Real Food on a Budget

I think one of the biggest reasons people avoid eating good, real food is that it is too expensive.

Food is expensive, that is a fact and I totally understand how someone on a budget (basically all of us!) has a tough time spending that extra couple of dollars for organic produce, or an extra few dollars for the best meat or dairy in the store. But hopefully, you understand the long-term benefits of eating healthier. Less trips to the doctor, a happier mood, and spending less money buying clothes that fit you as your weight constantly fluctuates are just a few realities I look at when weighing where I spend my dollar.

And good, whole food doesn't have to be super expensive. Hopefully I can shed some light onto how to soften the hit your wallet takes at the register.

Tip #1: Purchase cheap cuts of meat.

A "lower quality" cut does not mean lower quality meat. You can get some really high quality meat for a lot cheaper if you opt for less fancy cuts. Instead of spending an arm and a leg on a filet from a local farm, buy the ground beef. Instead of individually packaged organic chicken breasts, buy the whole chicken. Better yet, get some beef jerky to snack on or have at lunchtime with some veggies. It has all the nutrients of beef at a fraction of the cost.

I have recently stumbled upon the chicken thigh as my new go-to option for dinner. Chicken thighs are so much cheaper than breasts. Plus, the thigh has so much more flavor!

I bought some bone-in chicken thighs from U.S. Wellness Meats and cooked them last night. They were absolutely delicious, and super simple. Here's the recipe I used:

Mustard Glazed Chicken Thighs

Simple and delicious. And the nice thing about the bone-in thighs is that you can use the bones to make homemade chicken stock (yet another way to help your budget!). And when you buy your meat from a really great place like U.S.Wellness, you don't have to waste so much time trimming all of the thigh fat (which was one reason why I used to steer away from thighs...too much prep work). The bone-in thighs had plenty of meat and I did nothing to prepare them. I just put them on a baking sheet covered with foil and brushed them with the mustard glaze. The whole family approved!

Do a little price comparing and see what the real difference is when you use the cheaper cuts of meat. If it's only a buck or two, it may be worth your while to make the switch.

Hello!

Well I certainly took a long time away from the blog! I have to say, even though I'm almost three years into it, parenthood still kicks my butt on a daily basis. And every time I feel as though I am getting into a routine, it gets swept out from under me in a flash. These past two weeks I have had some house guests and have taken a trip to see family with the kids. Just these two long weekends have totally wiped all of my energy and I feel so far behind in absolutely everything. My house has exploded (more so than usual, despite what the Hubs says "It always looks a mess...."), I am scrambling to get back into a cooking routine, and my motivation to get anything done (blogging, researching new recipes, preparing for the kids' birthday party) is impossible to find.

I find keeping on top of meals for four people, as well as those who come to stay with us, is an absolutely exhausting task at times. Probably because eating never takes a vacation. It isn't as though my kids don't need meals on weekends or I can just have them skip lunch. It isn't like I walk into my kitchen after not being here for five days and the dinners sometimes decide to prepare themselves. It's three meals a day, every single day. And committing to making the majority of our food is something that I am proud of, but also something that becomes a really big thorn in my side.

I'm desperately trying to organize myself and somehow get into a routine, but these pesky kids keep tripping me up. My son is potty training right now so that is taking up a lot of our energy. My daughter just stopped nursing so now we are getting into the routine of bottles and figuring out when to give them to her and how warm she likes them (my not even 1 year old is beyond opinionated...I'm already dreading the teenage years with her). Naps and morning wake-up times are inconsistent, my husband's work schedule is inconsistent, and I have a difficult time trying to keep up with it all.

So right now it's a tough period. I feel like I'm running out of ideas for the kids when it comes to food. They seem bored and tired of the same old, same old. My energy is super low and my patience razor thin. I beat myself up daily for not blogging or responding to peoples' comments (thank you for them by the way!). I haven't been able to go through any more of my workbook on emotional eating. Just a big, fat BLAH in my day to day life right now.

BUT, I will get through this like I always do. I'm going to try super hard to get back into the blog this week. And I'm going to try to take everything one day at a time. Right now my sixth load of laundry is going and the house is only about 80% disastrous. I'm about to go look through some of my favorite Paleo blogs for inspiration for the kids. Just gotta jump back on the horse!

Back but not for long!

Yowsa, I have a tough time when my schedule gets rocked. As much as I loved having my friends come to visit it just knocks my socks off and takes forever for me to find them and get them back on my feet. And even now, a full four days after they left, I feel like I have one sock on and can barely see the second one peeking out from under the bed.

