eating real food while traveling + a halfway-there update

Today marks day 50 of our 100 day challenge – halfway there!  Wow it’s going by fast!  I know I say this every time I do an update, but I am still just so amazed at how much easier this challenge has been than I expected.  And guess what, I’ve lost 10 pounds since we started our real food challenge!

The past two weeks both Michael and I have been traveling, so I thought I’d share a little bit about how we were able to stick to (for the most part) eating only real food.

First up was my week at church camp.  Fortunately I’ve been going to church camp with these same people for years and they are totally used to my weird ways :).  I’ve brought my own food with me many times in the past so I wasn’t too concerned about them thinking it was strange that I was eating different stuff than what they cooked for the kids.  Anyway, I brought the mini-fridge and microwave from my classroom and set them up out of the way in the mess hall.  Before I left for camp I wrote out a meal plan of sorts, and then I (with a lot of help from Michael) prepared my food in advance.  On Tuesday I had to come back to Bowling Green for a professional development, which worked out really well where the food situation was concerned because I was able to bring Sunday and Monday’s food with me on Sunday.  Then Tuesday I brought back the empty containers, washed them, and filled them with food for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  I wouldn’t have been able to bring all my food for the whole week on Sunday because my fridge just wasn’t big enough.  But this worked out nicely.

Some of the things I brought were:

• blueberry muffins and a hard-boiled eggs with milk for breakfast
• lots of fruit
• apples with peanut butter
• trail mix
• chicken quesadillas
• chicken noodle soup
• bean burritos

I was determined to stick to our real food challenge, and I was so proud of myself because during the whole week of camp I didn’t not eat a single thing that wasn’t considered real food.  In fact, I actually lost a little weight during that week (usually I gain a bunch and swell up like a balloon at camp so that was a pretty big accomplishment).

The week after I was at camp, Michael had to go to Chattanooga for a work trip.  He was able to get a suite with a little kitchenette for the week (fridge and stove) so he took some of his own food with him.  For lunch he had to eat what was served him at the conference, but he tried to make real food choices from what they offered.  However, he cooked his own breakfast and supper in the room.

Anyway, to make a long story longer, it is definitely possible to eat healthy while traveling.  Maybe not 100% of the time, but you can still do a pretty good job of staying on track with a little effort and prep work.  You can see more about eating healthy while traveling here (it’s not necessarily all real food, but it still gives you an idea)

Oh and a quick update on our no tv challenge – we I got a little off track.  First, Project Runway started last week.  That is my favorite show ever and so I have been watching that (although we built in two hours of tv a week that we just hadn’t chosen to use, so I don’t feel bad about watching it).  Then Michael went out of town, and as you know it is hard for me to be alone at night, so we decided that during that week we would make an exception and I could watch as much tv as I needed (it helps me to have it on in the background when I’m home alone).  That being said, I really didn’t watch as much while he was gone as I expected.  I think I watched one Project Runway episode and maybe two or three So You Think You Can Dance episodes.  And that was it for the whole week.  Finally, the Olympics started.  We aren’t huge sports fans, but we do like to watch the Olympics, so we’ve made another exception for the Olympics.

So are we still completely tv free?  No. But are we still watching significantly less tv than we were before this challenge started?  Absolutely!  So no regrets here.

I’m excited to see what the next 50 days of real food (and limited tv) bring!

honey whole-wheat sandwich bread (no bread machine needed)

Since starting our real food challenge, I’ve been trying to make as much of our food from scratch as possible.  I’ve made things like tortillas, biscuits, pizza sauce, pasta sauce, and salsa.  Most of the recipes I use have come from Lisa at 100 Days of Real Food.  I also wanted to try making our sandwich bread but Lisa’s recipe calls for a bread machine, which we don’t have.  I read through all the comments and found some advice on how to make this bread without a bread machine.  I tried it several times but each time it just wasn’t quite right.  On my third try I finally got it to turn out the way I wanted it!

Thanks to a sweet friend who read my post about my bread frustrations and offered me her bread machine, pretty soon I should be able to use Lisa’s bread machine recipe.  However, I know that many people don’t have a bread machine and might appreciate knowing how to make this bread without one.  The process is a little time consuming but not that difficult and totally worth it.  Here’s what has worked for me.

what you need: whole wheat flour, oil, yeast, honey, and salt

mix the flour, salt, oil, and honey

dissolve the yeast into warm water

add in the yeast+water mixture, as well as some more water

place dough in an oiled bowl

cover

let rise

punch it down

oil and flour a loaf pan

place dough in the pan

let it rise some more

bake it

enjoy your healthy, homemade bread!

