What's up with the Revolution??

I've had a few people ask me what has posessed me to make this change towards "real" food so I thought I would share the catalyst to my decision.  This past December while at a check up for one of the kids, our pediatrician pointed out that the food that goes into the mouths of our children is my responsibility.  If it's junk I hold the responsibility for bringing the junk into our house-seriously, I do hold the power when it comes to our food dollars.  They certainly aren't shopping for themselves!!  On the other hand, when I make healthy choices for our family and buy non-processed foods, I can take the credit for that too.  Hearing this woman that I trust and respect say those words really had a tremendous impact on me.  It made me stop and really think about what I was buying and bringing home.  For quite some time I have done a weekly menu plan-and honestly I do cook the majority of our meals at home.  We do not "do" a lot of take out and when I looked at our cupboard I didn't see a lot of what I considered junk.  We don't have a lot of candy/cookies/etc laying around.  But we do have fruit snacks, granola bars dipped in chocolate, baked chips, frozen pre-made pancakes, "whole grain" waffles, regular syrup, gold fishies (man I love my goldfish!!), and various other processed food.  It became clear to me that a lot of what we eat truthfully is prepackaged/processed food.  I was convicted to make a change but here is the problem-I am human.  I am a Mom to 5 busy children.  I work part-time outside the home (which quite frankly can vary to full time depending on the week).  I am tired.  I like easy.  So back to the point of this post-why am I doing this?  Because I decided that I want to try to do better.  I want to make an effort to present my family with real food.  I am determined to see if I can cut out white sugar/white flour/and packaged foods that have more than 5 ingrediants.  I had the desire but the next step was how?  How am I going to go about this whole revolution??  How do you come up with recipes that don't use sugar?  How do I make a variety of heatlhy snacks that are easy?  Thankfully (God bless Pinterest) I stumbled on to a blog called 100daysofrealfood.com and found EVERYTHING I need to make this possible!!  There is a 10 day pledge that we will be taking as of June 1st with the intention of doing an actual 30 day pledge in our home.  During the month of June we will be adhereing to "the rules" which are listed on the blog.  There are recipes, menu plans, and tons of tips-I would really encourage you to check it out!!  I am going to update my own personal blog with our progress.  If you know me you know that I will gladly share the good, the bad, and the ugly.  So if you want to check in and see how things are going please feel free-I will be honest in this pursuit of better eating-trust me if something doesn't work you will know!!  To give you a real life update we had our "we are transitioning to "real" food breakfast" discussion this evening at dinner.  This is where I dropped the bomb that as of Tuesday we will be having "real" food breakfast items-this translates into no more sugary cereal (good bye LIFE-I did love you so!!-see even I am sacrificing!!), no more store bought pancakes and waffles, and the biggie-no more sweetened yogurt for breakfast.  Are you wondering what the responses were?  They ranged from excitement to "this stinks" to "after the 30 days will we go back to just eating regular Mom?".  It will be a learning process for all of us, but I know that I feel good about making the effort!!!  Here's to an exciting new adventure-hope we can all learn along the way!!!  And if you have any good recipes, tips, or general comments please feel free to leave those as well!!

It's coming!!

June 1st is getting closer and closer!!  I am sticking to my food revolution-for 30 days we are going to cut out all processed food/white sugar in our home.  Now I realize that this is going to be hard.  The kids are used to eating packaged snacks (granola bars, crackers, and quite frankly cookies) and I am used to making easy items for breakfast (frozen waffles-even if they are labeled "multi-grain" I know they aren't healthy-and frozen pancakes).  This is going to take a lot of planning on my part, but I am determined to make this change for our family!!!

In lieu of the big change, starting May 1st (yes that is in 3 days) I am transitioning to "real food" breakfast items only.  I am going to hit the store on Monday in order to be ready on Tuesday to begin.  I have an awesome (and actually pretty easy) menu for the week that will give me some flexibility as I am also working every morning.

It's going to be a fun challenge but I know that it is going to be well worth it!!!!!

Babystep-taco seasoning

My ingredients
Mix it all together



Voila



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In the very near future (June, 1st to be exact), our family is going to take part in a food revolution-some are doing this voluntarily while others aren't really very happy about this venture. Our food revolution is going to be based on guidelines set up on the blog:
100daysofrealfood.com
and I would HIGHLY recommend you check it out if you have any interest in eating/living better.

