I've recently been finishing up "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan and it's got me thinking. For a long time we've been trying to make changes in our family lifestyle habits to be more healthy, active and eco-friendly, but change is hard sometimes! It's a lot easier to just continue doing things the way you're comfortable doing them instead of making a switch. However, I think I am finally at the point that I'm
so fed up with the way things are in our society that I'm ready to make some really big changes. I'm sick of companies benefiting from our poor eating and exercise habits, sick of the really irresponsible practices being promoted through government and big business and sick of having no real link to other people and nature itself!
At first, I just found myself being really angry at all those people (government, businesses, etc.), but then I realized that I should really be mad at myself. Aren't we all consumers that are giving feedback to companies? If I buy the things that are on the shelves in the grocery store, why would those companies ever change the way they're doing things? What it comes down to is that I need to educate myself about the food I'm buying and, therefore, the companies and business practices I'm supporting so that I can make good decisions. Yes, this does take some time and it also takes being willing to do things that aren't as convenient as running to Safeway for groceries, but I'm pretty sure that the benifits are totally worth it.
Here are the changes we're planning to make:
-We made the switch to all whole grain foods a few years ago, but now we'd like to use homemade bread to cut out all the fillers and the cost of buying high quality whole grain bread at the store. If you have any good recipes, send them my way!!-Buy our meat, dairy and eggs from local, sustainable ranches and farms. Since this will be more expensive (but higher quality), our goal is to eat meat only 3-4 times a week and eat meals with beans, lentils, vegetables the other 3-4 days instead of eating some sort of meat almost daily. -Buy local produce that is free of chemical processing-Avoid all processed foods-Make our own salad dressings and marinades to cut out all the fat and fillers-Eventually grow most of our vegetables in our own garden (this will still be a few years away).Obviously this means more work for me in the kitchen, but I really want my kids to grow up knowing where their food comes from and learning how to be healthy and how to work hard instead of taking the easy way out. This move is going to be a fresh start for us in a lot of ways - I can't wait!
As I've been preparing to make these changes, I found this site:
http://www.localsustainability.net/ which has provided me with a lot of good information. I'm betting that there are sites for your area too if you're also interested in making some of these changes! For example, here's one site for Arizona:
http://www.arizonalocalfood.com/, one for the Bay Area:
http://www.wisefoodways.com/bay/, and a new market in Calgary:
http://www.blushlane.com/index.html. Those were just the first ones that came up on a google search, so I'm sure there are tons more! I know that it takes time to decide to make changes, but I hope that you will all take the time to learn a bit more about how you can be a more educated and responsible consumer!! Reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" could be a fun and entertaining way to start!
I think they loved feeding the doughnuts to Virgil (Brandon's brought him from work for the weekend) even more:
Landon was so happy cooking his own food! He said: "Mom, look! I cooked a hot dog all by myself!"
When the boys wouldn't take naps, we walked up to Bridal Veil falls. I'd never been right up there before - it was beautiful! Parker fell asleep on the way, but Landon loved playing in the pool at the bottom.
All of us in our grubby glory:
I think Landon just might like his Uncle Brandon.
After that, the boys helped chop some wood, we played at the playground and looked at a lot of bugs. Well, Parker squished a lot of bugs.
They especially liked looking at these vultures:
Even though the boys got cut off in this picture, we thought the canyon looked really pretty!