Recipe (adapted from here)

Ingredients

• 3 and 1/2 cups whole wheat flour (I use King Arthur White Whole Wheat)
• 1/4 cup oil (I use olive oil)
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 packet or 2 1/2 tsp yeast
• approximately 1 – 1 and 1/4 cup warm water

Instructions

• Mix the flour, salt, oil, and honey together.  I mixed mine in my KitchenAid mixer using the dough hook, but you could definitely mix this by hand if you don’t have a stand mixer.
• Dissolve the yeast in 1/2 cup warm water.
• Add the yeast+water mixture to the flour mixture.
• Slowly add more warm water until the dough forms a ball and starts banging around in the bowl.  If you accidentally add too much water and the dough becomes wet, just add a little more flour until it’s a firmer consistency.  I usually end up using 3/4 cup or less of water.
• Put the ball of dough in a lightly oiled bowl (this keeps the dough from sticking as it rises).
• Cover the bowl and let rise for 1 hour.  I don’t know if keeping it in a dark, undisturbed spot makes any difference but I remember my mom doing that with bread when I was little so I did it to0, just in case.
• Oil and flour a bread pan.
• After the first hour is up, punch the dough down and place it in the bread pan.
• Cover and let rise for another 45 minutes.
• Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.
• After removing from the oven, let stand for 15 minutes.  Then remove from pan to finish cooling.

High Five for Friday

The beginning of the school year is drawing scarily close so I’ve been trying to make the most of my last few weeks of freedom.  This week has been full of trying to get things checked off my to do list.  It’s been a productive and fun week – here are some of the highlights.

1. We came to the end of our 30 day real food and no tv challenge this week (but decided to extend the challenge longer).  It’s been a great month and I am so so very happy that we gave this challenge a try!

2.  I got to check off another item from my 2012 bucket list this week – I made laundry detergent (using this tutorial).  I haven’t used it yet (we still have some store-bought stuff to use up) but once I have and feel like it’s working, I’ll post more about it.  I’m pretty exited about it – the original poster said hers lasted nine months and she does eight loads of laundry a week, we do less than that (about five) so I’m hoping ours will last a year.  FYI the supplies cost $20 so that’s $20 for a whole year of laundry detergent!  Wowsers.  I also tried my hand at making homemade cleaners – I made a batch of dawn+vinegar shower cleaner that everyone has been raving about on Pinterest (I’ll let you know how it works) and a batch of all-purpose cleaner for counters and such.  I can’t wait to see how all this stuff works out!

3. We tried canning for the first time.  We canned three quarts of tomatoes and we think they turned out right (obviously we won’t know until we eat them later, but the lids sealed like the instructions said).  It wasn’t as hard as I expected and we’re going to try to can more tomatoes before the summer is over.  We’ve also put up quite a bit of corn – trying to get enough stored up that we can eat real foods all year long!

4. I spent yesterday afternoon shopping at Opry Mills with my BFF since 2nd grade, Bethany.  Yet another perk of moving to BG is being just an hour from Nashville so that we get to see each other much more!  We got a ton of great deals and some super cute stuff.  We also found this little gem…

That’s right, a denim romper with a collar (that my hair is hiding, sorry) and sleeves with shoulder cut-outs brought to you by the usually-hip store Forever 21.  It’s like a baby onsie without the snaps.  Speaking of, how on earth are you supposed to go to the bathroom while wearing this?

5. I’m headed off to camp again on Sunday and I’m super excited!  What’s that you say?  Oh yes, you’re right, I did in fact just go to camp a few weeks ago.  I am so blessed to get to attend camp twice this summer – once with our church here in Bowling Green and then once with my family’s church.  Church camp is just about the best thing of the summer.

Unfortunately I started feeling not so great yesterday (sore throat, headache, ears hurting) so I’ll be hitting the Zicam to try to get to feeling better before Sunday rolls around.

