Menu Plan: June 18-24

 It has been almost three months since I last posted a menu. For some reason, my typically well-planned life has been not so well-planned as of late, which resulted in some less than stellar menu planning. I think I am back on track, although in about a month everything will be topsy turvy yet again as we move to Champaign!  As a side note, it has been far too long since I have been able to find organic potatoes around here. I found them this past week and promptly bought six pounds. Yikes! Hence all the potato dishes this week...

Breakfast

• Monday: Birthday berry crisp, fresh fruit
• Tuesday: Baby red potatoes with sausage and garlic, fresh fruit
• Wednesday: Perfect fall muffins, hardboiled eggs
• Thursday: Eggs with sausage and garlic, fresh fruit
• Friday: Soaked pumpkin oatmeal with walnuts
• Saturday: Coconut flour pancakes (recipe below!), bacon and fresh fruit
• Sunday: Eggs with sausage and garlic, fresh fruit

Lunch

• Monday: Rice with chicken, fresh fruit
• Tuesday: Grain-Free Pigs in a Blanket, carrots with homemade ranch dip
• Wednesday: Cheesy pan-fried potatoes, fresh fruit
• Thursday: Smoothies with cheese and veggies
• Friday: Italian stew, fresh fruit
• Saturday: Salmon patties, fresh fruit
• Sunday: Lunch at church

Supper

• Monday: Popcorn, fresh fruit
• Tuesday: Leftovers, smoothies
• Wednesday: Smoothies with cheese and veggies
• Thursday: Chicken and potatoes, fresh fruit
• Friday: Taco potatoes, smoothies
• Saturday: Herb roasted potatoes with sausage, smoothies
• Sunday: Leftovers, smoothies

Coconut Flour Pancakes

 Makes about 20 pancakes

9 eggs

2 sticks butter or 1 c. coconut oil, melted

1 c. coconut milk (or whole milk)

4 tsp. honey (maple syrup or sucanat works great, too!)

3 tsp. sea salt

3/4 c. coconut flour

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder (aluminum free, if possible)

Mix together eggs, butter/coconut oil, milk, sweetener and salt in a larger bowl. Add the baking powder and coconut flour and continue to mix until everything is incorporated. Melt a little more butter/coconut oil in a skillet and scoop about an 1/8 of a cup of batter into the pan. Repeat until you have about 20 pancakes. Server warm with more butter and real maple syrup!

This post is linked to menu plan monday

Cucumber Infused Lavender Lotion

photo credit: karenandbrademerson

Ever since embarking on our real food journey about a year ago, I have been incredibly interested in the effects of what we eat on our bodies. This quest led to lots of reading, shopping, questioning and habit changing. It also led me to realize that not only does what we eat have a major impact on our bodies, but what we put on our bodies also matters. I wrote a post about that a several months ago. This journey is best approached with baby steps, although I have been known to go crazy when I find out that yet another thing that we use that is less than stellar for us and throw it all away (just ask my husband about infant Tylenol...), and this post is a new baby step for me.

I have known for quite some time now that the lotion from a certain smell good product store that I have used for the past several years is essentially a toxic cocktail. However, I had tons of it stored up. It is expensive. I was given some of it as gifts. The list goes on, but the point is, I finally ran out. I knew that day was coming, so I had been slowly building up my supply of homemade lotion ingredients. Julian took an especially long morning nap today, so, after I did my necessary work (cleaning the bathroom and showering!), I stepped into the kitchen and created this delightful lotion.

