Guest Post Week Round-Up!

A big thank you to the wonderful bloggers who offered up their time (and their freezers, photos and families for the world to inspect)!  I know I enjoyed taking a peek into how we each manage food when food just takes so much time, so much effort, so much thought and, often, so much explanation.

Although this week's guest postings had to get dropped down to four, I have great hopes of trying this again sometime!  It was a first for me, and I liked it.

Guest Post Week: This crazy thing called food.

(My name is Morgan Wilson. I am wife to Dan and mother to sweet little Paul who will be two in August.) Note ~ Keep up with Morgan on her blog:  http://www.mmdwilson.blogspot.com/
 

My usual breakfast - a whole grain (quinoa, brown rice, whole wheat couscous), avocado, tomato, olive oil and seasoning. Super delicious and very filling!



Steam-fried veggies with spelt pancakes (we have these pancakes ALL the time - delish!

 

 I try and have a nice big salad every day



Yummy chocolate chip cookies!

 

Burgundy Bourguignon (by Gardein) with steam-fried veggies

  

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups - these went fast!

I am a vegan. This means I do not eat any animals or animal by-products (including fish and eggs.) I had contemplated it for a couple of years but didn't have the guts to make the change until now. It hasn't been a super easy transition but it has been well worth it.

I'll give you a little bit of a back story as to why I chose to go vegan. I have struggled with my weight since I was about 9 years old. It's a battle I have yet to win. I cannot tell you how many times I have tried and tried to lose it but to no avail. About 7 years ago I followed the South Beach diet and lost a bunch of weight and kept it off for a bit. Then I met my husband, got married and the weight found its way back on. While I was pregnant I actually lost weight and felt pretty good but after Paul arrived I fell back into my old habits, only worse. I was eating a lot of junk. I like junk food - I will admit that honestly. I love chips and cheese and nachos and chicken strips and everything in between. Chocolate and candy just throw me over the edge! I started eating those things more on a daily basis. Not only was I gaining weight but I was also feeling extremely tired, unmotivated, and my body inside just felt like it was going to give up on me. I knew I needed a change. I read Alicia Silverstone's "The Kind Life" and I felt so encouraged and passionate about it that I decided that it was the change I needed. I was ready to move past the "in moderation" thing and "cutting back on certain foods" diet. I needed to change my entire lifestyle and outlook on food. I have not regretted my decision for one single moment. Within a couple of days I had so much energy I didn't know what to do with it! I've also already lost close to 15 pounds and I haven't even incorporated exercise yet! I still have to be careful when it comes to fried foods (chips, fries, etc.) and carbs. I also have to watch my portion sizes. I feel like I am on the right track, though. I am finally working my way towards victory!

I mentioned earlier that it hasn't been a super easy transition. The biggest reason for that would be the effect on my family. My husband does not follow a vegan diet at all, nor does he want to. My son sits in between. I am strict with myself and even though I don't always like doing it I will feed my son foods with animal by-products in them. I am a working mom (full time) and sometimes I just go with what’s easiest for him. I try to make an effort because I have been lucky to have a child who is not very picky at all about food. The other night Paul ate two helpings of vegetable curry and he wolfs down tomatoes and red pepper like they're going to cease to exist! I feel like Paul's body and heart are so fresh and new so I don't want to taint them with processed junk. As with so many moms out there, though, it's trying to find the balance of time and perfection. I want to be that mom who only feeds her son all organic foods, everything homemade and a completely vegan diet. I want to be a granola mom! Unfortunately it isn't that easy for me. I work outside my home and that in itself makes it much harder to plan that kind of a diet for my son. My husband is home more often with him so it's easier for him to feed him what's available and what he is comfortable making. Now, I have only been following a vegan diet for about 6 weeks now. I am still finding my way and learning what I like and don't like. It takes a lot of preparation and time. I am trying new recipes and I would love to make up batches of food to keep on hand for my son. I know this would make it easier for my husband and healthier for my son.

One of the biggest impacts has been our grocery bill. It's not really more expensive but when you have a husband who does not follow the same lifestyle there is A LOT of compromising. The first couple weeks were hard trying to figure out who gets how much money. We have settled on what I think is a decent weekly budget split: $50 for him, $50 for me and $25 for our son. It's a little harder for me because I have to get fresh veggies every couple of days but I try and stay within my budget.