I've been scrambling all week to get back on track with my cooking and routines for the little ones. And I've felt even more against the clock because we have another trip fast approaching that I have to get ready for. This April is jam-packed with the Hubs traveling, people coming here, and us flying with two wild cards. Thankfully I've had some meatballs, chicken nuggets and a few dishes in the big freezer in my garage so I've been able to get proteins together for meals. I fell so far behind with my cooking and shopping with The Hubs also being gone the entire two weeks before my visitors. AND I'm also exhausted from a couple of late (but fun!) nights. So goes the life of a mother...even when you have a fun non-kid weekend planned you pay for it in the end : )

Not too much to report on our eating here. We're pretty much at a plateau. Music Man still fighting me on anything green but doing well with his other veggies and meat. The Peanut is still eating well although I think she's still upset about the weaning process. I'm sort of falling off the wagon a bit and trying to get back on. And I'm really taking a look at my emotional eating and realizing just how big a mountain I have to climb there. But at least I realize I have some things to work through and that's a big step one.

Off I go to prepare for our trip, hopefully I'll get more of the swing of things soon!

Great Breakfast Recipe

This weekend I have some friends coming into town. I had all these grand plans of cooking dinners and  breakfasts and having tasty snacks everywhere but that just didn't happen. The Hubs has been away for two weeks and I barely have enough food in the fridge to feed my kiddos today. It's definitely not stocked for a weekend of fabulous entertaining! But, I packed away some of the Easter leftovers in my freezer and tomorrow we'll enjoy this absolutely delicious Paleo French Toast Bread Pudding.

Now that the kids are getting older and this place is starting to feel less like a dungeon that I can never leave and more like a home again. I'm looking forward to seeing places beyond my 5 mile radius that encompasses the grocery store and the playground. I'm also excited to socialize a little more and invite people over and actually do a little entertaining in my house. I say "entertaining" very loosely because I can only have people over that don't mind tripping on toys, sitting down to a table with crumbs all over it, and leaving with dog hairs all over their clothes. But that is actually an improvement from what this house looked like a few months ago so we'll just go with it.

Anyway, I'm trying to find some meals and dishes that can both satisfy my Paleo lifestyle as well as my guests' taste buds. And this breakfast casserole is definitely one of them.

I am off to try and put this house back together before my friends arrive. Probably won't be posting for a couple of days, enjoy the weekend!

Emotional Eating

OK, so here's a topic I've been thinking about for quite some time. As much as I go on and on about the addictive nature of sugar and the physiological toll it takes on my body, I know deep down inside that there's a lot of emotional turmoil that sends me flying to the refrigerator to scarf down food.

I'm currently working through a workbook on dealing with overeating and binge eating and this week the theme is humility. Basically, accepting that we are flawed humans and learning how to deal with the ups and downs of life without reaching for the ice cream. There's actually a LOT more to it than that, but for the sake of this blog I'll only share some tangible stuff, like the "assignments" I'm working on.

I had to pick one aspect of my "food stuff" that I would like to change. As I've mentioned before, I have a habit of eating whenever my kids go down for a nap. I end up snacking so much that I'm eating a full meal and I know that I'm really not hungry. I'm supposed to take note of what I'm thinking and how I'm feeling when I attempt to not eat at this time. I probably won't share everything I experience (emotional eating is deep-rooted in some very personal stuff!) but I'll share any progress I do or don't make.

I'm finding all these detoxes to be too much on me at the time. I think I'm actually going to take a small break from them and try to focus a little more on what is going on inside myself and work on some personal growth. There I go getting all Oprah again! But it's all part of the journey...food is such a huge part of our bodies (physically, mentally, and emotionally) that many of us have a long road ahead of us before we figure it all out.

Music Man 1,374...Mommy 1!

Victory!

As I have written in the past, trying to feed the Music Man has been a struggle for about two years. Ever since he started eating his own table food he has fought me on anything and everything. BUT, last week I earned a huge victory.

He ate salmon! And he actually ATE it. Like a lot. And he ate it for two dinners in a row. Oh baby, that had me on cloud nine for quite some time. I was patting myself so hard on the back that I bruised. Feeling like a triumphant mother doesn't happen too often these days, so I am soaking this in.

I made him the "Quick & Easy Salmon Cakes" from (you guessed it!) Practical Paleo.

