Our Organic Revolution, and a New Diet Experiment

Yesterday's dessert was an organic grapefruit that came from Happy Box. Never before had I tasted such a delicious grapefruit - sweet, soft, so juicy it ran all over my clothes. "This is the way food used to be", I thought. "It's a tragedy everyone can't have one of these, they would fall in love with grapefruit all over again."

Personally, this organic journey started as a means of being socially and environmentally responsible. The chemicals that farmers are using in our soils are slowly killing us. The best and fastest way to stop this is to vote with your dollars. So that's what we did.

Now this journey is growing into more. The food really does taste better! It's more vibrant and full of nutrients. The eggs, those beautiful deep yellow yolks. The milk. Oh, the fruits and veggies. You eat them and you feel as if you're bursting with life.

To go back to pale, insipid grocery store findings would be an insult to our bodies. As long as we have the money to keep this up, that will never happen again.

So I'm trying something new, weight-loss wise. For the last week, the amount of processed foods this family has eaten has dropped waaay down. We have an "alternate" schedule, so we don't often get the chance to do family dinners. But we're almost always together for breakfast, so we have a cooked, sit-down meal together first thing in the morning. My typical breakfast is a 1/4 cup of Bob's Red Mill muesli mixed with 3/4 cups homemade, full-fat yogurt. Add a tsp of pure coconut oil and a tsp of ground flaxseed. Then I take some nibbles of what the boys are eating (oat flour pancakes, eggs, labne, zatar, olives) and round it out with a piece of fruit.
Lunch is usually salad from Happy Box with some homemade Asian dressing (made in my new Pampered Chef Measure, Mix, and Pour - oh how I love thee!) and some wild caught salmon or chicken breast of questionable origin (GFS) with half an avocado and a slice of bread with butter. Dinner? Homemade fried rice, or minestrone, or some other leftover. And then usually there's a snack at night, either popcorn with evoo or a slab of fresh coconut and half an ounce of dark chocolate.

Now here's the kicker. I've lost weight. About 6 lbs in the last 10 days. And I'm not hungry. And I have a boatload of energy. This confounds Yasar - he doesn't see how it's possible. But it's absolutely true. Despite the high fat diet, the pounds are coming off.

True story: at the store the other say, I had one very dry turkey burger to choke down. Thinking it could use a little help, I dunked it in some of the BBQ sauce on the cut table. After finishing the meat, it was like my appetite woke up and I was instantly ravenous, looking for things to shove in my mouth. I will tell you the list of ingredients on the sauce container is long, and has lots of -ose endings. Take from that what you will.

I haven't come to any raw conclusions about this except that our bodies weren't designed to eat all the processed foods on the market today. Going back to unprocessed foods is working for me. I don't feel deprived - quite the opposite. And last night I took a 4-mile walk with my kid.

I feel like I'm getting my life back.

Miami River Foods Project Beta Box 2.1

MRFP Beta Box 2.1 In Da Howse! (my house, LOL!)
Sourdough bread with olives? Oh, baby....
Cheese, butter, and eggs.
My one little green egg (I'm saving it for Andrew).
Dry goodies - brown lentils, black beans, white basmati rice, and quinoa. All in green compostible bags.
Kamut? This is going to be something new for us.
Hopefully that's enough t.p. to get us through the month. It's not double-roll.
And my dinner tonight. The menfolk are in Columbus, so I got to sit down with some of that amazing colby cheese, a slab of sourdough bread with my spreadable butter (equal parts softened butter and evoo mixed together), a couple medjool dates from the Middle Eastern store (which are amazing, mushy and sweet - YUM!), a glass of zinfandel (thanks Shari!), and a well-loved book.

I am thankful. :)

The Great Raw Milk Debate

Clearly I read too much.

So many different ideas and opinions can be found in your local library!

I'm smack in the middle of reading Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck. Some very interesting facts in there, about how high cholesterol is a fairly recent malady, and our ancestors didn't really deal with heart disease and cancer. Her main philosophy is that "industrial food" is slowly killing us.

I'm down with that.

So, we're already eating way more organic than we did, and I expect to wean out the rest of the processed foods over time (I'm way too cheap to throw away food!). I drive out into the country and buy our milk and eggs from an old order Amish farm, which almost certainly doesn't use growth hormones or antibiotics on their cows. The milk is very lightly processed, still having that beautiful cream line in it. Look at that and tell me you don't want some!