Linking up with Lauren

30 day real food and no tv challenge – the results

Monday marked day 30 of our real food challenge and no tv challenge.  Those 30 days passed so quickly!  We originally agreed to give it a try for 30 days (rather than a full 100 day challenge) and then re-evaluate at the end.  So here we are at the end, and it’s time to re-evalute.

But first, here are a few things that we ate during week 4 that I wanted to share with you (if you want to get some other meal ideas, check out weeks 1, 2, and 3).

tomato basil pasta – a little complicated and time consuming to make, but totally yummy and worth it

whole wheat blueberry muffins – oh my, these are yum yum yum (and easy, too!)

an afternoon snack: Ak Mak crackers with cream cheese, a peach, and some blackberries

lemon poppyseed pancakes – I adapted the recipe by leaving out the sugar and using whole milk instead of buttermilk (because I didn’t have any buttermilk) and they turned out great served with a little pure maple syrup

Thanks to all the wonderful produce available this time of year, we’ve been eating lots of veggie plates recently.  This meal consisted of rosemary potato wedges, squash and zucchini, green beans, tomato, and watermelon.

Alrighty, now on to results.

First, during the past 30 days I have not once craved chocolate, or sugar of any kind for that matter.  That is huge for me!  In fact, I haven’t really longed for anything non-real at all.

We stuck to eating all real food almost 100%.  We had dinner with friends one night and they so thoughtfully fixed us a real food meal (salad, salmon, quinoa, squash, zucchini, and bread) so that we were able to stick to our challenge.  I also ate out once at Cheddars and tried to make good choices (grilled salmon, rice, green beans, and broccoli).  But like we said in our original rules, friends and family first – although we try to make healthy choices, we will not be so strict about sticking to the rules that we can’t eat with our family and friends.

I’ve noticed that I don’t have to eat as often.  Since I’m filling my body with good, natural nutrients it doesn’t feel deprived and beg for more every few hours.  I used to snack all day long, but since starting this challenge I’ve been able to go more hours without eating.  Very rarely do I need a morning snack anymore and I used to always eat one.  After school starts back in two weeks that may change since I will be getting up earlier, eating breakfast earlier, and thus having to wait a longer time until lunch.  But it may not.

Along those lines, I’ve been trying to work really hard to 1) stop eating when I’m full rather than when my plate is empty and 2) eat only when I’m hungry (not because I’m bored).  I’m getting better but still not perfect.  I find that I get full quicker now and don’t have to eat as much food as I used to.

The good news: from day 1 to day 30 I lost 7 pounds.  I don’t know how much of that was water weight (from starting right after church camp) and how much was actual fat, but some is better than none, right?

The bad news: I went to the doctor yesterday to get a physical for my new job and my blood work showed that I have high cholesterol.  Higher than the first time we realized this was a problem, in fact.  Since I didn’t have my cholesterol tested before starting the 30 day challenge, I don’t know if eating this way has elevated or lowered it, I just know that it is high.  Obviously I’m disappointed.  At this time, my doctor isn’t too concerned but he wants me to lose 25 pounds then come back and get tested again.

So that’s pretty much the low-down.

We both loved the real foods challenge.  We have decided to do the full 100 day challenge, which will end on September 17.  However, we are really making this a lifestyle and will not quit eating this way as soon as September 17 rolls around.  So we will not revert back to our old eating habits then, but we might be a bit more relaxed with our food choices.

There aren’t really any results that go along with the no tv challenge, but I can say that I really haven’t missed watching tv at all.  We’ve been so busy with VBS, house hunting, and camp that there hasn’t really been time for tv.  I’ve also read a lot more books than I would have if we were watching tv every night.

Even though we allowed two hours of tv a week, we didn’t use a single bit of it.  Other than the tv being on while I was babysitting on day (and I wasn’t really watching it), neither of us have watched any tv in the past month!  I’m floored that I was able to do that!

We decided to continue our no tv challenge for 100 days along with our real food challenge, which means no tv until September 17.  Then after that (which will be right around the time all the fall shows crank up again) we are going to start watching some of our shows again, but we’re going to cut back a lot on what we used to watch.

 So there you have it!  I wasn’t sure we’d like eating non-processed, all organic and/or local food and not watching tv, but in fact we love it!  You never know until you try :).

real food challenge week 3

We’re three weeks into our real food challenge!  This whole thing has gone much easier and quicker than I expected, and we are both so pleased.  Here are some of the things we’ve eaten this week:

After we ate up all our refried beans from last week, we then turned our extra tortillas and the chicken we had left from our first whole chicken cooking experience into chicken quesadillas, topped with our homemade salsa.  So yummy!