Cucumber Infused Lavender Lotion

2/3 c. cucumber pieces

1 c. avocado oil

1/4 c. beeswax

1/2 c. almond oil

1/2 + 1/8 c. water

20-25 drops lavender essential oil

Place the cucumber pieces a small pot and pour the avocado oil over it. Turn the heat to medium and allow the oil to heat until you hear (or feel, if you are standing to close!) it start to pop. Turn it down to simmer and put a lid on the pot. Allow this to sit for an hour and a half. Strain the cucumber infused oil into a large measuring cup and immediately mix in the beeswax. Stir until the beeswax is melted. Pour in the almond oil and allow this mixture to cool for about ten minutes. Pour it into the blender and slowly add the water. Drop in the essential oil. Blend the mixture on medium, stopping to stir every so often. Blend until everything is well incorporated, about ten minutes. Store your lotion in a pint sized jar and enjoy!

Our Real Food Journey

I realized as I was making dinner last night that it was around this time last year that I was introduced to the world of real food. That got me thinking about how I had never written down our story, so here I am to share with you how we got to where we are now. Of course, we have by no means "arrived", but we have made some radical changes over the past year and I think it would be prudent to share how we got here.

While I was pregnant, I was incredibly concerned about everything that was happening to me medically. I did countless hours of research on giving birth, newborn procedures and vaccinations. I had a detailed birth plan and was ready to fight anyone who dismissed my wishes. It never occurred to me to consider what I was feeding my pregnant body. To put everything into perspective, I should make note of the fact that mere hours before our son was born my husband and I stopped at McDonald's to get some french fries and Hy-Vee for some animal crackers. And I thought all of that was perfectly fine...

I stumbled across Stephanie's site, Keeper of The Home, soon after I gave birth to Julian. I can't even remember what I was looking for, but, whatever it was, the search led me to her site. I camped out there for a few days, poring over posts while nursing my baby. I was astonished by what I was learning. I had, like many people, thought I was eating and feeding my husband and I a healthy diet. I cooked all our meals at home (open a box of this, throw in a can of that) and thought that we were doing pretty well. Boy, was I ever wrong! At that point, my freezer was full of meals lovingly prepared by the ladies from our church, I still wasn't comfortable driving and my husband was back to work and school full time, so I couldn't start implementing the things that I was learning just yet. As soon as we worked through the meals in the freezer and I was finally driving again, we were getting ready to move, so I didn't want to start overhauling our food supply just to have to pack it all up in a few weeks. So, we ate through what was in our pantry and freezer over those next few weeks until we were down to a few cans of tomatoes and condiments in the refrigerator. We moved into our new apartment, got settled and I had a blank slate in the form of an essentially empty pantry, refrigerator and freezer. I was excited!

Although I was excited, I was still unsure of where to start. I had all the information, but how would it play out in real life at the grocery store? I called up a good friend of ours who I knew fed her family the way I wanted to start feeding mine and asked to go grocery shopping with her. That might seem unconventional and maybe even a little presumptuous, but I was eager to learn! I packed up my eight week old baby and off we went to learn how to shop for real food frugally. Looking back, I am certain we made quite a sight traipsing through the store with four kids aged four, three, one and eight weeks. I actually walked through one of the stores cradling my nursing baby in one arm while taking notes on what she was purchasing! I learned quite a bit on that trip and gained an incredible amount of confidence. I highly recommend to those of you who are starting out on this journey to find someone who has been doing it for a long time and tag along. You will be amazed at what you learn.

I came home and excitedly shared all the new things I had learned with my husband. Unfortunately, he was not on board with me right away. I wanted to quit buying cereal? We weren't going to eat frozen pizza anymore? His world was crashing down around him, or so he thought. I am happy to say that he has since warmed up to most of my crazy ideas, although there are definitely things that he misses (scotcheroos) and things that he simply won't eat (avocados). I am still learning and probably will be forever, am still buying some things that other real foodies would look down on (store bought yogurt, anyone?) and have yet to keep a sourdough baby alive for longer than a week, but am so pleased with the improvements changing the way we eat continues to make in our lives.

I am forever indebted to sites like Kitchen Stewardship and Passionate Homemaking for doing the hard work and allowing people like me to learn from your research. I have read several books that helped shape my thoughts on food and continue to follow and learn from dedicated bloggers like those I have mentioned already and others, such as Modern Alternative Mama. I hope that what I have learned and continue to learn can be an encouragement to others on their journey to better eating.

