Our healthy living journey... part 1

So, awhile back I made a promise to share some of our "healthy" choices with you. Let's just pretend that wasn't way back in February! Ok? Though some of what I'm about to share was already touched on, I'm going to start at the beginning for a brief overview of the changes that have taken place in the last few years.

______________________________________________
Two and a half years ago, when my oldest was born, we took a little baby step that would prove to be a giant leap in the end. With his birth (why not before I don’t know, but stay with me here) we said good-bye to partially hydrogenated oils. Being sick through much of my pregnancy I had a lot of time to read. Friends of ours were the “healthy types” and I’d heard this and that about them. We knew enough about their food choices to be able to make a meal for them that wouldn’t compromise their convictions. Now that I had all this time for research, I dove in and started asking questions. I had a little one’s health to think about now, after all.

This wasn’t an easy decision to implement. Of course it’s easy enough to read labels and toss the bad stuff, but some of those things were well loved, and hard to replace. I’d grown up on Country Crock and cash register candy bars. Still, I was nursing, and once our kids were old enough to notice, we wanted them to be noticing good examples from their parents.

I kept reading. Not long after cutting PHOs (partially hydrogenated oils), we added MSG and high fructose corn syrup to the list of no-nos. This wasn’t a decision we entered into lightly, nor one we made overnight. We started to learn of the health effects, especially on children. We discussed and discussed and discussed, then finally made the decision to stop buying them.

We began buying whole wheat flour, then making our own bread. It’s funny really, but we never before used our bread machine because I don’t like the shape it makes the bread. Then I read the same thing from someone else online and how they use the bread machine on the dough cycle and bake the bread in a bread pan in the oven. What an Ah-ha moment that was for us. I’ve been making all (eh, except when I drop the ball and run out of time) our own bread, buns, and whatnot ever since.

Then Tammy and Crystal talked about their grain mills and I started dreaming of getting one for our family. I was pretty sure my husband was going to oppose this one as “over the top”, so I kept it to myself for a while. Then I started mentioning it. I was right… he didn’t jump on my band wagon. Over the next 4-5 months though, he started coming around… for his own reasons. Before long, he was ordering a Family Grain Mill with hand crank and bulk grain from a local natural food store. Now all the bread I was making was made from home ground flour. We loved it, and after a while, he even ordered the electric attachment so I wouldn’t have to hand crank everything (a huge time saver for a woman with a toddler and a newborn).

To be continued...

Labels: Healthy Living, In the Kitchen

posted by ~Babychaser~ @ 1:24 PM