Some meals we just have veggie plates like this lunch one day: boiled okra, cucumbers with homemade ranch dip, roasted rosemary potatoes, green beans, and tomatoes

hardboiled eggs are a great snack

We decided to buy another chicken at the Farmer’s Market this week, but rather than cooking it on the stove like we did with our last one, we cooked it in the crock pot (using this recipe).  It was incredible!  It was really easy (other than the touching the raw chicken part…thankfully Michael did that part for me).  Once you put the spices on it then you just let it cook in the crock pot and after about four hours it will literally just fall right off the bone.  And it was wonderfully delicious!

We ate the chicken with corn, squash, and zucchini

Fresh watermelon – finally!  I’ve been looking at the Farmer’s Market every week and they finally had some this week.  It was tasty and sweet.

Speaking of the Farmer’s Market, Michael suggested that I show you what all we bought yesterday so you can get an idea of what our grocery shopping looks like each week.  Most Saturdays we go to the Farmer’s Market, Jackon’s Orchard, and then to Kroger to get whatever we couldn’t find at the first two places.

Left (Kroger): yogurt, bananas, peanut butter, mixed greens, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, and pasta

Middle (Jackson’s Orchard): watermelon, apples, peaches, blueberries, and okra

Right (Farmer’s Market): corn, banana peppers, cheddar cheese, blackberries, watermelon, tomatoes, squash, potatoes, (not pictured: whole chicken)

also not pictured: milk (from a local dairy, purchased at the gas station by our apartment)

 I also usually go to the Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays to get anything we forgot, couldn’t find on Saturday, or have run out of since Saturday.  We also usually have to make at least one other Kroger trip during the week (mostly for bananas – we go through them like crazy!)

After we got home from all our grocery shopping yesterday, we went ahead and cooked a bunch of stuff for the upcoming week.

Michael made another batch of whole wheat biscuits

I tried out a new recipe: whole wheat blueberry muffins.  We loved them!  They are so so good!

I made another loaf of sandwich bread – third time’s a charm because this loaf turned out so much better than my first two attempts!

One of the biggest problems I’ve had since we started this challenge is keeping our bread fresh.  We’ve had to throw away sandwich bread, zucchini muffins, and biscuits due to mold.  It is so frustrating after I spend a good chunk of time cooking all this break to have to throw it away.  I hadn’t been keeping it in the fridge because we have a very small fridge and it was stuffed to the brim with other things that had to be refrigerated, so I just left the bread out and hopped for the best.  This week, I finagled some things around to make sure everything we baked yesterday could go in the fridge.  I’m crossing my fingers that we won’t have to throw away any bread this week!

If you want to see what other things we’ve been eating, check out week 1 and week 2.  Want to know what this whole crazy thing is about?  Look here for the scoop.

real food challenge week 2

After today we will be halfway through our 30 day challenge!  It’s going by so fast!  Week 2 was just as good or better than week 1.  After I posted about last week’s meals, ‘Becca commented:

Thanks for sharing! It is so much easier to imagine what a diet is like when you see several days’ real meals–and, unlike a lot of “real food” blogging I’ve seen, you are eating mostly simple things that are familiar to most people, instead of fermented liver with homemade buckwheat vinegar or whatever. Congratulations on escaping the clutches of TV!

Her comment made me laugh because I totally know what she’s talking about – usually people who post real food recipes use ingredients that are so foreign to me.  As soon as I see ingredients I don’t recognize, I immediately dismiss that recipe and move on.  So I hope that seeing what we are eating on our real food challenge (hopefully not too much weird crazy stuff) will give you some ideas that don’t seem so daunting.

So here are some of the things we’ve been eating this week (I’ve provided links to all recipes used…unless there wasn’t a recipe used):

One thing that I forgot to take a picture of was the chicken we cooked.  My mom almost always cooked whole chickens when I was growing up (as opposed to the boneless, skinless chicken breast that I usually use) and I’d helped her de-bone them a lot, but I’d never actually cooked on myself.  So we bought a whole chicken from the farmer’s market last weekend, cooked it in my largest pot (and it still barely fit!), then de-boned it.  It was actually much easier than I expected (although Michael did the hard part of touching the raw chicken, checking the cavity to see if anything needed to be removed, and putting it in the pot) and we got a ton of chicken.

