Wahoo. We have made it 40 days so far. We've eaten out 2 or 3 of those nights but for us, that is great. We used to eat out at least once a week, sometimes two or three nights a week. I'm not going to lie to you, it takes planning and I'm spending a lot more time in the kitchen. That's ok though because I love my kitchen. I'm pondering painting it a new color to freshen it up a bit.
Last night was a last minute throw together because I never did get to the grocery store. I had hoped to do the shopping while Connor and Tim were at Connor's karate class, but I just didn't feel all that great. I am fighting a stomach bug of some sort. Maybe I'm just suffering from a three day hangover. All I know is that the boys came home from karate and Tim had a slice of freshly made bread and then he was fine for a bit. Around 7:30 I wandered into the kitchen to see what I could throw together for a quick dinner. I had some ripe tomatoes, some onions, some fresh eggs, and some local cheese. Omlettes!
My omlette.
I know, it doesn't really make for a pretty picture but it was delicious. I put chopped up onions and tomatoes in mine with a tiny bit of shredded cheese. Aidan likes just cheese in his. Connor had onions, pepperoni, and cheese. Tim had the same thing I did. Not an elaborate dinner, but hey, not bad considering I haven't been to the grocery store for over a week.
I finally have just gotten my menu done for the rest of this week. Am I the only one who checks the forecast when making up menus? I find that I have to see what the temps are going to be and then that helps me decide what I'm going to make. If it's going to be rainy or cold, I cook accordingly. This week it's supposed to be above normal HOT so I'm planning on light dinners. That makes sense, right? I'm not overly quirky. =)
Hmm, what else? I had a couple of conversations yesterday with friends and neighbors and they were asking some questions. Are we off all pre-packaged, processed foods? Where do I get the majority of our food? It got me to pondering what we've done in the last 40 days.
As to the completely off pre-packaged food, no. I still buy some things in the grocery store. I am much better about staying to the outside edges of the store. When I do get pre-packaged items, I would say 98% of it comes from the health food store inside Wegmans. I love this about Wegmans. They pretty much have a little health food store set up inside the major store. They also have a pretty amazing international "store" inside the store. What I buy pre-made are things like condiments and peanut butter. Canned beans and canned tomatoes. Most of the time it's all organic. I also buy organic frozen fruit for a smoothie now and then.
In the last 40 days I've gone to baking all bread that we consume. I make all of our own pasta. For cereal in the morning, I make granola or we just eat oatmeal. We've also been enjoying farm fresh eggs more. Actually, our breakfasts are completely home made with no extra junk or preservatives. Our lunches are usually left overs from the night before or fresh bread with peanut butter and local honey. And then dinners, well, you've seen all of our dinners. I gotta say that I'm pretty proud of what we've done so far.
Now, as far as where we get our food. Once a week (sometimes twice) we go over to our local dairy farm. We get all of our milk, butter, eggs, ice cream, yogurt, and sometime cheese there. They also have sell pork products from a nearby farm. So I also get my bacon and ham steaks from them. Our beef. Once a year we buy a 50 lb variety box of beef from our friends at Five Mountain Farm. It's organic, grass fed beef. This year we also got a 10 lb box of all beef hot dogs that are AMAZING. We can do this because we are lucky enough to rent a house that has a full size freezer in the basement. I suppose we could cram all of the beef in our regular freezer, but then we wouldn't have room for our Rocky Road. That would be tragic. The rest of my groceries come from Wegmans. In another month or so, that will drop down a bit because our local farmer's market will start up. I plan on getting all of my fruit and veg from the local farmers and I need to stock up on the local honey too. Wegmans will be where I go to get my organic chicken (I'm trying to nail down a local source) and my things like beans and peanut butter and rice. What I would ideally like is to only have to go to Wegmans every two or three weeks to get basic goods. That means I'm going to have to up my getting organized and figure out how much flour I'll need for two to three weeks to make the breads and pastas.
I think that is all I have for now. I know it was all over the place but I hoped it helped someone out there. This is a work in progress and I'm happy with what we've accomplished so far. Until later, happy cooking!
