Yes, I Am A Label Reader & Beating Cold & Flu Season

I like sweets as much as the next person. Though I did grow up in a health-conscious family, because we attended a Baptist church (potlucks every week!) I grew up loving desserts (Shannon, Tori, & my mom can attest to this). Growing up my mom and dad were really into alternative medicine, healthy food, and juicing. We didn't eat meat with every meal and we never drank cow's milk. Over the years I have learned a lot and because of my mom's research and refusal to just do what everyone else is doing, I have learned the importance of using natural ingredients to cure illness, to read the ingredients of food, and to research medicine before taking it (even if the doctor says it's perfectly safe). I remember being a little girl and my mom handing me a glass of carrot & apple juice and it actually tasted GOOD!

In the past 6 months I have really been convicted about not being the best steward of my body that I can be. I love cooking - especially Italian (with homemade pasta), Chinese, and Mexican (real Mexican food, like the kind they eat in Mexico) - and baking and often lots of butter and/or sugar are the main ingredients to make a good cookie or a great sauce. I know a lot of facts about health and I know what is bad for my body and what actually nourishes my body, and yet I wasn't doing anything to help the cause. So in the past 3 months I have really worked hard to almost erase refined sugar, butter, and white flour from our diet. Sometimes it means experimenting and ending up with a bland quick bread or pie that needs a little oomph, but overall it's been great. Sometimes we indulge and I use white flour to make pizza crust, but when we do, we end up both agreeing that it didn't make us feel good afterward. And so I've concluded that it doesn't matter how seemingly good something tastes, if you feel sick afterward then you're not doing your body any favors. However, I still haven't figured out how to make a good dairy free, butter free alfredo sauce yet, so when I do make Alfredo sauce for pizza, lasagna, or fettuccine once in awhile, I do use milk, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, and butter.

I'm a label reader. I will admit that it sometimes takes me much longer to do my grocery shopping, but in the end it's worth it. I always thought that buying healthier food meant spending a lot more money (and I never thought it was worth it), but I've realized that often it's not a matter of price as much as it is spending time to figure out which brand to buy. For instance, I was buying teriyaki sauce one day and I grabbed the cheapest bottle, looked on the back and immediately spotted the words "corn syrup" in the top 5 ingredients. Although it was cheap, I knew that if I bought it I would be turning our healthy brown rice and chicken & veggie kabobs into something unhealthy. So, I looked at the next few sauces, all of them had the dreaded ingredient. I finally found a bottle that didn't have corn syrup in it and it was only about 10 cents more than all the others. Score! Also, just as a helpful note, did you know that Hunt's marinara sauce has corn syrup in it?! And that most baking powders have ALUMINUM?! And the brand without aluminum is the same price! So, you're probably thinking back to that corn syrup commercial you saw on television this weekend that told you that your body can't tell the different between corn sugar or cane sugar. Well, if you look at the bottom of the screen during the commercial, you'll notice that the corn farmers are the ones who PAID for the commercial - and who would say anything bad about their own product? Because corn sugar/syrup is BAD.

 

So, to go along with our new found eating habits, I decided a few days ago to go buy tons of veggies to juice. I've always loved juicing - I feel so energized when I drink it and it really fills me up. Since it's cold and flu season, I think it's important to do our bodies a favor and give them some extra nutrients to fight off sickness. It's super easy to do if you have a juicer, and if you don't you can borrow mine - someone was gracious enough to give us one as a wedding present. So as I write this I am drinking 8 carrots, two leaves of kale, 3 apples, 3 stalks of celery, & 3 handfuls of spinach! And, it tastes GREAT! I'm going to buy some lemons and ginger next time to real amp up my immune system. I prefer to get my vitamins from veggies, grains, legumes, and seeds rather than taking a pill. I don't have anything against pills, but I find that I am not very consistent in taking them and the good quality ones are awfully expensive. I try not to be fanatic about eating healthy. I'm not paranoid about the ingredients when eating at someone's house or at a restaurant. I think you can make healthy eating an idol just as easily as being a glutton. Good things can become an idol, and I don't want to be under bondage to anything, not even produce!

I love making a meal with as many vegetables as possible. But don't get me wrong, I do like some good carne asada or an elk burger to with it! :)