My Diet

A friend of mine said she wanted to live at my house for a week to eat like I do.  Kind of like a cleanse.   We then discussed the options of calling "my" cleanse by my first name or my last name.  We decided that using my first name would probably be preferable to using my last since my last name *might* give the wrong impression about what one would be expected to eat. This got me thinking about what I eat.  I'm always thinking about what I eat and trying to eat better--who isn't?  I got Alicia Silverstone's book, The Kind Diet, at the library again and I'm trying to reread it to help inspire me again.  It's harder to read now that Olivia is starting to wean herself.  I used to be able to read for at least half and hour when I nursed her, now as soon as I pick up a book, she wants to check it out too.  Apparently someone else is also reexamining how she eats...

I'm also in the process of planning a menu for our vacation in September.  Clearly I'm excited.  I'll be cooking for the 6 of us, plus my brothers in law and my mother and father in law.  In an attempt to please the masses, I'm going to try to cook "normal"
food.  I'm actually struggling to figure out what that in fact is.  It's an easily solved mystery, I'm just going to ask them, but it made me think about what *most* people eat on a daily basis.  I don't really think that our diet is THAT much healthier than other people.  I think what people imagine my diet to be is actually much healthier than what it is.  It's currently on a down side as we're still eating food left over from our Fourth of July cook out and donated food (stuff my dad got us at Sam's Club--mainly meat).  I've decided to post this week's menu-not because I'm proud of it--far from it-- but because I feel like I need to fully disclose how our house actually eats.  I'm actually a little embarrassed about this menu because it's a week I was trying to cheap out on groceries.  I'm trying to use as much from the freezer as I can and not add a lot of sides.  This often happens when I make the grocery list and menu the same day as I shop.  Suddenly that dish with 12 ingredients that I don't have doesn't seem as good as it did the night before when I wasn't faced with taking 4 kids to the grocery store with me.

 I don't know if this is something everyone does or something that I learned from my mother, but I do a weekly menu and shop once for the whole week.  It's easier for me that way.  I look at the calendar, decided how many dinners I need to make and who will be at each (if Evan's not going to be home for dinner I won't make anything with meat) and go from there.  Does everyone do that?

Without further ado here it is, our menu for this week. (With added notes also know as excuses for not eating an entirely plant-based, organic diet).

Marinated Portobello Mushrooms (from the Forks Over Knives cookbook.  I new recipe I've never tried before) BBQ chicken-- salad (lettuce and peppers from our garden this week!) and cantaloupe

Sweet and Spicy Eggplant (also from FOK cookbook and also a new one.  It uses pineapple and pineapple juice-I'm excited to try it!) hot dogs- salad and pineapple(for those not eating it in the eggplant dish)

Taco Pie (VERY heavy on processed foods but one of Evan's favorites and one we don't have a lot) Bean, Corn and Summer Squash Saute (FOK cookbook and I actually made this one last night.  Pretty good!) and corn on the cob (locally grown from Four Season's Nursery by Washington Square in NC)

Pasta (this was an Evan-less night and also the night we went to the store.  I had each of the kids pick a pasta.  Caden chose spaghetti (whole grain) Vince chose shells (whole grain) and Ellie chose spirals (the bad one--sorry!).  I was at Wal-Mart and they don't have organic sauce so I got the cheapest I could find that didn't have HFCS in it-Hunt's Garlic Herb and a Sun Dried Tomato Pesto.  I let the kids pick which sauce they wanted.  Caden, traditional-Ellie- none-Vince chose traditional then asked for seconds with the pesto.  The pesto was pretty good, but I wish I'd gotten the basil pesto since the sun dried tomato kind of just tasted like tomato sauce.) Salad and Garlic Bread (Alexia is our favorite!  Not organic but natural--whatever that means!)

And there it is!  Our menu from Friday to Friday!  See, not so great and generally pretty normal, right?