10 Eating Choices We’ve Made
My friend Amanda is hosting “Top Ten Tuesday”. I thought it would be a good time to tell you a little about what we eat.
1. Whole grains: We eat whole grains as much as possible. We grind the wheat ourselves and bake bread a couple of times a week. We grind fresh grains for waffles, muffins, cookies, pancakes, etc. It sounds overwhelming if you’ve never done it before, but really it’s simple once you get used to it.
2. Farm fresh meat: We have a friend that raises grass fed, all natural beef and we buy a cow or two from her every year and have it butchered. There’s pretty much always beef in the freezer. There are some local places to get chicken, but I haven’t found it to be affordable. So we don’t eat much chicken.
3. Milk: We have our own milk goats and we milk them about half of the year. They are getting old, so they don’t produce as much as they used to, so we also use rice milk and we buy regular, organic cow’s milk for baking, soups, etc. We also make cheese and yogurt with our goats’ milk. Yum!
4. Vegetables and fruits: I buy organic when I can, mostly at Costco. The thing is, it takes so much energy to do the co-ops and buying clubs that we don’t do it. I know you’re thinking, “Uh, knock knock…anybody home? It’s not as much energy as it takes to milk your own goats you crazy woman!” Yes, but we also get an ag exemption for the goats and the boys need real responsibilities, so it serves other purposes. There’s only so much time and we all have to spend ours wisely. I don’t have a good local source for fruits and veggies, so I do Costco. That is still an hour’s drive for me
5. Cheese: I’d love to make all of our cheeses from scratch, but it isn’t practical for me. So I make our soft cheeses and buy cheddar cheese in bulk at Sam’s. It is an easy lunch for us and fills up the kids and sometimes that’s what you need.
6. Canning: In our area there is an abundance of peaches in mid summer, so I get them and preserve them so we have them for the year. I also put up tomatoes. People will bring me their home grown tomatoes and I can them so we have them all year for sauces and soups. It’s easy to do and makes me feel like I’m doing something good for my family.
7. Eggs: We raise our own chickens and eat their eggs. We eat a LOT of eggs.
8. Sprouts: One thing I can easily keep up with and it’s so good for you is sprouting. It’s very affordable and easy to do. Just soak for a day, rinse occasionally and eat. We put them on salad (which we eat a lot of) and sandwiches. I vary between alfalfa sprouts and a sprout mix.
9. Eating out: We very rarely eat out. It’s a big treat. It costs over $100 for the 11 of us to go out to eat, so we just don’t ever do it as a family. We eat out about twice a year with the whole family. It’s a pain anyway…getting a table for 11 and ordering for everyone, it’s not worth the money. James and I go on a date every Friday night and we will eat out about half the time. The rest of the time we have an easy dinner at home and see a movie or we have a late lunch and get an ice cream. OK….I’m getting off topic. What was I saying? Oh yes! Number 10….
10. Enjoy life: We bake cookies and cakes and try new dessert recipes a lot. We almost always have something fresh baked around. We have a lot of company and the girls like to try their hand at baking, so it’s a good combination. I try my best to feed us well on a budget and then I relax. There’s just so much one mom can do. You all know I enjoy the occasional Diet Dr Pepper.
Those are some of my food choices. It’s not perfect everyday and there are definitely times when a package of frozen corn dogs is all I can cope with doing. Most of the things I mentioned here are things I’ve done for so long that it’s just routine now. So don’t let me overwhelm you. I started one thing at a time and worked my way into what works for us.
hehe, I just knew we had more in common than we knew. I am a fellow wheat grinding bread making girl. Although, I love some good squuiissshhhhyyyy white bread from time to time. We grow most all our veggies in the summer and I freeze what I can so we have them through out the year. Our problem is finding meats that don’t break the bank, I try to limit ours to help save, but I buy organic when it is on sale and try to stock up then. We drink very little milk, but I buy it for cooking and baking. Cheese is out major down fall of eating healthy we love it and go through it far to fast to buy organic. My grandmother has chickens and we get eggs from her, like your family we eat bunches of eggs. Hubby would love for me to do sprout, but I never have, I don’t love them but he does. Maybe I will look into it since I know someone to ask my questions to now.
So fun to find one more thing in common,
Cha Cha
.-= Cha Cha´s last blog ..PREPARING FOR FALL PART 1 =-.
I love this—you’re not all or nothing. Thank you for saying you still drink Dr Pepper sometimes!! 🙂
a
.-= oh amanda´s last blog ..Whatchoo Lookin’ At A Retro Photo =-.
I store grains and grind my own wheat too. My husband loves homemade bread, rolls, and any other baked goods, so I try to use a little wheat flour in everything I make. We have friends with a cow and they gladly GIVE the milk away. I remember being a small girl and pulling my little wagon down the road to our next door neighbors to get fresh milk by the gallon. They re-used large gallon pickle jars with screw on lids to put the milk in. I would give them the empty jars and they gave me two full jars to pull back home.
