For years now I have leaned toward finding a more natural lifestyle,
which isn't always easy. It started small, with me learning about my
oldest son having dry skin which turned out to be Eczema, which he
inherited from me (who would have guessed it, all those years I thought I
just had pimples all over... heh.) from learning we had Eczema to
educating myself on the best ways to deal with it, I started to discover
that all of the "soap" products we had were really nothing more than
chemical filled synthetic products, nothing natural about them, it's no
wonder our Eczema was constantly flared up! That's how I learned about
all natural handmade soaps, and began making them myself.
I grew up on convenience foods (Hamburger Helper and Rice-A-Roni
anyone?) and thought nothing of continuing to eat those after I had
children of my own. My family was eating loads of just-add-water
"homemade from a box" (as my ex mother in law used to say) meals,
generally cooked in a microwave. (Have I mentioned I haven't owned a
microwave in 4 years? It's amazing to discover you don't really NEED
one!)
I'll tell you that for a good 8 years I fed my own family overly
processed, highly synthetic, convenience foods, just like 60% of the
rest of the Nation***
In the past 5 years that I have been with my husband, I have learned to
make some drastic changes. I started to eat healthier, mostly because he
insisted, and gradually I began to like some of it... though I was
heavily into the coupon game for awhile and most of what you can get
with coupons is convenience foods, so that's what I bought.
Around the time I got pregnant with my youngest, who will be 3 next
month, I was starting to really get a good grasp on the whole thing...
actually paying attention to what products we use, and more recently
what we eat. In recent months I've gotten to the point that I absolutely
dread going to the grocery store. I walk through the aisles and I can
just feel the labels screaming all their obscene nasty chemicals and
additives at me. Two months ago when I went shopping I literally stopped
in the middle of an aisle looking around and could just feel myself
getting wearier by the second thinking about how I KNEW all the crap
that was in the food I was buying, but I felt nearly powerless to do
anything about it.
Not anymore!
When we got our income tax return we bought half a cow and a pig from a
farm down the road. The meat was butchered by two local meat cutters,
and cost maybe $1,000 between the 4 checks we had to make out... was
well worth it to have a stand up freezer so full of meat that it was
overflowing... AND we supported THREE local small businesses in the
process. Our hamburgers and roasts don't shrink when we cook them, and
our pork chops have fat that gets crispy not chewy... how's that for
GOOD products?
The meat tastes so much better than the junk at the store, and in the
end cost about the same, we won't have to buy meat again until fall at
least.
We also have 2 chickens who started laying eggs this winter... not a lot
for a family of 6 but 2-3 eggs a day is helpful! We are getting a few
more chickens to help increase the yield and then we can cut out having
to buy eggs... yet one more thing we will know where it came from and
what went into it and can feel good about eating it! It's also another
good source of meat!
We are working diligently on growing a nice sized garden this year,
which I've already mentioned here, and Last time we went for a big
grocery shopping, we bought almost all fruits and vegetables, which is
great and since we didn't have the added cost of meat to consider, I
splurged and got lots of fresh ones and as much organic/natural as I
could. We did buy a bunch of pasta and pasta sauce, cause lets face it,
my husband is Italian and pasta is one of the ultimate comfort foods (go
me!).
I've been researching more about MAKING more foods from scratch, and
today I convinced hubby that it would be a great investment to buy a
pasta machine. He was planning to save up to buy attachments for our
Kitchen aid Mixer (Super frugal find from a couple months ago, I'll
write about that soon!), but when I got looking at the cost and
everything, explained to him that it might be more cost effective to buy
a separate machine. After doing some shopping around and him thinking
back on his childhood (his grandmother used to make pasta all the
time... heck, probably still does!) we settled on an Imperia SP150 and ordered it from Amazon using some gift cards I've earned from Swagbucks (not many because I just ordered a bunch of books for my son who paid me cash in exchange for the gift cards I used)
We also got a 2mm Spaghetti attachment and a Norpro Ravioli Maker and Press.
Pasta is a big thing in our house, though we pair it with lots of
veggies, salad, etc. I like the idea of making it myself so I can
control what types of ingredients are going in it... and I think that by
including the kids in the process they'll become a bit more aware of
what they are putting into themselves and hopefully keep the love of
making their own food with them as they grow!
***I have no idea what the general statistics are, but I'd wager on it being more than half, lol
Full disclosure: If you click on any
of the links that go to Amazon.com above and purchase any of the items I
posted, I'll get a tiny reward for sending you their way, I'm all about
saving money though so if you can find it cheaper somewhere else, more
power to ya! As for the Swagbucks link, if you sign up through the
link, I'll get matching Swagbucks for your first 1,000, which will net
me somewhere around two Amazon gift cards for $5 each :)
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