What Ginger and Co. Eat

My friend MTP wrote a great post on food. Inspired by a link I sent featuring a slideshow showing what people from around the world eat in an average week. It was very illuminating. Costs were way down for people who ate simple foods: vegetables, grains, etc while the costs sky rocketed for those who bought mostly processed foods. In addition, it was sobering to see how little some people have to eat compared to what those in Post-industrial countries eat. It made me realize that we have a way to go in our goals of simple earth friendly eating.

Now I love food. Food gives me great pleasure. It is also my drug of choice, and I have a hard time controlling what I eat. Thus one could say my relationship with food is ambiguous. I attempted this summer to not think about dieting, watching food intake etc, and gained a lot of weight. In fact, I hit the mark when my knees start hurting, my back aches, and I have heartburn every night. This is always a pretty clear sign that something drastic has to happen. So for me, WW is a way to be able to enjoy my food but to also control my addiction. And I have to be able to eat good food. I just love food too much to be willing to compromise good taste.

How we eat: we're mostly vegetarians. H and I will both eat meat if we're eating out. And sometimes I have to grill chicken at the pool. But we never buy red meat or pork. When I buy chicken it's always organic. H does eat turkey breasts on his sandwiches. I can't afford organic but we do by the Oscar Meyer natural which has minimum processing. In addition, we eat a variety of grains: quinoa, barley, couscous, whole wheat pasta, brown, basmati, and wild rice, millet, and bulgur. I love pilafs and cold salads in the summer. We also eat a lot of beans, and I try to get in tempeh once a week (I can't stomach tofu and no I don't think there's a recipe you have that will make me stomach it). We only eat whole grain breads and when it's on sale I stock up on Rudi's organic. We buy tons of fruit. I'd say half our grocery bill is fruit. The kids drink soy milk, and I don't drink milk period. We buy some cheese (not organic). I eat organic yogurt. We also buy free range, organic eggs. I'm trying to cut out my sugar (thankfully I've never been able to take the taste of apasthme), and I have succeeded in not drinking soda (haven't drank soda in three years).

Processed: I'd say we're pretty minimal but not as good as we'd like to be. Horacio does eat cereal (organic and natural). We can't seem to wean the kids off Honey Nut Cheerios. I love Kashi bars but again I can read all the ingredients. The worst thing for me is sweets. I love the low cal. pudding cups and the 100 cal. packs of cookies but I only allow myself one package of those a week. I gave up WW ice cream treats because the ingredient list scared the hell out of me. We buy Bryer's or Edy's Light ice cream now, and everyone gets 1/2 cup after supper. The worst thing is that I have gotten into the habit of letting the kids a, get candy way too often when we go out, and b, let them pick out one "treat" such as graham crackers, Goldfish, or pretzels. I don't feel bad about the pretzels but I do think we should lay off the other things. They like the oatmeal cookies I make just as much but that involves cooking...more on that later. Oh, and I can get them chicken nuggets. I know, I know horrible. Maybe I can start to make those as well. I'd also like to buy more organic and more local grown fruit and vegetables. However, the price for organic is very high here--often three times as much as for non organic. And local grown....okay some of it is that I'm lazy. I'd have to drive three kids at least 20 minutes away, and then deal with them in a crowded market. Argh.

All in all I think we do pretty good. I spend anywhere between 100-150 a week feeding a family of five. I know this is significantly less than most of our friends who have families. I cook pretty much every night. We don't theme it but I love to experiment so we do Indian, Chinese, Mexican, etc. We always have big bowls of soups in the fridge and the freezer. The kids eat pretty good but could be better about trying new stuff. But they snack mostly on fruit, love broccoli, and salad. I guess I can't complain:) We also use only olive oil, and pure canola oil. And we kind of follow Dr. Weil's recommendations for healing eating.

MTP has inspired me though. I think Ill try to bake more (I can't make my bread raise so bread is out of the question). And we may try to roast a turkey breast for sandwiches. I'll let you know how it goes:)

I'll post a picture of what we bought on Tuesday.