just eat food.

bread + peanut butter + bananas = breakfast

Disclaimer: Again, I am not super health nazi all the time. I feel like from now on if I post any food that is not 100% healthy, I'm going to get hate mail. We try to eat like this most of the time. We do our best to what our budget allows, but I also love chips and salsa, and will not give up a good old fashioned fried tortilla chip.....oh well.

Disclaimer #2. this post a billion times longer than yesterday's!

Breakfast:

*We love oatmeal. Real oatmeal. Old fashioned oats or steel cut oats. Add a little fruit or some real maple syrup.

*Toast and peanut butter.

*Eggs.

*Cereal. I am a cereal nazi, and we only get it if the sugar is under 6g/serving and it has some protein and fiber in it. I like alot of the Kashi cereal (although check the labels--some of them have a ton of sugar), we like multigrain cheerios and plain shredded wheat (with a little honey).

Lunch:

*Who doesn't love a pb&j! On good bread, real pb without all the extra junk in it, and I do love to make jam.....which is so so so so easy.

*Leftover soup from another night.

*Grilled cheese with good bread and REAL cheese.

*Quesadillas

*Black bean burrito

Dinner:

I promise to start posting more dinner recipes on here! I do love to cook....but by the time dinner is ready, it's dark out, and makes for a terribly ugly photo.....so as soon as it lightens up a bit I'll be posting more of what we eat. Tonight we had minestrone soup!

Snacks:

* fruits/vegetables. I usually let my kids each pick out their own fruit/veggie at the store--so they can get excited about it.

*We love peanut butter. Peanut butter on apples, bananas, celery, carrots, crackers....mmm..

*Cheese and a good whole grain crackers.

*Edamame.

*Almonds. Peanuts.

*Yogurt. Not to be confused with Gogurt.

*For "treats" or snacks on the go we love Annies bunny crackers and Z bars (found at costco!), and real dried fruit (not coated in sugar and preservatives) rather than fruit snacks.

*I also recently discovered Fruitsource Mini Bites, at Costco--they are 100% fruit, with no other added crap, and my kids love them. (and ps. runners, I like a few before a long run:)

Keep it in your budget:

I try my hardest to feed my family what's best, but unfortunately it's so much cheaper to buy bad-for-you-food......why is that? Here are a few things that I do to help with costs. Even a few changes here and there will be so beneficial to your family.

*Costco is your friend. I feel like every time I'm there, they have more good-for-you options. Lots of organic choices too, like 100% applejuice, organic whole wheat spaghetti, and I get the canned organic diced tomatoes also.

*Target is your friend. (I mean really--it's Target!! It's perfect.) Target also has lots of healthy choices, I love alot of their Archer Farms brand items (all natural turkey breast), and an organic produce section (small, but it's there). They sell Laura's Lean Beef, which isn't local to us, but the cows aren't factory grown either, so for now that's what I do.

Even Walmart is upping their ante and now carrying great products like Stoney Field Farms.

Sunflower Market. As close as I can come to my beloved Trader Joes, since we don't have one (tears). Sunflower market has great selection of everything you need, and on Wednesdays they give you this week's sales, AND last week's sales.....pretty good! Their sales are amazing, and I usually try to stock up on their chicken when it's a good price.

Trader Joes. Trader Joes would be my first choice on the list, but seeing as we don't have one, I'm holding a grudge. But GO THERE NOW. Say hello. The boy and I used to walk there once a week when he was just a babe......sigh.

Plant a garden. I am a TERRIBLE gardner. But we do try. Last year was our best crop yet, and we will try even harder this year (we'll be taking a page from the book of Hayley and starting our compost)The kids love getting to eat what they worked so hard on, and so do I. And having fresh tomatoes every single day.....you just can't beat that.

Visit your Farmer's Market. We still have a while before ours starts up, but I cannot wait!! They have every fruit and veggie that you can imagine, as fresh as they come, and everything is so cheap!

Extras:

*We don't drink a ton of juice, and when we do it's 100% juice, not a "juice drink" (too much sugar!)

*Even if YOU don't like it, your kids just might. The thought of gnawing my way through a piece of celery makes me gag, but I always have it in the fridge for soups. One day I was slicing some up and asked the boy if he wanted some.....he LOVED it!

*Liz pointed out yesterday that all the food in the inner shelves of the store (rather than the outsides where the dairy, produce, and meat are) are alot cheaper....but most of it is just "pretending" to be food. A whole box of Nabisco Whatevers will not fill you up like an apple and peanut butter would. You can actually save some money by NOT buying so many items from those inside shelves. (trade in your soda and chips for something from the outside shelves)

*As much as I'd like to, I cannot afford to buy everything organic. But I make sure I buy organic:

-apples

-lettuce

-celery

-potatoes (anything that is grown underground--the fertilized soil is used over and over)

-tomatos

-grapes

-peppers

-carrots

And I skip over organic

-bananas

-melons

-avacado

-pinapple

-peas

-fruits/veggies that are protected by their peel or shell.

*Local Meat. I've been buying hormone free meat for a while now, but Food, Inc really got me pumped up about trying to find it local. I'm still working on that one, but I'll let you know what I find! I'm from Montana.....I should be able to come up with something:)

*Also, yes, REAL meat is quite a bit more than the other stuff, so that's why we don't eat meat every night. We really love bean-anything, meatless soups, eggs,and whole wheat pasta dishes.

This is so much info, and may seem a bit overwhelming. But it is really so easy.

Just eat food. No gimmicks or tricks. Just.Eat.Food.

*please feel free to jump in and share your thoughts! I'd love to hear what YOU are eating!*