Presenting Spelt

I have been wanting to make these Spelt Pumpkin Muffins for quite a while, but wasn’t sure about using an “alternative” flour.  A friend made them a couple months ago and brought me a few – they were delicious!  I finally found spelt flour at a local store, so decided to give it a whirl.  When I told my daughter two days ago that I was going to make her some pumpkin muffins, she turned her nose up, stuck her tongue out, and gave me a super dramatic “blech!”  Nice.  But I knew she’d like the taste, just as she had before, she’s just so darn stubborn about eating anything that I make.

I threw together the ingredients quickly while my daughter was downstairs playing.  A couple years ago, my mother-in-law sent us a snowflake cookie baking pan and a snowman mini-loaf pan, so I decided to break these out.  Yes, I’m aware Thanksgiving is the next holiday, but I was determined to make these “muffins” in a way that my daughter would like.   When she came back upstairs, I was just pulling the snowflake cookies out of the oven and putting the snowman loaves in.  She was so excited!  Then she saw the mixing bowl, the remnants of the batter, and said, “Ummm, there’s cinna-ninna-ninna-mon in that!”  (Although I know it’s not true, she contends that she does not like cinnamon.  And, for the record, she can pronounce the word correctly, we just have fun with it.)  I told her there was no cinnamon in the cookies (little white lies are perfectly okay), that the recipe called for it, but I specifically left it out so she’d like them, and that what she was seeing was just ginger.  She clapped and screamed, “Yum, gingerbread!”  (Insert evil laugh here.)  And, of course, she thought the cookies were super yummy!  So yummy that we made those Wednesday afternoon, and as of this morning, Friday, they are gone!  My husband and son happened to love them too, and there is now more pumpkin puree thawing so I can whip up another batch.

So, moral of this story is: It’s really all in the presentation.  It’s so much easier to get my daughter to try better-for-you food when it’s presented to her on a Hello Kitty plate (veggie burger homemade Happy Meal), in a Cinderella cup with a lid and slinky straw (yummy smoothies), or in the form of snowflake cookies and snowman muffins.

And I just have to mention…  My daughter’s kindergarten class made pumpkin cranberry bread yesterday at school.  They made it in mini loaf tins and decorated a recipe sheet to bring home.  I loved that they all participated and were able to do something so hands-on at school, and taste the fruits of their labor.  But, I didn’t love that the recipe included two full cups of sugar for two loaves of bread.  When we got home, I sliced a piece of the bread for my sweet Baby Girl to try.  She took one bite, handed it back to me, and asked for one of the muffins I had made.  I cannot convey to you how happy this made me!  (I think I’ll send in a spelt pumpkin muffin to the teacher next week, what do you think?)

Processed Defined

A friend asked the other day what the actual definition is of “processed food.”  I had the same question when I started on my journey to rid my home of it.  I still don’t have a definitive answer to that question, as I think it depends at least somewhat on what your ultimate goal is when it comes to processed food.  If you want to eat the most real, most fresh, most whole food possible for every meal, every day, move to a big farm, buy some cattle and chickens, a lot of seeds, and good luck.  That doesn’t work for me; I try to eat as minimally processed as possible, with a little convenience thrown in here and there. 

According to livestrong.com, “The United States Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, Section 201, Chapter II, (gg) defines processed food as "any food other than a raw agricultural commodity and includes any raw agricultural commodity that has been subject to processing, such as canning, cooking, freezing, dehydration, or milling."“  I tried finding this definition myself on the FDA website, but had no such luck – surprise surprise, it’s very difficult to find what you’re looking for on that website!

According to the definition above, it’s virtually impossible to eat no processed food whatsoever, unless everything you eat is plucked from your backyard and eaten raw. I know raw is best when it comes to veggies, but sometimes I just like a nice piping hot bowl of vegetable soup.

The 100 Days pledge allows for store-bought items with less than five ingredients.  I like this.  It allows for some convenience, but with minimal additives.  However, even if there are less than five ingredients, if I can’t pronounce one of them, I’m not buying it!

