Eating Organic & Buying Local...Life Changing!

A couple of years ago, I frequented fast food, drank a lot of Coke, ate a lot of processed foods & ate out a lot.  I fed Sydney frozen chicken nuggets, frozen pizzas, Easy Mac, Eggo waffles & hot dogs.  We ate store bought bread, Pasta Roni, made Pancakes from Bisquick and had lots of boxes of "food" in the pantry.  I bought gigantic frozen chicken breasts from Sam's & gigantic packages of ground beef at a very affordable price.  I paid around .78 cents for a dozen of the whitest, most perfect looking eggs.  I bought produce that had a mysterious waxy feel & just didn't taste great & I would wonder how I was supposed to enjoy eating it when it had no flavor.  I never exercised & I was 70 lbs heavier.  I hate saying that...but I'm always honest here. 

In January of 2010, I took the first step to changing my life and changing the path I was sending my kids down.  It started with a simple baby step of buying a container of organic yogurt.  I had never really liked yogurt, but this yogurt tasted different.  It tasted creamy and I could taste actual flavors.  It didn't leave a weird aftertaste on my tongue.  I was at rock bottom in my life after losing my Dad and I was desperate for a new outlook on life.  So I decided to learn everything I could about food, chemicals, organics, etc.  It was like opening the door to a world that had always existed, but I never knew it was there.  And once I crossed over, I knew it was where I belonged.  The more I read, the more I was convinced. Then I watched "Food, Inc." and it sealed the deal and changed me forever.  I highly recommend this documentary!

Changing the way I thought about food completely changed my life.  I changed what I bought, where I bought it & how I cooked it. Here's how I do it now:

* I get chicken from the farmer's market.  It's local, free range, hormone & antibiotic free.

* I also buy Cattle Tracks Beef from the farmer's market.  It is local, certified organic & grass fed. 

* From the farmer's market, I also buy locally made cheeses, honey & peanut butter.  I buy any produce that I do not have in my garden.

* I buy my eggs from Sylvia.  She lives a few miles from my house & is a retired school teacher.  She just happens to have the cutest little chicken coop & sells me her brown eggs for $2 a dozen.  She has a refrigerator under the car port & I simply leave my money in the butter dish and take my eggs if she isn't home.  Let me just tell you how much better her eggs are!  They make absolutely everything I bake taste better. I promise you, Sylvia is not injecting her chickens with hormones & antibiotics. ;) And she has inspired me to raise chickens next year.

* I grew my first vegetable garden this year & absolutely loved it.  I had tomatoes, cucumbers, broccoli, lettuce, peppers, onions, garlic, red potatoes, russet potatoes, cilantro, parsley & strawberries (although they never produced).  I will definitely continue gardening every year & may eventually expand to a much bigger garden.

Our garden.

This lettuce tasted so good!

The kids loved digging up the potatoes!

* I bake our bread, rolls, desserts, pizza crust, etc.  All using mostly organic & local ingredients.

* We are a 100% no pop family.

* I try to buy mostly organic & local.  But, when I do buy from the grocery store, I avoid these ingredients at all cost: high fructose corn syrup, MSG, BHT & dyes.  I will not buy anything with these listed in the ingredients.  It gets tricky because this junk is in so much of our "food".  But it is possible.   

My vision for our future is to eventually have a little micro farm on our 2 1/2 acres with a big garden, chickens & a compost pile.  I also want to learn how to can food.  This year was my education in changing the way we eat.  Next year I want to learn how to make eating this way a little more convenient, such as, cooking in bulk & freezing, canning, etc. 

I love the idea of avoiding big box stores & chain restaurants and, instead, everyone in the community supporting each other.  We have simplified our lives this year & have, as I like to say, "taken it back old school".  I love that there's a movement of people doing this across the board, and especially in OKC!

My my two favorite local stores to buy organic & local food are Native Roots Market & Forward Foods.  They are both quite a drive for me, but very worth it.

Late July has some of our favorite organic snacks.  Their buttery crackers are great & free of high fructose corn syrup.  I was shocked that nearly every box of crackers in my grocery store had HFCS.  Kettle Chips are so good.  Too good.  Seriously, what I like to call a "red flag food" for me.  The BBQ is my favorite. 

Eating local & organic is a no brainer.  It's better for our health, the environment & the animals.  Yes, it is more expensive & my two worlds of being thrifty & eating organic really collide.  But I always repeat to myself "read the ingredients, not the price tag". The health of myself and my family is priceless. I just consider it preventative medicine.  It's much cheaper to eat real food now instead of paying for medications & doctor bills later.  If nothing else, we should all do it for our kids.  Most kids today are eating a concoction of chemicals at every meal.  Add to that the mega doses of vaccines & plastics all around us.  If we don't make some changes, our kids don't stand a chance at a healthy future. 

My family is proof of this healthy change.  We look better & feel better.  Changing the way we ate had a domino effect on our lives that led to many positive changes.  I swear by this way of life now.

BUY LOCAL ~ BUY ORGANIC ~ BE HAPPY