What I Ate Wednesday: Baby Steps

Our 10 month old son has had a very dramatic month. 

In about six weeks time, he learned to sit up on his own, pull himself to standing, creep along furniture, feed himself, and to crawl.  He started waving and clapping his hands on his own.  He began sleeping through the night in his crib and napping in his crib.  As he developed all of these skills, he also was pushing four teeth into the top gumline of his mouth.  WOW!

For we adults, sometimes development takes a lot longer.

I started eating healthier and buying better food for my family over two years ago.  I learned about the chemicals and preservatives in processed foods and I started eliminating them from our diet.  Although it was often cheaper to buy packaged potatoes and plain wheat bread, I started making most things from scratch.  I canned produce when it was available.  I began to grow food in my own garden.

It has taken me a while to make the transition.  When I ate meat, I ate less of it.  I stopped using margarine and switched to butter.  We ate more fruits and vegetables with our meals.  I changed my son's "fruit" snacks to actual fruit snacks: dried cranberries and raisins.

I finally placed my first order from the food co-op in town.  No longer do I buy even wheat buns and tortillas; now, I only buy sprouted grain varieties and I make most of our bread from wheat I grind in my Vitamix.  I recently started buying organic cheese and eggs for my family.

Here are the healthy foods I ate.

After my workout (I don't like to eat before exercising in the morning), I ate a yummy bowl of Nature's Path Flax Plus cereal.  I added an extra Tb. of ground flaxseed to the top before pouring over 3/4 of a cup of almond milk.

For lunch, I indulged in a bowl of homemade raspberry sherbet, made with frozen raspberries, 1/2 c. almond milk, and 2 Tb. of light agave nectar in my Vitamix.  I topped with another Tb. of ground flaxseed.

For snacks, I ate a Golden Delicious apple (my favorite variety), but I didn't take a picture of it. I also had a piece of Ezekiel bread toast (I was out of homemade bread) topped with 1 oz. of thinly sliced Follow Your Heart vegan cheddar-style cheese.  It looked so good that I almost forgot to take the picture before I ate it all!

I made Amy's California veggie burgers for supper on Ezekiel sprouted grain buns with olive oil mayo. I topped the burgers with romaine lettuce and sliced tomato from the farmers market.  We also enjoyed a side of asparagus and a romaine lettuce salad with light balsamic viniagrette.

Even though it put me a little over the calories I wanted to consume today, I couldn't resist eating the crust from one of two loaves of whole wheat bread I made this afternoon.

Like my friend Mary, who still cherishes eating bologna sandwiches on white bread, I think I would become ill and given up if I had tried to make all of these changes right away.  I started with baby steps in the right direction.  Now, I can't even imagine going to back to all of the fake food I used to eat.