I think the easiest rule of thumb to follow is to make everything that you can from scratch.  If you need to buy something premade or packaged, just read the ingredients.  If you don’t know what something is, don’t buy it.  It can be a bit overwhelming at first, reading all those labels, but it gets easier.  Once you get the hang of it, your trips to the grocery store take much less time (and cost less money) – you’ll find that you stick mainly to the perimeter of the store, with just a couple of exceptions (olive oil, frozen veggies every now and then).  Forewarning, checkout can take a lot longer, with the cashier having to type in all the produce codes; I am not the favorite customer at my regular grocery store!

I’d love to hear some of the surprises – positive or negative – that you’ve encountered while reading ingredient labels.  Please share in the comments.

Sugar – My Own Very Unscientific Study

I’ve been doing a pretty good job of feeding my family real, whole, clean food for almost a year now.  There are days I’m too busy to cook, weeks we have so much going on that I fall off the wagon a bit, but for the most part, we’ve been eating clean since January.  Some of the first positive effects we noticed were weight loss (my husband and I both), just feeling better in general, improvement in our health (our daughter’s asthma is all but gone), and our daughter’s behavior improved. 

But yesterday was Halloween.

This post could have just ended there; the previous sentence should be self explanatory.

You see, when you change your eating habits to eat clean, you don’t consume nearly as much sugar.  Sugar – in any of its refined, un-natural forms – is bad bad bad!  (Throw in some artificial food coloring, and you have a potential recipe for disaster!) 

The past few months have been extremely busy for me, my husband, and yes, for our five-year-old daughter too.  I had no idea kindergarten would be so busy!  So I have relied on takeout a few times (I try to keep it healthy) and just haven’t been putting forth as much effort with our meals.  During these past few months, Rapunzel has been having these crazy tantrums.  She had them when she was younger, but basically grew out of them – or so we thought. 

We’ve made so many excuses for Rapunzel’s behavior – full school days with no naps; coming down with a cold; adjusting to having a baby brother.  The hubs and I have both suspected sugar, knowing it most likely had at least some effect.  When we’ve gone out of town to visit family, there seems to be a tantrum the morning we get ready to come home; if it’s a longer trip (longer than a weekend), there’s a couple to deal with while we’re visiting.  You know how grandparents are – Rapunzel gets treats like froyo with 12 toppings on it – and I’m okay with that; I don’t want to deprive my daughter or her grandparents.  I just brace myself for what I have learned will surely follow.

Today’s tantrum was a doozie!  It was the longest one, clocking in at about 38 minutes.  Since there is already a hole in her bedroom wall where the doorknob hits (you guessed it, from a previous tantrum), there was no damage to anything, except maybe my sanity, and Rapunzel’s.  The tantrums always involve a lot of crying, screaming, gasping for air, “you’re the meanest mommy ever,” hitting, kicking…  You get the idea.  I gently restrain her so she can’t hurt herself, and once she’s worn completely out, she just wants to hug and snuggle. 

As a mom, this story is a hard one for me to tell.  It’s embarrassing.  If I’m a good mom, my daughter should just simply behave, right?  But I do think I’m a good mom.  I usually walk away from these tantrums so frustrated, confused, and worn out.  I feel bad for my little girl, my baby, that she can’t find a way to control her anger better.  I get angry at myself for letting her have two pieces of candy on Halloween night.  And I get angry at the teacher that brought in cookies, icing, chocolate chips, and candy corn for the kids to make jack-o-lantern cookies yesterday without a single word to the parents. 

After improved behavior over the past couple of weeks (I’ve gotten back on the wagon with clean eating, no takeout, etc), today’s tantrum on the day after Halloween, the “holiday” that revolves around sugary treats, is my proof that sugar is my daughter’s worst enemy.  Now to make her five-year-old brain that thinks she has two stomachs – one for food and one for candy – understand that!

BPA

My husband mentioned to me the other morning that he had been reading about a study that linked BPA exposure to breast cancer.  I know we’ve all been hearing a lot about breast cancer this month, so I’m sorry for exposing you to even more talk of it.  But it’s a really important topic.  I think most women assume that it is a genetic issue, but it’s not!  I have read several places that only 5-10% of a woman’s risk is genetic.  There’s the factor of age, which, no matter how much we hate it ladies, is inevitable; and being overweight, which we can all do something about.  Then there’s exposure to chemicals in plastic.  Inevitable too?  Perhaps.  But we can limit this exposure.