Here's the recipe:

2 6-ounce cans of wild salmon (drained) *I order most of my salmon from Vital Choice.
2 eggs, beaten
3 T minced shallot (I just used a white onion)
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T green onions, minced (I didn't have any so I left them out)
1 t Savory Spice Blend **
2 t gluten-free mustard (optional...I used regular yellow mustard. I plan on buying gluten-free once I go through the mustard in my fridge)
1-2 t coconut flour (optional...I used this, actually probably used a little more to get the consistency I wanted)
1/4 c coconut oil or butter

Combine salmon, eggs, shallots, garlic, green onions, Saturday Spice Blend, and mustard in a small mixing bowl. Add the flour you need to get the consistency you want. I wanted them a little firmer so added a couple of scoops.

In a large pan melt the oil and then just fry them up like patties. I guess it was about 3-4 minutes per side.

** Practical Paleo has a whole page of spice blends to make up for her recipes. They use easy ingredients and are great to have on hand. I basically just did a mix of rosemary, sage, salt, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika and black pepper. I like to get creative with my spice combos and don't really think you can go wrong. This is where you can feel like an actual "chef" and not just a person who does EXACTLY what a book tells you to do. There's something liberating about this for me :)


He ate these puppies up. Of course, he'll probably throw them to the floor next week but I'm adding them to my list of foods I know he can eat and that won't make him gag (broccoli and green beans are still on that list....)

These kids are killing me!

Ugh, doing this detox while taking care of my kids is getting to me. And by getting to me, I mean that I cheated! Sad but true. It's so tough to have all of this fruit around for them and these muffins that I've sweetened with ripened bananas and honey. So this weekend I indulged a little. But the really good news is that for once I'm not beating myself up about it, and I'm moving forward with the detox instead of quitting and binging on anything in site. That's what I would have done before. But I'm trying to diffuse this perfection monster that always rears its ugly head when I'm trying to accomplish something.

What helped was one of the support emails sent out to the detox group this morning. It's Day 8 and Diane encouraged us to keep going forward even if we had a slip-up. "Slip-ups" used to not be in my dictionary. It was all or nothing baby! You can't say you did a detox if you even consumed 1 gram of sugar! Well, that chick has been suffering with sugar addiction and emotional eating for years so maybe it's time for a new mindset. A calmer, more compassionate mindset that doesn't collapse when plans don't match an exact blueprint. I enjoy this way of thinking a lot more and its the one I want to model for my kids.

But still, they are killing me. It's so much easier to go through this when you really can clear out your house of anything tempting. And it's easier when you don't have much stress in your life and aren't exhausted trying to chase your now mobile and curious Peanut and breathe your way through the Music Man's latest blow-up. My favorite is when he loses his mind over something HE suggested.

MM: Want water.
Me: Water? Ok, I'll get you some water.
MM: NO WATER!!!!
Me: Ok, I'll just put it on the counter and you can have it when you want it.

10 seconds pass...

MM: Water please.

And the day is like that for 13 hours....

But it's Monday, a new week and it is beautiful here in Charlotte. Spring has finally arrived and I'm off to the grocery store to load up on vegetables for the week. I've done a fair amount of cooking in preparation for this week so all of my proteins are ready.

Even if I stumble through these 21 days I'm still going to be happy I did it. I'm still working on my emotional bond with food and I think having a little more patience and compassion with myself will only help that.

Starting Day 6...

Well this is the first day on the detox without my mom here to help me. I tried to do a lot of cooking the past two days but it's still going to be a challenge to get quality meals on the table while taking care of the kids. And the Peanut keeps waking early so she's cutting into my morning prep time. The good (and sort of bad) news is that we've started to wean from nursing. More on that topic later, but it is giving me some freedom during the day and I can hopefully not feel so crazy with keeping to feeding schedules as I have been.

But I've got a grain-free porridge heating in the pot and some left-over sausage for the Music Man. The Peanut will have her egg yolks, sweet potato and avocado. And I made the apple streusel egg muffins from Practical Paleo last week and will shovel a few of them in my mouth as I scramble to get us off to swim lessons and a birthday party this morning.

Off to begin the day...it's finally spring here in Charlotte so hopefully the sunshine makes these withdrawal symptoms bearable!

Day 4

Holy tomatoes I did a lot of cooking today. My mom leaves tomorrow so I wanted to take advantage of my built-in nanny and get a lot done for the next few days. Unfortunately when I cook a lot I tend to "taste" a lot and right now my belly is about to implode. But I managed to make a few portions of two different meals (both from Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook), and some chicken nuggets for the kids. Oh and I also made these Apple Streusel Egg Muffins from the book, Practical Paleo. I'll eat these this next week while I'm trying to get the days started without much help.