To babystep my way towards cutting out packaged foods, I decided to use a recipe that I found on Pinterest (which was taken, I believe, from an original Rachel Ray find) which was very easy!! As you can see above the ingredients are simply chili pepper, cumin, garlic powder, and onion powder. The recipe directs that you take equal parts of each and mix them together (photo two). I took 1/3 cup of each spice and mixed them together in a bowl. After the mixture looked...well, mixed....I then put it in a mason jar and gave the jar a few good shakes.

I did do a little dry taste test and I am thinking that the chili pepper may be a bit too much-my kids do NOT like anything spicy. If it does end up being too much, no worries-I will just add a bit more of the other stuff to balance it all out.

My first babystep towards no packaged food with more than 5 ingredients listed is a wild success!!! HOORAY!!!!!


Update (4/27/12)
I actually used this seasoning for Taco Tuesday last week and I am happy to report that NO ONE even noticed that I used this mix!!!  It was a bit spicier so I think next time I will adjust the ingrediants a bit.  But the bottom line is that it worked!!  HOORAY!!!!

Easter 2012

Easter at the Story house was lovely this year. Peris and I served at the 8 a.m. service to start the day off right. We returned at 11:30 for church and it was very moving. Anytime I hear "How Great Thou Art" ,I know it is going to be a good day.

The theme for my day was recognition-seeing God in the big and the small. As I looked at our worn, little Easter baskets I was reminded that time is marching on-not only are the baskets older but so are the kids. My heart overflowed as I thought of Easter's past-bubbles, play-doh, sidewalk chalk. I thought of how Derek and I are much different parents today then we were in those days. How we have been blessed with the opportunity to start fresh-to be resurrected into better parents through tremendous grace. Our day was spent finding eggs full of candy, laughter, and a meal-but it was so much more. It was the recognition that every day we are given a fresh start. If we acknowledge or seek the grace that is afforded to us then we will find it. What a beautiful day.

Jr. Gamma Phi 2012

The circus has come and gone for the Story household!! This year four Story's were able to participate so we were busy watching!! Peris broke her elbow, so she was promoted to backstage manager-a job she did VERY WELL carrying out!! Below are just a few pictures that I took-what a wonderful opportunity our kids have to participate in something so cool!!!!

Spring Break-Day One

The Spotted Cow

To officially kick off Spring Break 2012, we decided to head over to Peoria for our annual food tour. We had a master plan to hit our local favorites for some seriously awesome junk food!!!
As we pulled into the Ice Cream Shack parking lot, we noticed that the sign said....closed!!! The Shack isn't even opened for the season until March 14th!! After some serious devastation (on my part that is-I had my heart set on a freight train!!!!!), we decided to press on to our next destination-Trefzger's Bakery. I had lemon tarts, thumbprint cookies, and danish on my brain!! As we slowed down to turn into the parking lot we noticed that the interior of the bakery looked awfully dark!!! Derek quickly read the hours of business which do not include Sunday and Monday-WHAT!?! Check that off.
What to do with a car full of disappointed kids and parents? We headed to The Spotted Cow for some yummy homemade ice cream-yes, they were open and no we were not disappointed!! I revisited those days of long ago and enjoyed a moo-nuer sundae!! This consists of turtle ice cream, a lot of hot fudge, whipped cream, chopped snickers candy bard, and chopped nuts-yes it was heaven!!!
Post ice cream we decided to introduce our kids to some culture and we headed down to the UFS (unclaimed freight) store where we found many treasures for cheap!! We actually only purchased a new garden flag and holder, but we could've gone crazy with all of the trinkets that were found!!
The weather is gorgeous so we are enjoying this day!!
What a great way to kick off a much needed break!!

Countdown

In exactly 7 hours we are officially on Spring Break!!! What does that mean to me? Exhale!! For the next 9 days our lives will have white space!! We will not be going at our typical speed which is comparable to the Millenium Falcon hurtling through space at light speed!! What I really love is that there is NO PLAN!! We are having a "stay-cation" which is lovely!! No packing, traveling (although we may take a little mini-excursion or two), or major schedules to follow. We will delight in sleeping in late, slow breakfasts, NO homework (whoot whoot), trips to the library, playing outside, making our garden plans, more sleeping in, and maybe hitting a bucket list item or two. Sigh. Sounds perfect to me!! Can't wait to post about how we spend our downtime!!!!!!