Yes, this is better than the white stuff they try to pass off as milk in the dairy aisle of the grocery store. But it's not raw.

Raw is what our forefathers drank every summer and fall. Then they supplemented their winter calcium needs with preserved milk. Cheese.

There was no low fat or skim milk. Our bodies needed (and still need) the fats and proteins and bacteria found in milk.

But wow, finding raw milk, not so easy. I contacted a local farmer about purchasing raw milk, and was told you have to be a shareholder (called a herdshare) in the cow. So you pay a monthly maintenance fee to feed/house/medicate/etc. the cow, and in return you get a share of the profits. It's expensive, too. $75 one-time contract fee, $36 monthly upkeep fee. All for a gallon of milk a week. Yowza...

I desperately want the benefits of raw milk. Planck even mentions in her book that it can help with asthma and allergies, both of which I'm really suffering with right now. But I can't justify it at that expense.

So we'll keep trekking out to the country (which I love) for our milk. We'll keep shaking up that gallon jug so we distribute the cream into the milk. And we'll hope that someday we'll be able to afford to take on a herdshare. Or to buy our own mini-farm and have a family cow.

If you're gonna dream, dream BIG!

Happy Box = Happy Boy!

The Locavore Box:
Beautiful heads of lettuce, complete with a bug! I think this is Romaine. Andrew thinks it's delicious.
These giant onion tops will make Yasar a happy man.
Spinach heads and kale.
My kid chomping into some fresh kale. He said, and I quote, "it tastes like candy!" Gives me a warm & fuzzy feelin'. :)

Shifting Towards Organic

Not so long ago, my only focus at the grocery store was that final total I had to hand over to the cashier. What a rush, to get a cart full of all kinds of canned/frozen/prepackaged foods, hand over a fistful of coupons and tally up the loss leaders, and walk out spending a pittance. I never really gave the actual cost of these kinds of foods a thought.

Like long-term. High fructose corn syrup (or any corn syrups, for that matter) and their relationship with diabetes and obesity.

Antibiotics in dairy and their connection with resistant super-bugs, like MRSA, C. diff, and the newest baddie, VRE. Do you think it's a coincidence?

What about the ethical treatment of animals argument? I'm not quite ready for any paint-throwing, but it's worth it to me to spend $2.25 a dozen on eggs I buy from a farmer, especially since I can see his chickens scratching and pecking in their roomy coop. Reading how chickens that give us grocery store eggs are forced to live makes me ill.

So this week we've started taking some steps towards organic.

1.) We're joining with other like-minded locals and forming a CSA, the Miami River Foods Project. Last Sunday evening they held a meeting at a local coffeehouse and we discussed what we can do to get off the ground. I love that we're rewarding local farmers for doing things the right way - local, sustainable, ethical. I love that my cheese won't have rBGH. My fruits won't be imported from California. That I'm playing a role in the upkeep of my local community while feeding myself and my family healthy foods.

2.) We've also signed up for the Happy Box, a produce CSA out of Fulton Farms. I'm really excited to see what's brought to our door in the Locavore box - believe it or not, there was some produce on the list that this "weekend foodie" didn't recognize, like tat soi. $20 a week for 10-15 lbs of local, fresh, organic produce? That doesn't sound so spendthrift, does it?

3.) And tomorrow's project, making a garbage can compost bin. I'm really excited about this! Every year Yasar grows the most delicious, beautiful tomatoes...using Miracle Grow. We've got to be able to do something comparable using scraps from our kitchen instead of chemicals.

One thing I find myself pondering lately is how "frugal" and "eco-friendly" often dovetail with each other.

So that's what's going on in our home this last week. We're switching gears from "cheap" to "organic". It's a process, to be sure, and we don't expect it to happen all at once. But once you've been informed, it's hard to look at that grocery cart full of processed foods without forking the sign of the Evil Eye at it!

Something I wanted to add quick - I've just received membership to the National Consumer Panel and brought my scanner home yesterday. I'd originally applied to Homescan for the cool prizes, but now, after watching the DVD and really understanding how it works, it's more important to have my voice heard - the voice of someone not spending money on chemicals, additives, and antibiotics. It's an opportunity to let food manufacturers know that quality is important, despite the additional costs involved. Yes, I'm forfeiting my privacy. But to me, it seems to be worth it.