So I have this friend Chris. She is a bit of a crunchy, hippie,
treehugger but I love her. A.LOT. I should tell you that I am none of the above. Chris and I often talk about baking, cooking, raising kids, travelling. But we don't talk about shopping (she wears
Dansko's, go ahead google it) or makeup (she never wears any) or hair (she has super long beautiful hippie hair) or anything
girly for that matter.
Anywho back to the point of this post. Her kids Jack and Kate have never had a
hotdog. NEVER. Not one. ever. And when she eats a
hotdog, it's a real
hotdog like from the butcher in the casing. And I was all "uh what the heck do your kids eat?" and she was all "
ummm homemade stuff". So I began to berate her with questions such as "how on earth do you have time to make 'homemade stuff' in the middle of the day?, do you spend all of your money shopping at Whole Paycheck?, are you a freak?", etc. You get the idea. And she shares her innermost thoughts about food, kids, eating habits, etc. with me. And now I will share them with you. But I assure you it's no revolutionary concept.
She told me that growing up her Mother always had fresh and healthy snacks on hand, they always had natural peanut butter, ate whole grain, fresh veggies and fruit and they had dinner together as a family every. single. night. and her kids eat what she is eating; she doesn't run a restaurant. She hates preservatives, additives, food dyes, unnatural sugars, high fructose corn syrup, nitrates, red meat, etc. We talked about how much money she spent on groceries a week/month. And it wasn't much more than I was already spending (roughly 100$). So I thought well I can handle this.
So without saying anything to her I applied most of her advice and restrictions on my own family. I am proud to say that we are now a whole wheat, all natural snack, all natural syrup, fruit leather instead of fruit snack, organic fruit and veggie and MILK eating family. My kids no longer get their own meals. They eat what Joseph and I are eating or they get nothing. I allow them to choose if they want sauce on their pasta (whole wheat pasta I might add) and things of the sort but I no longer make nuggets instead of feeding them the enchiladas that we are eating. It has been nice to eat healthier and feel better about the things that I am choosing to feed my family. So we are one step closer to being treehuggers. Just don't tell Joseph.