Other than those couple of things it hasn't had as huge of an impact on the family as you might think. My husband is learning to fend for himself and Paul is getting to taste some delicious healthy foods that otherwise he might not get a chance to. The biggest balance to keep is happiness in the home and we have definitely found that. I am a happier, more energetic person and I feel like that has trickled down into the happiness of my husband and son. I like watching them learn and grow as people. Things have shifted in how things work in our home but there is no lack of support nor is there any judgement. I feel like those are things that you hope to find in any home, vegan or not!

I think my advice if you ever think of making a drastic change like going vegan is just go for it! Your family will learn to adjust and everything will still carry on as normal. You still have to find that balance (constant work) like in every other family; you're just taking a different route there!

(Morgan very graciously shared some of her favourite vegan websites as well as a favourite recipe)

I thought I would also give you some links to blogs and recipes that I like!

BLOGS:

http://vegweb.com/index.php
http://vivelevegan.blogspot.com/
http://countercuisine.blogspot.com/ (this is mainly raw foods)
http://vegandad.blogspot.com/

RECIPES:

Pancakes: http://www.food.com/recipe/5-minute-vegan-pancakes-132263
Chocolate Chips Cookies: http://www.pagehalffull.com/eatenup/2011/05/05/vegan-chocolate-chip-cookies/

VEGAN RANCH DRESSING

Ingredients:
1 cup vegan mayonnaise
1 cup plain soy milk
1 tablespoon white vinegar
2 tablespoons finely chopped green onions
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
2 teaspoon minced parsley
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1/4 teaspoon paprika
1/8 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
Directions:
Place all ingredients in a jar with a tight-fitting lid. Shake well to blend. Makes 2 cups.
Note: Best if chilled several hours or overnight.



Guest Post Week: This crazy thing called food!

(My name is Deborah and I am married to Stefan and we have a beautiful 1 year daughter named Capri. We are Bible College graduates with a heart for ministry. We plan on letting Capri experience the world by whatever means we can. We cloth diaper, baby wear, breastfeed and co-sleep [at times]. )
Note~you can read about Deborah's parenting adventures at www.deborahruth42.wordpress.com

When my daughter Capri was born I had the great idea that I would make all my own baby food. It is way cheaper and more healthy so why not?! As I started doing more research I found an interesting concept in feeding your baby, it is called Baby led Weaning (BLW). What this means is that you give your baby control of what they eat and you do not spoon feed them. They start out with real solids (not pureed solids), and they get to decide what and how much they will eat.


One of the big reasons behind this concept is that when a baby is given purees they learn to swallow and later learn to chew which can bring up many issues with young children. These issues make it hard for kids to try new textures and can actually pose a higher choking factor. With BLW your child learns to chew and learns textures in their mouth and later learns to swallow. The rule of thumb with BLW is “food before 1 is just for fun” because your child will be getting their nutrients from breast milk or formula.

We started giving Capri food just around her 6 month birthday. She started off with toast and since that time has eaten whatever food we put in front of her. She loves steak, chicken, all kinds of vegetables, bread, cheese, fruits and whatever else she can get her hands on. She has a very healthy appetite and swallows pretty much everything that goes into her mouth now (food wise).

One of the big concerns with BLW is choking; it scares a lot of people. While the great thing with babies is that God gave them an amazing gag reflex. So when they swallow a piece that is too big they will start coughing (this is gagging not choking) and they will bring it to the front of their mouth and either spit it out or chew it up again. Choking is when air can no longer get into your lungs, many of us adults have gagged on food and we just cough it up. But it is always important for any parent doing any feeding style to know how to do infant CPR.

Guest Post Week: This crazy thing called food.

(Cari is a wife, mother to five and an amazed watcher of the mundane magic in her garden.  You can read about her adventures at http://www.clan-donaldson.com/)

Let me start off by assuring you that I am most definitely not a zombie fanatic. Most days, I don’t even think about them. And on days that I do think of them, it’s only in a mildly curious way, like one would think of a particularly interesting cloud formation, idly trying to recall second grade science class where you classified cumulus, stratus, and cirrus clouds.

Zombies do not motivate any of the choices I make in my life.

That said, I’d like to start off this essay by briefly quoting a scene from Max Brook’s World War Z, which is a fun sort of zombie apocalypse novel. The scene takes place as the human race, nearly wiped off the face of the earth by a zombie pandemic, has successfully rallied and is trying to make sense of the wreckage. One of the characters talks about how when local communities were totally cut off from the “global village”, they had to adapt or die.