Three Things I No Longer Buy

Like many families right now, we are trying to simplify our life and save money any way that we can. We also try to be intentional about not only what we are putting in our bodies but also about what we are putting on them.

I will be honest and say that we are NOT a "go green, save the earth, whales, llamas etc." family. However, many of the choices that we make do fall in line with the "go green, save the earth, whales, llamas etc." crowd, but not because of that. Our primary focus is to be a good steward of that which the Lord has entrusted us. To me, this means not only keeping a close eye on our purchases and, therefore, stewarding God's money well, but also keeping a close eye on what is going in and on the bodies the Lord has given us, thereby stewarding God's dwelling place well. As a homemaker, one of my jobs is to do my homework and make sure that I am providing my husband and son with the best possible choices for meals and other areas of daily life.

This has been a slow process for us, mostly because my husband stopped me from throwing everything we owned away when I began looking into this natural way of living, so please don't think that we have it all figured out or even that we are doing everything right. Don't take my word for it. Do the research yourself and decide what is best for your family. These are simply some things that we have decided are best for our family.

Three Things I No Longer Buy

 1. Toothpaste. I was always intrigued by the suggestion on the back of the baking soda box that it could be used as toothpaste, but I never tried it. After doing a bit of research and concluding that I don't really want my family ingesting flouride or sodium laureth sulfate, I decided to go ahead and try to make our own toothpaste. I tried an adapted version of this recipe first, using a few drops of tea tree oil. My husband did not care for the tea tree oil taste, which I should have known would happen considering he could not stand the smell when we were using it to treat Julian's yeast infection. So, I finished up that batch while he used up the very last trial size Crest we had in the house. I went back to the internet and finally came up with a new homemade toothpaste recipe adapted and compiled from several different sources. 

Storms Family Toothpaste

2 tbs. coconut oil

3 tbs. baking soda

1 tbs. hydrogen peroxide

15-20 drops peppermint essential oil

Mix all ingredients together in small glass jar.

2. Shampoo. The idea of making our own shampoo stemmed from the fact that we were spending at least $10 a month on shampoo. I looked at that figure and decided that was on area we could cut back. But, I was 7 months pregnant when I made that decision, and did not really have the motivation to make shampoo myself. So, I started couponing and signing up for free samples. We very quickly had a BIG stockpile of free shampoo bottles and samples. Then I started reading about sodium laureth sulfate and decided I did not want our family to use products with that ingredient any longer. Enter the homemade shampoo. This is not an original recipe. In fact, type the ingredients in Google and you will find myriad people that are using this method to wash their hair. Are you ready?

Storms Family Shampoo

1 tbs. baking soda

1 c. water

Mix the ingredients together in a pump or squeeze bottle. Wet hair and pump or squeeze onto scalp. Comb through with a wide tooth comb and rinse. UPDATE: Apparently, this does not work out so well with hard water. Since we are currently apartment dwellers, we cannot do anything about softening our water. For the time being, we have, unfortunately, switched back to regular shampoo. I would like to get some sulfate and paraben free organic shampoo, but $8+ a bottle is not feasible right now! If you have started using this and have soft water, hopefully it is going well for you! We did this for about three months and it was just in this last month that it started leaving a film on our hair. I will definitely try this again once we have soft water.

3. Lotion. After I started cooking with coconut oil, I came across blogs and articles that praised it for all sorts of different uses. We started out using it as diaper rash cream for Julian and that evolved into the whole family using it as daily moisturizer. It works great and does not have unrecognizable ingredients, like your typical Jergens or Vaseline moisturizer. 

So, there you have it. Like I mentioned, this has been (and continues to be!) a slow process for us. There are still things that we are currently using (such as my husband's shaving cream and my deodorant) that I want to find natural replacements for. We are by no means done figuring out this natural living thing!