Living with less success story

Somehow our successes the last two weeks were all about food.  It shouldn't surprise some of you that my focus gravitated toward this, since if you know me well you know how much I love food.  I mean really love it. I wake up and my first thoughts are the three meals I will make. This is not an unusual conversation at our house:

Me: "What should we have for dinner tonight?"
Mark: "Hon, I don't know.  I haven't even eaten my bowl of cereal yet."
Me: "Oh, sorry. I just was thinking about it while I was waiting for the waffle iron to heat up.  I mean if we eat waffles for breakfast, maybe we should plan on something lighter for dinner.  What do you think?"
Mark: "Really. Can we talk about this later? I have no idea."
Me: "Right. OK. Maybe I'll just plan on grilling. I have this new recipe for...."
If Mark had a mean bone in his body, this is where he would begin rolling his eyes.  Instead, he drowns out my chatter with crunching.

Here's another little tidbit of history:

I grew up with a very unusual grandmother and slightly less unusual mother.  Two snapshots of my childhood:

Snapshot A--Life with my mom: My mother makes her own yogurt when we are little. Our cookies are made of whole wheat flour and carob chips. We shop at the food Co-op. Cheerios with wheat germ and raisins is my favorite breakfast (plain cheerios, people, not honey nut). One time, I ate so many scallops, I got sick (little kids usually get sick from too much candy, no? But sea scallops?). I didn't eat a candy bar (not even one tiny little bite) until I was E's age. And then I was allowed one, tiny, little bite. The rest went on the mouse trap we were setting, in which my father later caught his toe.

Snapshot B--Life with my grandmother: My grandmother once stole our Halloween candy out of our car...at church. She once took me to the movies and when I mentioned I was hungry, hauled out a baggie of cantaloupe and cheese slices (mixed together), while my cousin munched Junior Mints next to me. She asked me questions such as: "Can I have a piece of your hair?" (to send it to a homeopathic lab for analysis). You never ever told her you didn't feel well. That led to a full blown analysis of the acidity of your body, and an hour-long lecture about how much sugar you were eating. When my grandmother cooked for us, we often had this conversation (and she was an amazing, true Italian cook):

"OK, Mama Katy, what did you put in that?"
"What?" in an innocent voice that clearly revealed she was not innocent.
"What was in that? It tasted different."
"Oh, that? It was just..." --insert name of something bizarre and disgusting meant to cleanse your colon.

So this is the context for my fetish with not just food in general, but healthy food.  And by healthy I mean anything that tastes delicious and is all natural and preferably organic and grown on a farm I can actually see. (Confession: I may or may not have topped my kids' smoothies with whipped cream this morning, but cream is all natural and contains protein. That's healthy, right?)

If I could, I would turn my entire front yard into a vegetable garden, raise chickens, and keep a goat for a pet. Alas, I have three small creatures that already absorb much of my time. So we keep a small garden, because I think it is important to show my kids where food comes from and how it is grown. Plus, a walk a few paces to the edge of our property to pick beans, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, peppers, or rhubarb is so completely Little House that it makes my heart sing. But I still shop at the chain grocery store down the road, and I still purchase packages of ground beef hailing from five or six different countries and infused with "edible" ammonia fillers that kill e.coli, a bacteria that is largely the product of feeding cows a diet of corn and containing them in barns where they stand knee deep in their own manure all day. (Watch Food Inc and suddenly your food does not appear so foodish anymore.)

I have been trying for a very long time to establish a balance between feeding my family healthy, environmentally friendly, non-cancer causing food, and not going completely broke while doing it.  It's hard. OK, it's impossible. And so we compromise. We keep a small garden. We buy local in the summer. We buy less meat. We buy organic when it's available and if it's affordable. But I imagine we spend a lot more on food than the average family. And sometimes I'm cool with that, and other times I freak out and start buying cheaper food again. Until I remember my convictions and swallow the lump in my throat and fork over extra dough for the organic strawberries.

So after the lengthy lead in, here's our overview of food successes during the last two weeks.

Buying local:
My convictions--and my taste buds--woke up again last Saturday, when the girls and I visited the Wintertime Farmers Market.  I walked in with 20.00 in cash and walked out with a bag full of delicious local produce, cheese, eggs, and the most amazing apple cider donuts I have ever eaten. We tasted and tasted and tasted.  My mouth thought it had died and gone to heaven.  The girls even convinced me to try a raw sea creature that was still moving when it entered my mouth off the end of the oyster guy's pocket knife.  "Make sure you chew it!" he chirped cheerily.

