October Unprocessed

My bloggy friend Lori is taking the October Unprocessed challenge.  It should not be too hard for her since she makes amazing healthy meals for her family all the time.  I have also decided to take this challenge.  For me it will be a little harder. 

I tend to go in waves of cooking.  I will be super into cooking and making healthy meals.  Then I get bored, errr.... busy and start hitting the Golden Arches a little to often.  Let's be real here.  It is much easier to run through the drive through and grab a $.99 burger between piano, gymnastics, cheer, tutoring, homeschool classes, school drop off and pick ups, than it is to cook an entire meal.  However I am spending way too much money on food.  I still grocery shop and while the food I bought at the store is wasting in the refrigerator, I am spending even more money on fast food.  And can I ask when fast food got so expensive?  I took Leanne and Cameron to Chip*otle and it was $30 for the three of us to eat.  Seriously!?  So, I am taking this as a challenge to not only eat better, but to save money as well.

How am I going to do it?  I was talking to Lisa (my BFF) and I told her about October Unprocessed.  I may have called it "Whole Food October" because I am pretty sure I have adult ADD and could not remember the name 30 minutes after I read it.  Anyway....  I decided when talking to her and after reading the comments on the official sites post, I am not going to be rigid or I will fail.  While I plan to make as may unprocessed foods as possible I can and will use foods I have readily available and I will not be able to go totally organic.  While I think there is a huge benefit to eating all organic food and used to mostly buy organic.  I can no longer do that.  I had to let go of that guilt months ago and just be blessed I can feed my children.  Since there are so many families who go to bed worrying about where their next meal comes from, I choose to be thankful I do not have that worry.  So my October Unprocessed will really be the "We are not eating fast food, mom is cooking everything from scratch, with the best ingredients she can afford" challenge.  I am pretty happy with that!

I made a weekly menu and I plan to share that here as often as I can.

October 1st

Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with spinach and fetta cheese on toast.  One kid loved it, one kid ate it, but suffered through it the entire time, one kid picked it apart pretending to eat it and stuffed it in the trash and the last kid refused to eat it and sneaked to the school cafeteria to eat sugar cereal or pancakes cooked in a bag with a friend.  That child has decided not to do that again because she was tardy to class by 3 minutes and owed that time to her teacher on recess.  Have to love natural consequences. 

Lunch: Was a mash up of things.  Two kids took sack lunches to homeschool co-op.  One kid bought a school lunch which was yogurt and a muffin and sadly I had Wend*ys with one child between appointments.  Yeap!  Day 1 and we had fast food.  The kid was starving and her mom of the year forgot to pack her a lunch to take to school after her appointment.  Epic lunch fail!

Dinner- Sesame (grilled) chicken with broccoli over steamed rice.  Two children loved it, one child liked everything but the sauce so she had plain chicken, broccoli and rice and the last child threw a fit over the broccoli making gagging noises and faces that looked like I was feeding him fried insects at the table, causing one frustrated momma to pick the broccoli out of the bowl, throw  toss it into the kitchen sink, completely miss the sink and splatter sesame chicken all over the kitchen wall, blender and side of the cabinet.  That she then had to clean up.  Joy!

All in all I call day 1 half a success.  Thankful for 31 days in October to get it together.