It seems that the worst chemical offender in plastics is BPA.  We all know that BPA is bad, right?  RIGHT?  I mean, there’s a reason we see “BPA-free” advertised on plastics everywhere.  But do you know why it’s bad?  After what I’ve been reading, I’m just sickened, not only that I’ve plopped my leftovers into the microwave in plastic storage containers, but about everywhere else we find BPA.

According to Wikipedia, “Bisphenol A (BPA) is an organic compound with the chemical formula (CH₃)₂C(C₆H₄OH)₂. It is a colorless solid that is soluble in organic solvents, but poorly soluble in water. Having two phenol functional groups, it is used to make polycarbonate polymers and epoxy resins, along with other materials used to make plastics.^”

That does not sound like anything I want anywhere near my food!

Further, “BPA exhibits hormone-like properties that raise concern about its suitability in consumer products and food containers. Since 2008, several governments have questioned its safety, which prompted some retailers to withdraw polycarbonate products. A 2010 report from the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned of possible hazards to fetuses, infants, and young children.  In September 2010, Canada became the first country to declare BPA a toxic substance.  The European Union, Canada, and recently the United States have banned BPA use in baby bottles.”

Well, yay, baby bottles don’t have BPA anymore.  Woo hoo.  But guess what?  If you feed your baby formula (not everyone is able to breastfeed, no judgements please!), know that the formula can liners contain BPA.  And BPA mimics estrogen in the body (it used to be used as an estrogen supplement!), which, in short, can lead to an increased risk of breast cancer, as well as a host of other issues. 

Know where else BPA is found?  Cash register receipts!  Now, I like to shop just as much as the next gal, but now I’m wondering if I should wear gloves when I take my receipts.  (Oh wait, those gloves would probably contain BPA.)  So shopping can lead to an increased risk of breast cancer?  Oh, we’re all screwed!

Seriously though…  There’s probably no remotely-halfway-easy way to avoid BPA altogether.  But we can seriously limit our exposure.  Store and reheat your leftovers in glass containers.  I know there are non-BPA plastic containers, but I’m playing it safe.  Just beware of the lids on your glass containers!  Use stainless steel reusable water bottles (did you know you shouldn’t re-use plastic water bottles?) and pots and pans, if you can.  And limit your canned food intake (which you should be doing anyway) because those can linings contain BPA.

Know your plastics!  You can learn what all the symbols mean here.  We are done reheating in plastic containers in my house, but until we build up our glass container supply, we’re still storing leftovers in plastic.  The containers we use are types that are deemed safe (the lids are a different type than the containers), but based on some of the other things that the FDA considers safe, I think I’ll just quickly phase out all plastic food storage.

I’d love to hear some of your suggestions on limiting BPA exposure (or exposure to any other nasties in plastic) – please comment below with other steps we can all take.

Meals

One of the reasons, I think, that I relied so heavily on takeout in the past is that I wouldn’t ever think about what we were having for dinner on a particular night until about 3:00 each afternoon.  The stress of waiting until the last minute and the thought of going to the grocery store every day was just too much for me, so convenience would win out.  Now I plan our meals for the week on Saturday morning, make the grocery list, and go to the grocery store once for the week.  Yes, sometimes I forget things and have to make a quick trip back.  (I forgot two important things yesterday, so I had to go out in the cold rain today, ugh!)  But planning and shopping for the week all at once saves so much time, stress, and money!