I met one gentleman on a costal ferry from Portland to Seattle. He had worked in the licensing department for an advertising agency, specifically in charge of procuring the rights for classic rock songs for television commercials. Now he was a chimney sweep. Given that most homes in Seattle had lost their central heat and that the winters were now longer and colder, he was seldom idle. “I help keep my neighbors warm,” he said proudly. I know that sounds a little too Norman Rockwell, but I hear stories like that all the time. “You see those shoes, I made them,” “That sweater, that’s my sheep’s wool,” “Like the corn? My garden.” That was the upshot of a more localized system. It gave people the opportunity to see the fruits of their labor, it gave them a sense of individualized pride to know they were making a clear, concrete contribution…

My mother is a gardener. I remember taking walks with her around the perimeter of our acre of yard in suburban Detroit. She’d point out the individual plants and call them by name, and I grew up with words like scabiosa, dianthus, and rudbeckia, not conjuring up exotic diseases or ancient cities, but rather flowers.

When I was seven or so, my mom let me have a section of her vegetable garden. I chose three strawberry plants. Those three plants, given access to the rich soil of my mother’s garden and then promptly ignored by me, grew to staggering proportions. They soon took over my section of the raised bed, and while I don’t remember ever eating the fruits, I do remember being amazed by the totally mundane magic of growing things.

That sense of awe with gardening has never left me. My first house was located in a flood plain in yet another Detroit suburb. A gardener only had to think about a plant, and there it was, fully formed and thriving. That small city yard hosted my first vegetable garden. My husband and I tilled up a good section of lawn, and I enthusiastically tossed in zucchini, tomatoes, green beans, corn, and mint. The last two had been given to me by older, far more experienced gardening neighbors, who watched my chaotic garden with a mixture of horror and amusement.

Do I even need to tell you the results of that fledging attempt? I quickly realized that my zucchini production far outpaced my ability to use it, the tomatoes grew to monstrous proportions, dropping fruit so far into the remaining lawn that the next year we were finding tomato plants springing up all over the place. The two offerings from the neighbors were equally exasperating, as the mint had brought stinging nettles along with it, and the Lebanese neighbors had given me field corn instead of sweet corn.

I didn’t care. The whole thing was so amazing to experience. Here was this small section of earth, bringing forth things that I had been designed to eat. Amazing!

A few years later, we had been transferred to Mississippi, to a cheaply built subdivision constructed over a former gravel pit. Mississippi clay is good for growing cotton, and the growing season is long and hot enough for watermelon, but little else can be done with it without heroic efforts on the part of the gardener. Add horribly restrictive homeowner’s association covenants and the demands of a growing family, and I sort of gave up gardening for those five years down south.

Now I find myself in New England, thanks to yet another transfer. I’m here in the land of Pilgrims and Colonists, and people who didn’t have the benefit of Miracle-Gro or WalMart. If they wanted to eat, they had to grow it. Or trade with people more or less in their immediate community. I think about these ancestors of mine with a mixture of annoyance and admiration. Annoyed that they’re such smug show offs, finding time to build a nation while still managing to coax food out of this rocky soil, and admiring their ability to do so.

That ability has carried down through the generations and now manifests itself in a number of community farmers’ markets, family farms, and an importance placed on local food. The air seems to sort of hum with it, and I found myself this year, anxiously waiting for the ground to thaw enough for me to be able to put in my first vegetable garden in half a decade.

My soil doesn’t have the same flood plain fertility that my Michigan garden did, but it also doesn’t have the sun-baked clay that Mississippi offered. It offers an abundance of rocks, but will respond favorably to organic amendments. I put peas in the day after St. Patrick’s Day, per my mom’s teachings, and now, three months later, I am eating them. My acorn squash is an entire season away from ready; the tomatoes are still a good month, month and a half away from eating, as are my peppers. The zucchini, however, is poised to explode its bounty everywhere (I never learn).

I stalk my garden every morning with the critical eye of someone who now has children to feed. I stalk my garden and look for the amazing things it is designed to yield, things that I’m designed to eat, and I am filled with wonder at the process and dread that I should ever have to rely just on my efforts, and my land.

I think about the zombie book again (I swear I’m not a zombie fanatic) and wonder what would happen if we really had to shrink our worlds down to the local community level. The benefits to such a proposal are obvious, as people more educated than I on the subject can tell you, but I look at my garden and I think not about the abstracts but the reality. Moving to a food supply derived from only local sources would be easier here in New England than in Mississippi. Until winter came. Or we got a hankering for hummus or kiwi or chocolate or any of the food we’re so used to having whenever we want.

