Stocking a Pantry to Save Money, Time, and Your Health – Part 1

We had another great healthy group meeting at my house this week and we discussed storing lots of healthy food in our pantries.

We covered the following topics:

- Why do I store food?

- What food do I store?

- Where do I buy it?

- How do I store it?

At the meeting, my little apartment was packed with other women interested in feeding their families a healthy diet. Several had babies in arms and it was a full house! To see the energy and interest on this topic was so gratifying and encouraging. After we covered the above topics, most women stayed an extra hour for an informal Q&A session and a half dozen stayed an hour after that (3 hours total). We covered so many great topics that I’ll need some time to blog about them.

Why do I store food?

Storing lots of healthy food simplifies my shopping lists and streamlines my experience at the grocery store. It is economical, and it brings me peace of mind. I also store food because the leaders of my church counsel members to do so.

Convenience
When I go to the grocery store or farmer’s market (every ~5 days in the summer, every ~8-10 days in the winter) I usually go straight to the produce section and then I go to the checkout. That’s it.

Everything else we care to eat is generally already at our house, in a large enough quantity that we don’t have to shop for it weekly.

When I am making dinner, I send my 5 year old downstairs to “shop” in our basement. She’ll bring back all the lentils, canned tomatoes, whole grain pasta, etc. that I need to pull together the meal. Having these things on hand also means we can extend the time between making trips to the grocery store when needed, saving money on gas and reducing impulse buys.

Peace of mind

Because we are moving soon, during the past few months we’ve been focusing on eating from our storage without replenishing it at all. With just ~$30 of fresh produce a week, we’re able to eat really well just by shopping our own basement. This allows us to save some extra money for the period of time this summer when we won’t have a paycheck. While we’d miss fresh stuff, we could certainly eat exclusively from our basement if needed.

Having plenty of healthy staples on hand has also helped during the times Columbus has been without power or been snowed in since we’ve lived here. Power has been off for up to a week at a time, and so many people are flooding the few fast food stores and grocery stores that do have power and clearing the shelves. We stay home and don’t have to worry about where the next meal is going to come from. (Important note: We’ve learned the hard way that it also helps to have a way to cook when the power is out! )

Finally, along with storing food I’ve slowly increased my skill set so now if I want to have tortillas for dinner, I can just make ‘em. I don’t have to, but that option is there because the ingredients are always on hand. I could make tortillas for the whole neighborhood! (In theory. They are a bit labor-intensive to scale up.)

Economics

When people say they can’t afford to eat healthfully, it sure seems like a weak excuse to me. Most healthy staples are downright cheap (lentils!) and others often just take a bit of creativity to bring the cost down.

A beautiful pan of veggies ready to roast and toss with herbs and chickpeas.

I made the above dish inexpensively by taking advantage of a sale on cherry tomatoes, stocking up on frozen corn at a good price, using dried chickpeas bought at a great price, using basil stored in my freezer from our garden last summer, etc.

This same dish would have cost many times more if I had made a special trip to the store and just paid the going rate for fresh basil, corn, cherry tomatoes, and canned chickpeas. If economics are truly an issue for you, you may need to get creative but please don’t assume you have to compromise health.

Because healthy food staples (aside from produce) rarely go on sale or have a coupon, if I take the time to find the best price available in my area or online and then stock up at that price, I save lots of money over just picking it up as needed at whatever store I happen to be in. I’ll detail how I do this in the next post.

Example: My favorite grocery store sells dried garbanzo beans (chickpeas) for $2 / lb in the Mediterranean section, and they’re even pricier in the Mexican section. But the Indian market a block further away sells big bags of chickpeas for $1.25 / lb. I don’t want to be running to the Indian store all the time, but with a little planning I can just go there every six or eight months or so and while I’m there I stock up half dozen products at great prices.

A second example: Raw cashews are $11 / lb in the bulk bins at one grocery store, but $5 / lb at Trader Joe’s and $4.25 / lb if I buy them from my favorite healthy food source online.