I use The Fresh 20 for help planning my family’s meals.  I have tried other meal-planning services in the past, but The Fresh 20 is by far my favorite.  Each week, I get a menu that lists five dinners with side dishes, a grocery list that totals around $75 (for a family of four!), and nutrition info for each meal.  The basis of the meal plans is that you can prepare, from scratch, five healthy meals a week for your family based on twenty fresh ingredients, plus Pantry Basics (olive oil, spices, etc).  I have no complaints about any of the meals I’ve made thus far, and have been using The Fresh 20 for almost a year.  I love not having to make the same few meals over and over again.  And the meals are easy to prepare, so my daughter can help me with most of them; when she helps make a meal, she’s much more likely to eat that meal without complaining.  J

We use the Classic plan, but The Fresh 20 also offers Vegetarian and Gluten Free options, as well as a Lunch plan.  They have monthly and annual subscription options for very reasonable rates.  They really have something to fit everyone’s needs.

             Turkey chili with maple cornbread muffin.  YUM!

Now, some of you may be wondering how I prepare from-scratch meals for my family five nights a week.  It’s simple - I don’t.  Most weeks I plan to cook three nights (some weeks two, some four, just depends on what we have going on that particular week).  I pick the meals I think will go over the best with my family each week.  Although I work outside the home, it is on a part time basis and pretty flexible, so I’m lucky in that I’m able to be home a little more than someone who works full time.  Most of the nights that I don’t cook, we eat leftovers.  One night a week is my daughter’s pick, which usually means a trip to the grocery store salad bar.  (I know, how lucky am I?!?)  And we usually eat out one weekend night.  (When we eat out, we try to stick to locally-owned restaurants that use fresh, local ingredients.)

I know some people spend Sundays prepping meals for the week.  If that works for you, fantastic!  I wish I could make myself do that, but I just can’t.  I do enjoy cooking, but not for hours on end.  (And we tend to spend Sundays pretty lazily, lounging in our jammies as long as possible.)  But you can find a schedule that works for you and your family.  It may involve getting up a little earlier in the morning to prep, or taking a long lunch from work a couple days a week, or spending Sunday in the kitchen – just know that you CAN do it.  Your health and that of your children is important, make it a priority.  Please.

As a side note…  Mine is not necessarily a weight loss story, but changing to clean eating usually means losing weight, if you have it to lose.  When we started using The Fresh 20, I weighed about 155 pounds.  During the first three weeks that I was following The Fresh 20 meal plans, I lost seven pounds.  At just under 5’ 2”, that is a fairly significant weight loss for doing nothing other than eating differently.  (I made a couple other changes at the same time that I started using The Fresh 20; the biggest one was cutting out artificial sweeteners, they are terrible for you!)  I have since lost another eighteen pounds (and completed a 30+ mile bike ride a few months ago and my first 5K yesterday!), but I’ll save that story for another day.  J

How It All Began

One of the first sites I found when I started looking into the awful ingredients in processed food was 100 Days of Real Food.  I didn’t know when I first found Lisa Leake’s website that she lives just outside my hometown of Charlotte, NC; finding that out was just the (whipped cream) frosting on the (whole wheat chocolate) cake.  (I later found out from a co-worker who went to high school with her that she used to live in Knoxville, TN, where I live now – crazy!) 

Lisa and her family pledged to go 100 days without eating a bit of processed food.  She, her husband, and their two daughters were successful, so Lisa decided to help others by sharing their journey.  She came up with a ten-day pledge to assist in making the transition from processed to real less overwhelming.  And for those that think ten days is just too much, she offers weekly mini-pledges as well.  You’ll be surprised by just how easy it becomes once you start doing several little things.

Even after reading everything I could on Lisa’s site, I still had to wrap my head around actually ridding my home of processed food.  I mulled it over for weeks, but started taking baby steps, one at a time.  The first step was to end the "treat" trip to McDonald's for a Happy Meal after my daughter's dance class every week.  (This was actually not a baby step, this was HUGE!  After almost a year, she just very recently stopped asking to go to McD’s after dance class every. single. week.)  I know, isn’t that just awful?  She didn’t care much for the burger, and she usually ordered apples instead of fries, but she always loved the toy.  So now her treats are usually sticker sheets from the dollar bin at Target.  She actually has a treasure box at home, that she painted and decorated, that I keep stocked with treats like this – stickers, lip balm, bath bombs.  And every now and then, we hit up a froyo place – I know, I know, still not great, baby steps people! 

