A Bit About Food in Our House

I read a lot of "health" articles. By health I mean a wide range of topics, from food to exercise to cleaning. Most of the articles are about food -- what it means to have a balanced, healthy diet; tips and tricks for developing such a diet; the importance of eating organic and "abnormal" foods; and cooking/baking advice.

What do I mean by abnormal foods? Well, are you familiar with quinoa? It has become a staple in our household. At the recommendation of a friend, I purchased a bag of quinoa from Costco quite awhile ago (maybe it was about this time last year?). We tried making a couple of different things with it, but mostly it just sat on the shelf. Then, rather suddenly, I started coming across quinoa articles quite frequently. And quinoa came up in several conversations. So last summer we ordered a cook book that's all about quinoa:

We've made a lot of the recipes from this book. I wish I could tell you they were all great, and that I love every recipe, but it's not true. Some of the recipes are terrible. Many of the recipes are bland. Most of them just replace the rice or flour in a traditional recipe with quinoa or quinoa flour. BUT there are some GEMS in this book. For instance, I LOVE several of the soup recipes (we had the Italian wedding soup for dinner this evening; it's a tad bland for Nate's taste, but I like it). There's a DELICIOUS mango chicken recipe, and I like a lot of the breakfast meals (which use quinoa flour, which my mom brings me from the Bob's Red Mill store in Milwaukie). In particular, the waffle recipe is great. Oh! And there's a recipe for banana-and-creme-filled chocolate crepes. Yum-tastic.

In addition to incorporating foods that are less common (but way better for us) into our cooking/baking, we've also switched to whole wheat. I've been using whole wheat flour for years, and we slowly switched over to whole wheat breads (including hamburger buns, which are MUCH tastier with whole wheat), but now we've transitioned all of our pastas and many of our cereals.

Another big change is that we've gone organic with our produce. We're not perfect about it, but when I/we go grocery shopping every week, I first go through the organic section to buy the organic version of everything I can. If something on my list isn't organically available, I go to the regular section. But I try to avoid non-organics, if at all possible. (Note to self, I should really check out the "hippie food" store down the street from my house, as it probably has a wider variety of organic produce. And bonus, it's a local business!) We also try to eat more "seasonally appropriate" produce.

I am looking forward to doing a lot of gardening this summer so that we can cut down on our grocery bill and get even more fresh, healthy, organic foods into our diet. I need to buy some heirloom seeds (mom, remind me to ask you about this later). But we also have a lot of yardwork to complete before the new gardening area will be ready for summer planting! Fun times ahead, for sure. Stay tuned!