Why? I thought. Because if I don't it will crawl out again?

"My kids love them in marinara!" he added.

And while I couldn't picture my kids coming near them with a ten-foot fork, they actually were pretty tasty...whatever they were. 

The market was a hit, especially with my littlest foodie, Miss A., who became very adept at swiping up samples as we walked the halls of the old mill that houses the market every Saturday from 10 to 1. I forgot what fresh eggs taste like until this week--how their yolks are a deep yellow, their flavor so mild, and how it takes little effort to cook them into a delicious, fluffy pile.  I forgot that organic milk tastes, well, like real milk. Even 1% is creamy and rich and flavorful, nothing like the vapid watery stuff you get out of a plastic jug. I forgot how long greens can last when you buy them fresh.  My pea greens are crisp as they were seven days ago--they last in the fridge for up to three weeks! Know why? Because they were picked the day I bought them. Food that is fresh, that is local, that is in season has flavor and texture and health benefits that far exceed the products we can find on the grocery store shelves.  And you get to see who grew it for you--there is reassuring accountability and a deep sense of community in that.

Acts of service:
Speaking of convictions, I've been thinking for a while now that it's time to get our girls involved in community service.  Sure, we do Operation Christmas Child every year and it's fun to buy stuff for kids who have less than us and send it off somewhere else in the world. But kids live in the moment, and the moment that box leaves our house, they've forgotten it entirely.  We need something more tangible than that.  Community Harvest Project is our answer. CHP is a non-profit farm that grows and donates produce to local food banks. Last year they "donated over 170,000 lbs. of fresh fruits and vegetables to hunger relief organizations" in our area.  I found out about the project a couple of years ago and vowed that when the kids were old enough we'd sign up to work.  So we did, and I am so excited to get started. After emailing their volunteer coordinator, we learned that they welcome families with young kids.  Our three and five year old will have plenty to keep them busy, and K can ride in the backpack and view the scenery. I can't think of a better time to start teaching the girls about serving their community. They'll be outdoors, digging in the dirt, and helping to provide healthy, fresh food to a population that desperately needs it. Community Harvest Project has drop in hours starting in late April.  If you live in our area and you're interested, visit the web site.  Maybe we'll see you there!

Eating right:
Finally, I made a deliberate effort to make more food from scratch the last couple of weeks and I discovered that it can help offset the cost of buying local and buying organic.  We made quick homemade pizza with our own sauce and crust.  It saved money and tasted much better. I felt good that I wasn't feeding my kids a bunch of chemical preservatives they didn't need. And really, if you plan ahead a bit, the extra time required isn't as much as you might think.  The dough took about 10 minutes to throw together and the sauce another 15. Then they both rose/simmered for about an hour and we were ready to roll at dinner time. I can't do this kind of cooking every night, but the more I do, the more we save, and the more likely I'll be to spend the savings on quality food, rather than processed food. It's win/win all around.

We also discovered another way to save money on healthy food, thanks to my friend Becky.  She pointed us to an organization called ROI Health based in NYC that offers discounts on healthy products delivered to your door.  You can register for an invitation code and when one becomes available, you can use it to purchase foods online through a local grocery delivery service. Ours is Peapod through Stop and Shop.  You spend a minimum of $60.00 and get a 15% discount on your purchase.  And did I mention the food is delivered to your door? Becky reported buying her Chobani Yogurts at $.85 a piece, rather than the usual $1.00. It takes a while to get the code, but sounds like it was worth the wait.  We registered right away.

Waking up:
I ended my two week focus on food by watching the now-famous documentary Food Inc. I've been annoying Mark with statistics from it ever since. Last night, as he was drifting off to sleep, I was still rattling off info I was convinced he needed to know NOW.  "And did you know that the average American meal travels 1500 miles just to arrive at our tables? Do you even know how much fuel that is? Three times a day!"

"Really," he replied. "You have to stop. I'll watch it, I promise. But can we please talk about something else?"

If you haven't seen Food Inc. yet, do. It will change the way you think about our food system. I'm hoping it will nudge our family toward changing some of our bad food habits. For good.

Time to call it a night.  Tomorrow's Monday and my favorite part of Monday? Planning our meals for the week! Yum! Happy eating!