Thursday, July 05, 2007

Food book - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

I recently read the book, "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" by Barbara Kingsolver. It got me thinking even more about the food I eat and what I feed my family. Since Wee One started eating solid food, (even before, as I was paying attention to what I was eating while breastfeeding), I have been more conscious of what I buy and feed her. It has been a good influence on my diet as I eat her leftovers and she gets a lot of whole grains and fruits because that is what she likes (so that's why I have lost some weight...duh!). She, of course, like any other kid, will eat candy until we run out, but she really prefers fruits, juices, pasta, rice, tortillas, yogurt, peas, corn, cheese, eggs, and milk. Occasionally she'll eat some meat. Not a bad diet for me to follow either.

I have been even more attentive to high fructose corn syrup because I think after a capri sun one day she really crashed into a bad tamtrum (may have just been the 2 year old blues, but this one was really, really bad). Growing up we had liberal access to sodas, chips, etc., but my mom often let them go stale/ flat so that I really didn't care for them any more than any other food. She prepared most of our meals from scratch, chinese home cooking so we ate a lot of veggies, seafood, chicken, and rice. My cooking is an amalgam of chinese/ tex mex/ southern/ quick fix/ italian/ american convenience. I have chips and soda in my house, the soda more for my dh who stopped drinking 3 years ago. We do eat out, sometimes out of boredom/ fatigue at figuring out what to make that will please everyone. It is terrible sometimes what we will put into our bodies to quell the hunger/ keep the routine of a meal.

I do find a lot of pleasure in cooking, preparing meals for my dh and wee one. I have more interest in that than in home decor per se. One of the points of the book that has been sticking with me is the concept of locavore. Now, I live in the desert, not exactly a fertile place, but I do think about and try to buy things that don't have to be shipped from >1000 miles away. So locally, I have noticed tomatoes, melons, and dairy. I live in a big state, but my goal is to try to buy things from in state...like the blueberries I got the other day. It helps that the market I shop at is hq in my own state.

1 comment:

Erica Kain said...

Hey there! I was inspired by Barbara K too, as far as the locavore philosophy. So I started going to the farmer's market more frequently, and grew the garden (I hope BK would be jealous of it... it's organic!)

But my troublemaker husband decided he'd start his OWN philosophy, which is that he'll only eat food grown in the places to which it is native. So no California blueberries, for example, even if they're organic. Unless they are NATIVELY grown, then it doesn't count.

He's not serious about this, but it was a funny wrench to throw into my locavore philosophy!