Thoughts

Intimidated. Time constraints. Fear of commitment. Overwhelmed. Confused. A whole year?! What about travel? All of these thoughts are rattling around in my head right now.

For a while I've been trying to figure out where to devote some of my passion. I want a cause to work for and be proud of. I want to do something that will make a better place for my boys to grow into strong men.

I dabbled in politics. I then remembered why I was much happier oblivious to politics. The whole scene of politics just makes me frustrated and angry. Two feelings that I'm not particularly fond of.

There is one thing that I invariably come back to. Food. Food should be a simple topic but it's not. Actually, there are a lot of politics involved with food. Government looks the other way while corporations genetically modify our food, depositing their big fat checks from said corporations.

What happened to plain old farming? What happened to eating in season? What happened to buying from local farms? Hell, what happened to having a garden in your yard? Why are fast food companies allowed to advertise on a network of cartoons? Why do people wonder why obesity is on a dramatic rise in the U.S.? I think the answer to that question is tied into all the other questions.

So, here I sit. Wondering. Should I or shouldn't I? Do I blog about eating real food? I'm intimidated because I don't know if I have the ability to eat local, organic "real" food. Can I take my kids to a store and NOT come home with "treats" (processed crap) for them? Can I go to the farmer's market and buy enough of the right fruits and vegetables to satisfy my family?

Then there are the time constraints. Not really an issue through the summer months but when school starts back up in the fall, I"ll be teaching a second grader and a fifth grader. That leads to my fear of commitment. A whole year? 365 days? A dinner made from all natural ingredients every night? Right now part of my brain is saying, "I give you two weeks--a month tops." Another part of my brain is saying "Shut up. I can do this. I have to do this for my health and the health of my family." I wonder if I should be concerned about the voices?

Overwhelmed and confused go hand in hand. I know that I want to get all prepackaged, name brand, so-called "food" out of our diets. To what extent though? How far do we go? Take bread for instance. Bread is typically flour, water, sugar and yeast. Ah, here is my first problem. I have no problem baking bread. In fact, I love making bread. When I bake bread I use unbleached all purpose white flour. Hello...it's processed. Flour is just a ground up grain. If it's white flour then it's had all of the nutrition ground out of it. Baking with whole wheat flour is tricky. Not only is it harder to bake with, but how do I trust that it is in fact whole wheat? How can I trust packaging when most packaging is a lie? Do you see my problem? I'm sure there are other out there wrestling with questions like this.

I think my plan right now will be to make this a work in progress. We will start with dinners. That is the one meal that we all sit down and share together. This is the big meal of the day. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to switch over breakfast and lunch too. I'll have to figure out traveling, but I'll deal with that when it comes.

In this blog I hope to share how I (a normal mom trying to feed her family) can take fast food and processed food out of our diet. I will share what I'm doing and how much it costs. I will share how long it takes to prepare. I am hoping I'll be able to report that everyone loved the food, though I have my doubts about Aidan, my picky eater.

So, that's it. I am going to get started on this and hopefully show that real food can be made and we don't have to buy what big corporations are pushing on us. We can buy locally. We can grow our own food. We can support local farmers and it can all taste good.

Now, I'm off to the kitchen.