 We’re still not completely free of processed food, but we’re getting there.  My daughter is making better choices on her own (she loves salad drenched in our version of ranch – Greek yogurt with a few seasonings), although she is still resisting most of Mommy’s cooking – not because it’s bad, but just because, well, she’s stubborn.  (I have NO idea who she inherited that trait from!)  ;)

If you think you’re ready to start getting rid of the junk, just know that it takes a lot of determination.  Your spouse kids will fight you every step of the way.  Don’t expect that it’ll happen overnight just because you’re armed with knowledge and recipes.  If you have eggs, milk, and whole wheat flour (as well as a few other ingredients) on hand, do you automatically have super yummy whole wheat waffles?  No.  You have to mix the ingredients, wait for the waffle iron to heat up, pour in your batter, and wait for the waffles to cook.  But boy, when you’re finished, you have a lovely plate of homemade waffles (hopefully with some 100% pure maple syrup).  EFFORT.  WORK.  PATIENCE.  But isn’t it totally worth it?  I promise you, it is!

Welcome to Process This

Hello friends.  My name is Amy, I am a 38-year-old wife and mother of two insanely cool kids.  I’m doing the best I know how to make sure my kids are raised healthy and happy, while making sure my husband and I remain somewhat sane.  I am asked quite a bit how I do it – how I can work outside the home, manage my kids’ schedules, and prepare (almost) all of our meals from scratch with real, whole, healthy ingredients.  So I decided to start this blog to share my journey with anyone who is interested in following and hopefully learning a thing or two.  I’m constantly learning, and look forward to sharing with you.

Less than a year ago, I was the queen of takeout, shortcuts, and simplicity when it came to mealtime.  My then preschool-aged daughter would ask which drive through we were going to most days when I picked her up from school.  At the height of my mealtime-shortcut obsession, I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes.  I was a few months into my pregnancy with my son (who is now a handsome, healthy, one-year-old), a pregnancy that my husband and I had fought so hard for.  I had miscarried a couple of years earlier, and it took us a long time, a wonderful specialist, a lot of money, a surgery, and giving up on the hope of another child before we finally became pregnant again.  So here I was, being told that I was endangering the life of the unborn child I had already been fighting so hard for.  The day I tested positive, I made drastic changes.  By the time I went to the Diabetes Center the following week, I had my GD under control.  I dutifully recorded all my food, checked my blood sugar (have I mentioned how much I abhor needles?), and quit hitting the drive-through.  Now don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t super unhealthy – a tad (between five and ten pounds) overweight (who has time to work out when you work outside the home, run a home-based business, have a young child, another on the way, you get the picture) – and the shortcuts I was taking with meal prep were “healthy,” for the most part.  But, there was definitely A LOT of room for improvement. 

I kept my GD under control, made my doctor proud, and made sure my baby remained healthy.  Despite all of this, I was put on bed rest two months before my due date (due to pre-term labor).  So, I had a lot of extra time on my hands to watch soaps read.  I started reading more and more about the ill effects of processed food and the disgusting ingredients in them.  And when I say ill effects, I don’t just mean the issue of obesity, although that is an important one; but behavior, moods, energy levels, headaches – you name it, eating too much processed food negatively affects it.

The more I read, the more absolutely disgusted I became.  What was I putting in my body?  And more importantly, what was I putting in my daughter’s and unborn child’s bodies?  I started looking at the seemingly good food we were eating, and realizing that most of it was highly processed.  So I started making our meals from scratch, using real, whole ingredients.  When you start to really read about the ingredients in the foods you buy that you think are healthy, it’s hard not to take a good, long look at our country’s rules (or lack thereof) when it comes to our food supply.  I’m not going to go into all of that here, with this post, I’ve already gotten too long-winded, but I will go into it at some point; the FDA won’t get off that easily with me! 

Am I 100% where I want to be when it comes to the food I feed my family?  Absolutely not.  I told my husband just last week that I’d really like to move to a big farm in the middle of nowhere, raise all of our own food, homeschool the kids…  But that is just not practical, at least not for us.  So for now, I’ll continue to do the best I can, reading and learning more every day, and sharing with you what I hope you’ll find useful in your own journey to a healthier way of life.  Enjoy!