All this cooking on top of the regular breakfast, lunch and dinner I do. When I have visitors I tend to think I can cook during the day and don't do as much prep beforehand. Somehow it never works out well and I scramble around all day and feel totally disorganized. My hungry kids scream until I serve them burnt or cold food. But I managed to slow-cook a chicken, roast some sweet potatoes and sauté swiss chard with ginger and garlic for dinner tonight. Yum.

Felt good today but the cravings aren't backing down. Lots of snacking again but I'm staying on the path. I think this weekend will be rough but if I can make it to the middle of next week without cheating I should start seeing some great results.

Home Within A Home

A little over three years ago we decided to move down to Charlotte. I was not too thrilled about the move back then, but one of The Hubs major selling points was that by moving South we could afford a bigger house. Although a small positive in a sea of negatives (as I felt they were at the time) I have to admit the idea of having a spacious house got me a little excited. Our move pretty much coincided with my decision to eat a whole foods diet that involved cooking about 95% of my meals and so these days it doesn't matter how much space we have in our house. Because I live in one room....the bathroom. No! Although I do take my digestion quite seriously and examine it more than is considered "normal" I clearly meant to say the kitchen.

I spend A LOT of time in my kitchen. I wake up at 6:00 in the morning, attempt to do a few sit-ups while my belly laughs at me and screams "Oh, you think throwing a pail of water on a forest fire is going to help...that's cute", and then head downstairs to get as much done as I possibly can before I hear the Peanut calling for me. Usually this means getting breakfast prepared for the kids....Music Man usually gets a grain-free pancake  scrambled egg and some sort of breakfast meat. The Peanut gets 1-2 egg yolks, avocado, some sort of veggie pancake I've got left-over and fruit. On the days I'm on my game, most of these items come out of the refrigerator and just need to be re-heated. But sometimes I have to cook from scratch and that requires me to shift into third gear by the time GMA starts.

After breakfast is clean-up and on days my son goes to preschool it's back to the kitchen when I put the Peanut down for her nap. Usually on these days I try to get dinner all done. I aim for slow-cooker meals, or dishes that taste pretty good heated up. Back to the kitchen again for lunch time and then during afternoon nap time (or "quiet time" depending on which way the wind blows that day for Music Man) I finish up dinner or try to cook something that can be frozen/stored for later...pancakes, chopping veggies for tomorrow's dinner, roasting potatoes. On the days I have both kids at home, I turn to my best bud Mickey Mouse (or Daniel Tiger) during the Peanut's nap so I can have a few minutes to assemble dinner.

Most days I don't have time to actually cook dinner at dinnertime. The 5:00 hour is a delicate balancing act of trying to get the kids into dinner and bedtime mode and while also not pulling out every hair on my head or kicking a hole in my wall. It's also a time of day when anyone's mood (my son's...daughter's...mine) can totally shift the energy in the house and we can go from having a pleasant conclusion to the day to a "dear God I think the clock is broken" type of evening. The Hubs isn't usually around during the week at this time so I've only got two hands and they usually can't be occupied prepping dinner.

Once the kids are in bed, back into the kitchen to clean up all the mess and depending on my energy I do some more prepping or cooking for the following days.

Even though I don't enjoy much of my nice house, I do love my very spacious kitchen. When and if we move again, I think I'll shoot for a smaller house but with a bigger kitchen. I figure I'll just move a bed and a TV in there...

Day 2 Complete...Cravings Knocking on my Door

Whoo, today was an eating day. I stayed with the program but I definitely snacked myself through the afternoon. Lots of unsweetened coconut flakes, an unripe banana, walnuts and carrots. Just to give an idea of what I CAN eat, here were my meals:

Breakfast: sliced skirt steak, zucchini pancakes, sauerkraut, and roasted butternut squash with thyme (all of these were left-overs)

Lunch: salad with avocado and left-over chicken thighs and bacon. Olive oil, balsamic vinegar and Gomasio (sesame seeds and seaweed) on top.

Dinner: Chicken Cacciatore recipe from the Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook. I had wanted to serve it with spaghetti squash to give it a more "pasta-y" feel, but squash are starting to go out of season so I couldn't get my hands on one. Instead, I roasted up some carrots, zucchini, and re-heated some broccoli and green beans and made a vegetable medley. I poured the cacciatore sauce over the veggies and felt really satisfied with the meal!

Music Man ate up the chicken and the carrots. My Little Peanut was digging the chicken and zucchini. Neither were into the mushrooms in the sauce.