Knowing what a good price is also helps when I flip through the grocery store ads and see they’re running a sale on something I buy (peanuts, unsweetened applesauce, canned beans, canned tomatoes). Most of the things on sale outside the produce department aren’t things I’d ever want to feed my family, but I can tell at a glance if the sale is a good one on applesauce and stock up for many months.

Two more notes about the economics of healthy eating:

- Comparing the cost of cashews and kale to the cost of medicine and doctor visits and heart surgery… I’d pick the real food any day of the week. 1 in 3 children born today are predicted to have diabetes due to poor diet and inactivity. That is a disease we “manage” for life and it’s a money sink and saps vitality. It can be completely reversed by cashew and kale! If that’s not a steal of a deal, I don’t know what is.

- Our grocery budget did NOT go up when we changed our diet. It went down. Well, for a while… and then creeped back to its former level when we started overdosing on local peaches, berries, melons, arugula, etc.

And one note about food culture:

- In nearly every other developed country in the world, food takes up a greater percentage of income and time. The preparation of food from scratch is part of the culture. We’ve left that behind in America and we now feel entitled to have instant, no-effort, cheap food. That comes with a very high cost and we’re paying it in poor health and widespread fatness.

I spend more time preparing food now, no question, but it’s satisfying to feed my family well and I enjoy sharing the experience with my children. I would not say I love to cook, and food preparation can certainly become mundane and menial (much like doing the laundry, dusting, etc.) but I’ve really enjoyed the challenge of finding ways to feed my family healthy, delicious food. If it’s a priority, you can make it work. Some families make a big pot of soup on the weekend and eat it for lunch all week long. It doesn’t have to be glamorous.

What food do I store?

The food you keep in your pantry in large part determines the food you feed your family. Especially when life gets hectic, I often find myself making do with what I have on hand. The fact is: If there’s junk in my pantry then either I’ll end up feeding that to my family right away or I’ll feed it to my family after a period of time of wrestling with guilt and/or cravings. That’s not to say we can’t or shouldn’t enjoy less-than-healthy food sometimes! It just means we need to acknowledge that our choice at the grocery store ends up in our stomachs. I remember when my sweet grandma told me she was trying to cut back on cheese… as she was putting a truly monstrous package of it in her cart at Costco. “You see,” she said, “There isn’t much to each slice!” That may be true, but 4 pounds of cheese in the cart = 4 pounds of cheese in your stomach unless you plan on throwing some out.

Personally, I don’t like expending my daily allotment of willpower on resisting cookies and cheese, so I usually choose not to engage in the battle. I just don’t buy junk at the store so it’s a non-issue at home.

Even if you’ve decided to store healthy food, you still have to tackle the question of what to store and in what quantities. Some things keep better than others. There are two approaches:

The first is to just pay attention to what you cook with and buy more of that. If you make a dish with lentils that you like, store 10+ lbs of lentils. Eat lentils nearly weekly? Store 30+ pounds of lentils. If you love black bean soup made from canned beans, next time you buy black beans clear off the shelf. (My great neighbor always leaves a can or two just in case the next person absolutely needs that item for dinner that night. )

That is the way I’ve built up our storage, so I know everything we have is in regular rotation and would be easy to fix in case we were forced to live only off our food storage for whatever reason. I shoot for right around 6 months worth of nuts, sunflower seeds, and brown rice because they don’t keep as long.

For everything else I’d love 12 months but with our apartment size I still end up with 6 months to a year’s worth, depending on what it is. Note that for us so far, it does not mean I have the amount I would need if we were to eat ONLY those foods for a year, but rather the amount I know our family eats regularly in about that amount of time. That is easier to predict and makes rotation a very natural process. I highly recommend starting there and then, if/when you’re ready, scale up.

