that weekend (Sunday School social night and a birthday party).  Hey, it has several different veggies on it, so it counts, right? :)

Week 2 was this week.  Week 2: “Real” beverages – Beverages will be limited to coffee, tea, water, and milk (only naturally sweetened with a little honey or 100% pure maple syrup). One cup of juice will be allowed throughout the week, and wine (preferably red) will be allowed in moderation (an average of one drink per day).

I'd say week 2 went well!  I drank a lot of water, some milk, and coffee with honey or maple syrup and some half and half.  I almost had coffee at MOPS on Wednesday morning, but changed my mind when I realized what sweetener and creamer options were available.  Daniel said I should start carrying little honey packets in my purse - not a bad idea!  I messed up last night at a party because I had sparkling pink lemonade without even thinking about it.  Oops!  Guess I should have tried the wine... (I'm not a wine person!)  The juice thing wasn't a big deal for us, because the kids don't drink it very often.  They didn't have any this week.  I occasionally buy V-8 Fusion and have a small glass with breakfast, but that wasn't hard for me to give up.  I just had water with lemon instead.

Week 3 starts in a couple days, and it's going to be a little harder for us.  Week 3: Meat – All meat consumed this week will be locally raised (within 100-miles of your hometown). Meat consumption will also be limited to 3 – 4 servings this week, and when it is eaten meat will not be presented as the “focal point” of the meal. Instead meat will be treated as a side item or simply used to help flavor a dish.

We normally have meat at least twice a day, and we always just buy it at the grocery store.  Who knows were those animals were raised?!  I figured the best place to find local meat would be at the farmers' market, so I took the kids this morning!  We bought ground beef, sausage, pork chops, honey, no sugar added grape jelly, eggplant, radishes, cucumber, lettuce and cilantro.  Total spent: $45.  Definitely more expensive than the grocery store, but it's all local, grass-fed, organic, etc. and the prices were too bad (especially the veggies which were all from World Hunger Relief here in Waco - thanks for the tip, Lizzie!).  Plus,the jelly and meat were all from Rockdale, my hubby's hometown!

Our Farmers' Market purchases 

One vendor was giving away free flowers to kids, so Emma and Andrew each got one.  Andrew's was destroyed by the time we got home - no surprise there! Emma's is in my new blue mason jar that I got last night (thanks, Brandi!) on our kitchen table.

If you have any recipes or meal ideas to get it through this week, let me know! :)

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?