Generikat Grazes
How You Can Do Healthy Meals When Your Life Is Cycling Faster Than The New Post Feed
Explanatory Intro
Why yes I am eating shoe leather. Why do you ask?
In this day and age of instant food gratification it is so easy to fall into the quick, easy, and availability food trough. My daily schedule can be visualized rather easily: think of a teenage goat loose in the produce section of a Walmart. I be bouncing off of all of the bins!
When my kids were little I put so much effort into their comestibles. I grew carrots and pureed them myself. I milked goats and from the time my children were twelve months old they got fresh, raw goat’s milk every day. We picked any produce we didn’t grow from local farms and preserved it for future meals, raised and processed all of our own meat, and were pretty good about canning our own convenience foods like chili and soup. All of us were living the non-processed food dream.
Fast forward a few years and things are not quite so rosy. Granted, we still produce almost all of our own meat and the good majority of our produce, but there is a trend that has sneaked into our daily routine: The Schedule Schmedule Open a Box for That Fellow phenomenon. A couple of days a week our schedule is so bananas that we stop and pick up chicken for dinner or cook boxed pizza. The kid’s sugar intake has crept up as poor mom is so overloaded that she doesn’t make her awesome scrambles or special muffins as often as she used too. The detritus of life is tripping me up in the nutrition department.
And why is that? Because cooking and eating healthy takes a lot of time, prep, and planning. Sure, there are shortcuts, but creating deliberate, healthy, real food is not as simple as tearing open a package of ramen noodles. I’m constantly ordering books like this one:
from the library in my quest to find a way of eating that meets the twenty-first century busy family’s needs of easy prep, ingredient availability, child palate friendliness, and above all sustainability in all senses of the word.
After years of research and living on both sides of the deliberate food and post-modern schedule coins, here are some of my thoughts:
You don’t (and can’t) do it all.
Even a little bit of healthy and good is better than nothing at all. If all you can get done is some homemade flax crackers for your family to snack on that day, don’t beat yourself up over it! At least they won’t be scarfing down Cheezits today!
It’s okay to admit that you are a failure the size of a North Korean missile test, as long you identify your epic horridness in whatever endeavor you are not killing it in and MOVE ON!
I screw up all of the time, but I like to learn and am completely cool with admitting that I am wrong. Sometimes I am not the most gracious when I am admitting that I screwed up something tighter than the lid on Aunt Bessie’s pickle jar. The key is to accept defeat, reevaluate your approach, put on a good attitude, and keep moving forward with a new strategy. Only pigs, elephants, and other large, flying pest-besieged beasts should wallow. Humans, not so much.
Unless you like the humility sandwich that will inevitably result when your over-taxed body gives out on you, trim down your obligations. LEARN TO SAY NO!
I’m right in the middle of this step. This spring our willingness to say yes has taken a big toll on us all not only in the meal department, but in the health, mental health, and overall disposition departments too. As of the end of May, the only off-farm obligation that I will have is my part-time librarian job. We are going to slow down a bit, and by that I mean we are going to do a ton of farm work, but honestly, I am looking forward to returning to my agricultural to-do roots.
During my over-scheduled rebellion I am going to take some time and reflect on all of the data I’ve collected over the years regarding everything related to food: production, meal prep, recipes, eating for health, etc. I’ll also share my insights with you all, for even though I was a bit of an over-taxed by my own hand moron for the last couple of years; I did learn a thing or two in the food department. If my buffoonery helps just one person glean something useful, then my admission of parenting failure in the nutrition department will be totally worth it!
And as always, all of the images in this post were taken on the author's sometimes nutritional well-behavior capturing iPhone.
Living in a fast paced world we tend to grab whatever we can get our hands on to eat, and it catches up with us at a later date. Thanks for posting this, it was a friendly reminder to me that I make the choices of what is important to me.
Ooh! Well said! I really try, especially in the food department, to not take the impulsive, easy path. Life is so much more enjoyable when I feel good, and that only happens when I make (mostly) good choices! Thank you so much for the comment, I followed ya!
LOL. you have a special kind of humor which I dig.
great article btw
Ha ha! Thanks k! I actually tend to censor myself quite a bit, but that line had to stay! In fact, that brings up something that I admire about you, your blog is so excellent! I love how bold and unapologetic you are regarding your stance on any particular issue or topic that you post about. Definitely not NK missile test material at all, lol!
Hope you are having a marvelous morning!
I know what you mean! That's really cool that you have a farm. Knowing how to grow and produce your own food will always serve you well.
Thanks @weq! Even though there is always "something" to do, I truly love my farm! It's so satisfying, at the end of the day, to nibble on something that you spent the time producing, and I especially love that I always have surplus to share!
I think that situation is why my mother taught us kids how to cook and clean up early on. She had us trained pretty well! She never learned to cook even an egg until she was married, so she was determined that we would be capable. That, and she said her goal was to lie on the couch and eat bon-bons while we did everything, lol. Take it easy this summer and enjoy your less-scheduled time!
Ah yes, being competent is one of the highest forms of achievement in our family's world, lol! You mother sounds like a very savvy lady, and I hope that she achieved here couch lying, bon bon eating goal!
Hope your summer is filled with all of the things that bring you joy!!!