So far I haven't had too many detox symptoms. I'm tired today but that could be from my cruddy night's sleep. I read on the 21DSD Facebook page that people who eat mostly natural sugars actually feel worse on days 5-8 of the challenge. I have a feeling this may happen to me. My mom leaves on Day 5 and I'll have the kids all to myself. Perfect timing : ) But I'll get through it!

Paleo Approved Recipes

So now that I've decided to tweak the way I eat, I'm going to look back at some of the recipes I've been posting and determining what is Paleo-approved and how I can maybe change them to meet our new diet.

I need to remove all grains. Some people also do not eat potatoes but I am including those in our diet for now. I'm not eating white potatoes on the detox these next three weeks, but I'm actually eating sweet potatoes almost every day. I am still nursing and I need the extra carbs to keep my milk supply up.

First up are my stir-fry recipes. Basically they are Paleo-approved as long as I don't serve them over rice:

Flank Steak Stir-Fry with Asparagus and Red Peppers

Peanutty Stirfry  - I can't use peanut butter for this anymore. Peanuts are actually legumes, not nuts, so no go for Paleo. I'm going to try using a different nut butter with this one...thinking maybe cashew?

Chicken and Squash Stir-Fry

** I may try serving these with spaghetti squash or some day when I get super fancy and buy some expensive equipment I can make my own zucchini noodles. But that's low on the list...I'm trying to figure out how I can get my hands on a dehydrator in the next year. The Hubs has never bought me jewelry, the best present is when he just shrugs his shoulders when I purchase kitchen equipment and "weird" ingredients online.


The soups and stews are all fine:

Paleo Veggie Beef Chili  OK, I realized when copying and pasting this it obviously is OK since it's a Paleo recipe! I also love this because I can sneak liver in it with no one being the wiser.

Yikes - only one soup and stew recipe...gotta work on that.

The 2 slow cooker recipes I've posted so far need some adjustment...

Slow Cooker Tomatillo Chicken and Black Bean Tacos - No beans on Paleo. They are extremely difficult to digest. I think this dish would be fine without the beans, just cook chicken and the rest of the ingredients. I served it over rice and the Hubs used a wrap, but you could put it over a salad with some avocado and tomatoes and it would be delicious. You could also serve it along side some grilled broccoli, peppers and zucchini. Just make sure you get avocado and some good quality salsa whatever you do.

Sausage and Peppers - This one is a tough because who doesn't associate sausage and peppers with a crusty, buttery bun and some melted mozzarella dripping down the sides? That's the picture on this recipe post and it makes my mouth drool just thinking about it. But the flavors are delicious on their own, so just put it next to asparagus or maybe some crunchy kale chips.


Most anything can be Paleo-fied...a lot of times it's just increasing the amount of vegetables and eliminating the grain. I'm sure I'm going to stumble upon some bumps in the road, but luckily there are so many cookbooks and blogs out there about Paleo that I shouldn't have a problem creating delicious, satisfying meals for the fam.

Paleo - Day 1!

Day 1 of the detox and I've got a lot of groundwork to do. My mom's in town so hopefully I can get a lot of cooking done these next few days. I also keep noticing improvements in my Music Man on his grain-free/dairy-free diet and I've got to get cracking on some kid friendly Paleo options for him.

Here's what I'm working on for breakfast options for the kids:

Zucchini pancakes
Green eggs
Sweet Potato Pancakes
Pumpkin Breakfast Cookies

I'll share the recipes I can as I work through them.

Most of my dinners this week are based on the new cookbook I just ordered: Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook . Tonight I'm planning on making a salmon and sweet potato cake with an apple rosemary dipping sauce, broccoli and a green salad.

This 21-day sugar detox is very similar to what I've been trying to do before, but no grains. My diet will be mostly meat and veggies. No beans, lentils, rice, quinoa, or millet anymore. I can eat green apples and underripe bananas. It's not because they are low on the glycemic index or anything, it's because they aren't that sweet. That's one of the reasons this particular sugar detox spoke to me, because they recognize that some people can't handle fruit that well. I was listening to a podcast and Diane Sanfilippo was explaining why fruit that is actually low in sugar content (like berries) aren't on the list. She said something like, "I know some people that can do a number on a pint of blueberries." Um, yes! That would be me.

I think today I'll feel Ok and hopefully the detox symptoms won't be as strong as they have been in the past since I really have been eating pretty clean these past three months. I just slipped a little last week and this weekend. I've got to drink tons of water and try to get outside a bit to help with the stress I'm going to be putting on my body. I've got high hopes for this plan so we'll see!