We used some of the chicken to make Greek pitas (which I sadly failed to take any pictures of).  They were super easy; just chicken, whole wheat pitas, shredded mozzarella, tomatoes, cucumbers, and tzatziki sauce.

homemade honey whole wheat bread

Michael used this bread and some of the chicken we cooked for sandwiches some days.

This is the only recipe I’ve made that I still haven’t gotten right yet.  Lisa’s recipe calls for a bread machine, which we don’t have, so I’ve been adapting it to try to cook it in the oven.  However, it keeps not getting cooked all the way through.  Each time I make it I’ve been adding 5 more minutes and I guess I’ll just keep doing that until I get it right (unless one of you dear readers wants to make my life easier and send me a bread machine…).  It’s still edible, just a little doughy.

kale chips – these are my new obsession!  They are super easy to make and so delicious!  I’ve been eating them with my lunches just about every day this week.  Yum yum yum.

There was tons of fresh fruit at the fame’s market and at Jackson’s Orchard last weekend, so I had a delicious bowl of fruit (peaches, blackberries, blueberries, and strawberries) nearly every day for an afternoon snack.

Another snack we’ve been enjoying is zucchini bread muffins (apparently I forgot to take a picture of them!)

I know I showed you pizza last week, and I’m trying not to repeat even if we ate the same things this week, but I just had to show you these pizzas we made.  Michael’s brother came and ate with us one night so instead of making one pizza and splitting it like we usually do, I divided the dough into thirds and we each had our own little pizza.  I used my whole wheat pizza dough recipe, homemade pizza sauce (I used this recipe as a guide but added a bunch of stuff to it, I plan to do a tutorial soon so you can have the full recipe), and we shredded mozzarella cheese.  Then we each picked our own toppings: Michael had chicken and green pepper (his is on the left in the cast iron skillet), I had green pepper, banana pepper, and onion, and Joe Donald topped his with fresh basil from our garden.

They were fantastic (except that the basil got a little overcooked…now I know to put it under the cheese instead of on top).  I’m getting hungry just thinking about them!

Just about every day we make smoothies.  We usually make them a few hours after supper for our “dessert”, although they are also a good breakfast on the go or afternoon snack.  Michael usually puts a ton of different fruits in his; my smoothie of choice is peanut butter + banana + honey.

Michael still had bacon egg biscuits for breakfast most days, and I did some of the time, but I also wanted to try something else so a few days I had oatmeal (rolled oats, whole milk, honey, vanilla, coconut, and raisins).  Even Michael thought it smelled good (and he can’t stand oatmeal!).

This is possibly what I’m most proud of so far on our real food journey: homemade whole wheat tortillas

They weren’t as hard to make as I expected and they are delicious!

 homemade salsa (super easy and tastes like Chili’s salsa)

and refried beans in the crockpot (also so easy to make)

tortillas + refried beans + salsa + sour cream = possible my favorite meal so far

delicious!

And finally, we had Michael’s parents over last night for a belated Father’s Day celebration.  Michael grilled salmon with a honey glaze that he concocted (it was incredible!).  We also had grilled corn, salad with red wine vinaigrette dressing, squash and zucchini, and green beans.  Quite the feast!

So in summary, this challenge is going great!  We’re eating tons of yummy food and I don’t feel deprived at all.  I will say that I spend much more time in the kitchen cooking and washing dishes than I did before, but it’s not as bad as I expected and I think it’s totally worth it.  Also, in case you are wondering about cost, I haven’t kept super detailed records or anything, but just from what I’ve estimated, we aren’t spending any more now per week than we did before we started this.  So don’t let cost deter you.

Oh yes, and other then a few minutes of Disney channel that was on while I was babysitting last week, we haven’t watched any tv in the past 15 days.  We haven’t chosen to use our “allotted” two hours each week.  And guess what?  I don’t even miss it!  Who woulda thunk it?

real food challenge week 1

Our first week of our real food challenge is complete, and I am thrilled with how it has gone.  We’ve had plenty of delicious food to eat and surprisingly I haven’t craved sugar once.  Michael had headaches the first couple of days going without coke but he seems to be over that now.