I want to have chickens…even have a coop plans to build but it hasn’t happened yet…something I still want to do. We have land and could raise a cow or two but that is something else we haven’t done. I think part of the problems is my husband is a ex-farmboy and he is not to excited about going back into hobby farming!
However, I think it is great for any family to be as self reliant as they can in their current stiuation and when it is frugile for them to do so. I like your posts!
.-= Sandra´s last blog ..Thrifty Fall PB Knockoffs =-.
You are by FAR the coolest Mom I have ever “met”. The thought of grinding my own bread or making my own cheese seems so out of my grasp right now but you give me hope I’ll be able to do those things one day too. My goal for this year is just to learn how to bake my own bread (maybe next year you can teach me how to grind the wheat too?). I love your list – we’re different but the same. We’re following the same paths you are just really far ahead of me. For now, we make our own ice cream :), we bake muffins, cakes, cookies & brownies from scratch. I’m asking for canning equipment for Christmas and hope to give it a try during the holidays – I have always wanted to be a “canner”. We rarely eat out either, my husband just doesn’t have the patience for children in restaurants. It’s alright with me though it keeps us healthier.
I’m still working on eating more healthfully – it seems one week I have it mastered and well planned out and then life gets away from me and we’re back to boxed this or frozen that. Like I said, I’m working on it. I try to do one vegetarian dinner a week and one soup to make sure we’re not eating JUST red meat all week. I have a hard time finding chicken for cheap too 🙂 Alright enough ramblings, the kids will be up soon I need my beauty sleep.
Such a fun post. I love when you share about your life!
So – question about the chicken – could you not add some “for meat” chickens to your roost or do I just not know anything about chickens? Would the yield not be worth the extra effort/space/cost?? I guess you’d need to be butchering chickens pretty often to eat it on a regular basis, huh? Okay, nevermind.
We buy our bread freshly made at the bakery down the street; it’s so fresh and so inexpensive that it’s just not something I have bothered to learn to do myself. For about $1.50 I get 8 mini French loaves, enough for 2 meals worth for us (for with dinner and then sandwiches the next day, or cut into little “rounds” and spread with butter/baked to make “garlic rounds”.) I can get white or whole grain.
I do not bake. I have not figured out how to make my (no temp control) oven work for baking. Even in the US, I only baked from mixes/boxes. I’m such a wimp.
I do cook more “from scratch” here though. Fresh veggies, fresh milk (regular cow’s milk), meat (whatever we get on sale, but good cuts), fresh fruit, and a rice or potato side. Nothing from a box or bag or bottle, unless we count the butter or olive oil used to cook the veggies (just enough so nothing sticks) (or, well, if it’s cauliflower, a ton to flavor it…). Well, I do buy commercial tomato sauce. Still, we eat way more healthy here than we did in the US, and I know we’ll keep these good habits when we return.
We have a friend in the US raising grass fed beef; we’ve already arranged to buy from her when we do return. I’m looking forward to that!
.-= The Reader´s last blog ..The Closet Re-Do- Organized! =-.
Thank you all for sharing some of your eating choices. I love hearing about them.
Stacy, I hope we meet in person soon!
Reader, I’ve had several emails asking the same thing you asked about chickens. I may do a post about that….funny story. But suffice it to say, we will NOT be raising mean chickens. 🙂 And if I could get fresh bread for that cheap I’d buy it too! Here a loaf like that would cost about $4. Thanks for sharing! Lisa~
Did you mean to say mean chickens or was that a typo? lol
Have you looked at Costco for organic chicken breasts? I don’t know if $5.99/lb is good or not but I bought them b/c I thought it was good (I’m terrible at remembering what I paid for organic elsewhere).
.-= Autumn Beck´s last blog ..When you have little or nothing to say =-.
Thanks for sharing. We do almost all the same but we buy raw cows milk. We tried goats but I found them to noisy and pushy. It was good for us though. We now understand why the Lord makes the comparison to goats and sheep:)I would love to know more about sprouting. What do you use to sprout? I have tried and the grains went bad.
Isn’t costco the best?We love it too.
We bake a lot too. Much to the demise of my waistline.My daughter is always looking for a good reason to bake something yummy.And I am looking for a reason to eat it.
.-= Shannon´s last blog ..School days =-.
Oh I LOVE all of your food choices~bravo. So many people say they can’t afford to eat well. You are living proof with 11 that it can be done. When we lived in Greece we had our own goat~ oh I miss her. When living in Georgia a Mennonite community was right up the road from us and they had a grain mill~ I miss that.
Well, I am off to bake banana bread. My homebirthing hero has made a request. 🙂
.-= Laura Ingalls Gunn´s last blog ..Wingchairs Slipcovered in Ticking =-.
All I can say is Wow! I’m jealous! My parents have chickens and my kids love it! Living in the city has so many disadvantages and that would be one, not being able to have live animals (other than my own children of course.) LOL.
Blessings to you,
lana @ ilovemy5kids
You are so inspirational! I’m only recently married and would love a large family like yours. You make so many great choices for your family. It’s great to see more “real families with morals.” You and your family is blessed!