Real Food for Thought

What's for Dinner?

A simple enough question but how much thought do you put into your food.  For most American's and families these days I am sure it starts with some sort of packaged or boxed product that vaguely resembles food and if you simply add water it magically becomes dinner.  Or how many times have you simply driven through your local fast food joint and called that dinner?

How did we get like this?  How did we go from having great, homemade food to eating food that could last years on our shelves?  Is it out of convenience, laziness or brain washing?

Don't get me wrong... I do it too.  There were times when I was growing up that my mashed potatoes started life out as flakes.  I have even driven through any number of fast food places and served it to my family as dinner.  But one afternoon a few years ago I decided that enough was enough.  I was a stay at home mom and I needed to make my families food as fresh and healthy as possible.

I started really simple... I watched Food Inc.  A great documentary that shows you basically where your food comes from.  Since so many of us are not into slaughtering our own beef we buy it neatly packaged under cellophane and assume that it is good for us.  We purchase our fruits and veggies from the supermarket and don't pick them ourselves.

My first call to action is to look at what you are making our family for dinner.

Tonight my family is having Turkey Burgers (on whole wheat buns) covered in bacon, swiss cheese, and sauteed mushrooms and corn on the cob.  Granted I didn't make the buns but I am making the burgers myself.  If you are opening a box tonight for dinner just take some time and stop and think about how much effort it would take to make this meal from scratch... I don't want you to feel guilty about using it but I want you to start thinking about it.

The first step is to be aware of what you are eating.  I am making my family spaghetti in a few days and am using jarred sauce.  I can easily make sauce from scratch but it was on sale a few weeks back and I figured it would be nice to have some on hand.  I just want you to start thinking about where the changes can be made.

I want to try to post every Wednesday some sort of food related, educational post to try to hold myself accountable in keeping with my new found food values but also to help educate and inspire my friends and family to make simple, little changes in their diets to help remove processed foods from our diets.