In case any of you out there are thinking about doing a real food challenge, or just want to try to eat a bit healthier, I’ve made a list of some of the foods we’ve eaten for inspiration (apologies in advance for the pictures – 1) they were taken with my cell phone and I just can’t seem to take a good cell phone picture and 2) we usually eat off red plates, which I’ve come to notice are not the most appealing color for food to be on…but at least you can still get an idea – I’ll try to take pictures with my real camera next week).

Our cheese, milk, meat, eggs, maple syrup, all of the veggies, and some of the fruit were all purchased locally (farmer’s market, Jackson’s orchard, Chaney’s milk, etc.).  A few things did come from Kroger – mostly organic (avocados, spring mix, oranges, yogurt, butter, mozzarella, bacon).

whole wheat biscuits, bacon, and eggs

burger on a whole wheat pita with sliced tomato and avocado, grilled corn on the cob, and butter beans

pan fried potatoes with leftover crumbled up hamburger, tomato slices, and a peach

leftover potatoes and ground beef, corn on the cob, tomato slices, cucumbers with homemade ranch dip, and an orange

pizza: whole wheat crust and homemade tomato sauce, topped with mozzarella cheese, onion, banana peppers, and green peppers; spring mix salad with homemade red wine vinaigrette

toasted whole wheat pita pocket with cheese, avocado, cucumbers with homemade ranch, tomato slices

mashed potatoes with fresh chives, zucchini and squash, a peach, spring mix salad with homemade red wine vinaigrette

Some other things we’ve eat that I don’t have pictures of are:

• homemade banana bread (delicious with just a little peanut butter smeared on it!)
• smoothies (peanut butter + banana or banana + various fruits, usually with some greens thrown in)
• trail mix (I just mixed peanuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, and raisins together)
• apples with almond butter or peanut butter
• whole wheat blueberry waffles with pure maple syrup

So anyway, that’s just a glimpse into our first work.  Like I said before, so far so good.  Now it’s time to go whip up some other yummy things for next week!

(P.S. our first week of our no tv challenge also went well – we actually chose not to use our allotted two hours of tv this week in order to read.  I haven’t really missed it, I’ve just listened to audiobooks while I work around the house rather than watch tv like usual)

a challenge… {Works for Me Wednesday}

Sunday Michael and I started two 30 day challenges.  We’d been talking about and planning for these challenges for a while now, but decided to wait until after I got back from camp to implement them.  They are…

1. 30 days of real food challenge

Sometime during my Internet wandering (probably while on Pinterest) I came across this 100 Days of Real Food blog.  This family (mom, dad, and two young girls) decided to challenge themselves to eat only real foods for 100 days and they blogged about it as they went.  Then after that challenge was successfully completed they did another challenge to show how to eat 100 days of real food on a budget ($125 per week – the same amount that a family of four on food stamps would receive).  Lisa, the mom and writer of the blog, has also created resources for if your family wants to try a real food challenge for 10 days, or gradually work up to eating all real foods over the course of several (10, I think) weeks as well as many, many real food recipes.

So as I was reading I just kept clicking on post after post to read more and more about this challenge.  I was so intrigued.  Although I’ve eaten fairly healthy since starting South Beach over 5 years ago, I still ate tons and tons of processed food.  Everything Lisa said just made sense about cutting out processed food and making more things from scratch, plus it seemed fairly easy.  I was all geared up to start but I wasn’t sure if Michael would be on board.  I approached him with the idea and I was pleasantly surprised that he was totally willing to do this with me.

Rather than commit to a 100 day challenge, we decided to just start with a 30 day challenge.  We figure we can definitely last a month, but hope that this will extend onward indefinitely as a lifestyle change.  While we were in Chicago we both read Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto – a book recommended by Lisa from 100 Days, which talks about the shift to highly processed food over the years, how different our Western diet is compared to the rest of the world, and how coincidentally those of us who eat a Western diet tend to be much unhealthier.  Plus it has some conspiracy stuff in there and we love a good conspiracy theory!  It was a fascinating read and we were both even more excited to start this challenge after reading the book!