It’s a middle ground I think we’d all be wise in seeking out. A gentler, saner middle ground, where we all took responsibility for as much of our own food production as our living conditions would allow, and we all traded with the global village fairly and with modest desires. Maybe we don’t need access to tomatoes in February. Maybe it would shake us up enough to realize what an amazing thing a tomato really is, how amazing the world is, and how blessed we are to have God entrust us with it.

Whatever the answer is, I’m sure it involves zucchini. Two plants could feed a city. A dozen of those suckers could feed the world.

Guest Post Week: This crazy thing called food.

(Amanda is mama to Madison (19 months).  She lives, worries and blogs in Canada.  You can find her at www.diapersandparanoia.blogspot.com)

How to feed your family with multiple food restrictions

After I had my daughter about a year and a half ago, we discovered that she had both a dairy and soy allergy (or intolerance). I was nursing and this meant that I had to cut dairy and soy from my diet.
This was very difficult because I soon realized my addiction to dairy products. Replacing them with soy wasn't an option either, so it meant that I had to completely change my eating. Now, I'm a very picky eater to begin with so this was very difficult! I'd been eating cereal with milk for the past 28 years (I'm 29!) I figure I was having cereal since I was on solids! Anyway, I can honestly say I never really came up with a great solution. I found that if I ate things that had a little milk in them, Madison was okay, so that meant I could eat bread. There are milk-free breads, but they're usually vegan and contain soy, so I decided to just eat normal bread. So that meant I could have toast and peanut butter for breakfast, and I would usually have a piece of fruit too - like an apple or banana.  Eventually Madison grew out of the dairy and soy allergy which was so awesome! But during that first year, my diet was horrible. It was
mostly all carbs! Bread with peanut butter, pasta, some fruit and pretty much no vegetables because I don't particularly like veggies.


Now that Madison is a year and a half and she's very observant of what we eat, I'm again having to change my eating habits, and our family's eating habits. Madison will eat pretty much anything except jam (for some odd reason!), I don't like most vegetables, and a lot of other things that would take too long to list! My husband Brad is always on a 'diet' so that he can get lighter for biking (sigh), so he never wants anything with too much fat in it. He doesn't mind vegetables, but he doesn't really want them unless they're cooked and put in front of him. But he will complain about it if he knows ahead of time. He also doesn't like to eat the same thing two days in a row (unless it's pizza! But isn't that too fatty? Again, sigh…) We both want to eat as much organic food as possible - preferably local, if possible, and we don't want to eat any foods with preservatives because I'm worried about all the chemicals in it. So those are our issues (well only some of them, but those are the ones relating to feeding!) and here
are our "solutions."


1. Shop frequently. I go to the grocery store frequently (it's pretty much across the street), and I find whatever organic fruits they have and if they look good I buy them. We can often find apples,
pears, oranges, clementines, bananas, kiwis, blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries at the grocery store. Not all at the same time, but usually we will have at least 2-3 different types of organic fruit in
the house at the same time.

2. Organic convenience food. We have discovered a line of organic frozen foods that are really tasty! They are called "Amy's" and they have pizzas and burritos and many other frozen delights! We get tons
of the burritos because they have beans and veggies and Madison loves them, and so do Brad and I. We always have a good stock of them in the freezer and there are different flavours so it doesn't get as
boring as eating exactly the same thing each time (we probably end up having one every day or every other day.)

3. Frozen organic veggies. We always have at least one bag of frozen mixed organic vegetables. They're really quick to prepare with the steamer on the stove. We try to get Madison to eat the mixed veggies
(broccoli, carrots, green beans and cauliflower), she definitely prefers the broccoli! I think we definitely spend less buying the frozen veggies because we only cook what will get eaten. If we buy a
head of broccoli, and cook it all then we won't eat it all and some will go to waste. We have tried freezing it after being cooked, but it just doesn't seem to come out the same after being thawed.

4. Freeze bread. The freezer is our best friend! My favourite bread is the Ancient Grain bread by Dempsters and we just keep the loaf in the freezer and pop it in the toaster oven when we want to eat it.
Our bread never goes stale or mouldy!  Besides these general guidelines, we haven't figured it all out yet
and I have to say that our eating is still quite disastrous. We eat out a lot, but part of that is because we're trying to sell our house and eating out means that we keep the house that much cleaner. No
cooking, no dishes afterwards, no food on the floor and walls!