Over the next few weeks we started cleaning out the pantry, getting rid of “no-no” foods, making meal plans and grocery lists, and shopping for non-perishables.  On Saturday after I got home from camp we went grocery shopping and then started our challenge off with a bang Sunday morning.  Fortunately, we happened to pick the perfect time to start this challenge – the Farmer’s Market is in full swing so we have easy access to tons of local produce, plus I’m not working right now so I have extra time to spend cooking for us.

So what exactly does a real food challenge look like?  Lisa does a wonderful job explaining all about how to eat real food, so I’m going to direct you there to check out more, but basically we are eating fruits, veggies, meat, dairy, seafood, whole wheat or whole grain breads and pastas, and nuts.  As much of it as we can we try to get local (from the Farmer’s Market, local dairy, local farms, etc.), and if not local then organic.  If we do buy something that is pre-packaged than we aim for it to have less than five ingredients.  The only sweeteners we are using are honey and pure maple syrup.

It sounds crazy, but we’re a little crazy so I guess that works for us.  Fortunately we were eating pretty healthy before this challenge so this isn’t a huge leap for us.  For Michael, the biggest challenges have been and will be cutting out the cokes and eating more fruits and veggies.  For me the biggest challenges have been/will be cutting out the sugar and not eating so many processed snack-y “diet” foods.

We did make a few exceptions.  For one, Michael travels a lot with work and often eats lunch on the road.  Those times he will just pick the best option he can find among the choices given.  We’re also going with a phrase that I heard from Mandy at Biblical Homemaking (who did a 40 day original food diet – similar to what we are doing, but not exactly the same): friends and family first.  That means that although we are going to try to stick to this way of eating, we are also not going to let it alienate us from our family/friends and if that means compromising our real food rules, so be it (although we will work to stick to our plan as much as possible).

Like I said, we started Sunday so we’re three days in and so far, everything is going smoothly.  Surprisingly, I haven’t craved sugar once.  Michael had headaches from not having coke on Sunday or Monday, but today he started feeling better.  Some of the meals we’ve eaten have been things that we ate before, just tweaked to be more real.  Other things have been totally new recipes.  All have been delicious so far.  I am so so excited about this!  I highly recommend you check out 100 Days of Real Food and think about trying your own 10 day, 30 day, or even 100 day challenge!

I promise to update periodically and let you know how things are going, as well as share recipes and meal plans.

and then our second challenge…

2. 30 days of no tv

I brought up the real food challenge, but Michael was the one who suggested this one.

For a family with no tv we sure do watch a ton.

(sidebar: I can’t remember if I’ve told you guys that before – when we first got married, Michael had a dinosaur of a tv  It needed a converter box in order to work and we didn’t want to pay for one when we knew the tv probably wouldn’t last long anyway since it was so old.  We also had very little space in our teensy apartment and we had to choose between the tv or a chair.  We chose the chair and kicked our tv to the curb.  Over the years we’ve discussed buying a new one but then have always found something else we’d rather spend our money on.  So three years later we still have no tv.  However, we watch lots of tv on my laptop via Hulu and dvds of tv shows.  But it always blows people’s minds, especially my students, when we say we don’t own a tv).

And I do mean a ton.  Basically every night we were doing nothing but watching tv, whether it was current shows on Hulu or old shows on dvd or Amazon.

When Michael suggested this I knew it would be good for us, but I was a little resistant.  This challenge is definitely harder for me because I’m home all day and I like to have the tv on in the background while I clean, cook, scrapbook, etc.  But I just decided that I would either learn to like the silence or listen to books on iPod (thankfully our library has tons to check out).

Just like with our real food challenge, we happened to pick a good time to do the no-tv challenge because all our shows have ended for the season and there aren’t any that we are just super hung up during the summer, so that makes it easier.  I’m most interested to see how much, if any, tv we go back to after this is over (let’s be honest, we’ll probably go back to at least some…I do love my Project Runway!).

And just like our real food challenge, we have built in exceptions – we decided we could watch up to two hours of tv per week…that way we can see a movie for date night if we so choose.

So there you have it.  No tv and eating all natural foods (I’m starting to sound like a crunchy hippie…I don’t know whether to cry or laugh…)

Of course I’ll keep you updated, but feel free to ask any questions you may have.  I’ve summed up a ton of reading, researching, and planning into one short post so I may have completely left things out.

(Hopefully) eating real food and not watching tv will work for us!

Liking up to Works for Me Wednesday.