Another approach is to use a food storage calculator online, like this one and adjust it to fit your diet. Remember these calculators and recommendations were designed with a standard American diet in mind, so you will need to adjust it to be a diet that promotes long-term health. For a family of five, for instance, it calls for the following (to live exclusively off of for a year). I’ve noted the adjustment I would make for each:

GRAINS

Wheat: 525 pounds – sounds reasonable. We haven’t stored more than 250 in this apartment, but since we use whole wheat nearly every day to make our own bread, tortillas, etc. and wheat lasts forever this would be a good goal.
Flour: 86 pounds – I have no desire to store white flour so I’m ok with the ~5lb we usually have on hand. I’d much rather have something with better nutrition. Whole wheat flour is not shelf-stable for more than a few months so I don’t have any flour for long-term storage.
Cornmeal: 86 pounds – Here again, the shelf-stable cornmeal is degerminated and not a whole, healthy flour. I grind my own cornmeal from popcorn kernels so I store those instead.
Oats: 86 pounds – We love oats and have them several mornings every week in addition to using them in pancakes, so 86 pounds would not last us a year. I like to have at least 50 on hand of rolled and 50 of steel cut, and again, that doesn’t last nearly a whole year around here.
Rice: 175 pounds – White rice is not very nutritious and brown rice is so nutritious that it doesn’t store well longer-term, so we store about as much brown rice as we typically eat in six months.
Pasta: 86 pounds – Whole wheat pasta will keep a year just fine, so ideally I’d have as much on hand as we typically eat in a year.

FATS AND OILS

When you’re eating whole food (brown rice as opposed to white, popcorn as opposed to degerminated cornmeal, whole wheat as opposed to white flour, etc.) there is enough fat to live on without adding any extra. Nearly all whole plants, including ones you don’t think of first for being fatty, have a decent percent of their calories coming from fat. Especially with our ~6 months of nuts and seeds, and the amount of oil we usually use in a year on hand (2 qts each of olive oil and canola oil), I’m ok with skipping all the rest. I understand that fat is very high in calories, which could come in handy in a true and lengthy emergency, but they are empty calories and I’d rather get my calories from storing more legumes.
Shortening: 14 pounds – nope
Oil: 7 gallons – ~1 gallon
Mayonnaise: 7 qts – nope
Salad dressing: 5 qts – nope
Peanut butter: 14 lbs – We make our own peanut butter, usually, but we shoot for more than 14 pounds of peanuts and we store lots of other nuts as well (pecans, walnuts, almonds, cashews).

LEGUMES

Beans, dry: 105 pounds – Yes please, except that estimate would be low for our family. We store more white beans, pinto and black beans… at least 50 pounds each and then also garbanzo, kidney, and black-eyed peas.
Lima beans: 13 pounds – No, not my preferred bean.
Soy beans: 35 pounds – I’d love to get a soymilk maker some day and stock up on soy beans but otherwise I don’t use them. I do keep lots of shelf-stable soymilk on hand, though.
Split peas: 13 pounds – That’s not enough! And we store yellow split peas as well.
Lentils: 13 pounds – That is really not enough and we store red lentils as well.
Dry Soup Mix: 13 – Nope, we just make soup by combining the above.

SUGARS

We actually aren’t that far off from the calculator on sugar storage, especially considering our family’s consumption is far, far below average. I store ~25-50 pounds of honey because we use it to make bread and we also put it on bread as a treat. I also have blackstrap molasses on hand, a few jars of homemade jam for Scott, and that’s it for sugar and I’m ok with that. The vast majority of sweetness in our food comes from fruit so the dried fruit we store should really overlap with this category.
Honey: 9 pounds – More!
Sugar: 40 pounds – Far less.
Brown Sugar: 9 pounds – Far less.
Molasses: 5 pounds – Yes, blackstrap.
Corn Syrup: 9 pounds – Ew.
Jam: 9 pounds – A bit less.
Fruit drink, powdered: 21 pounds – If this is used to flavor water, I’m glad I have some bottles of lemon juice around instead.
Flavored Gelatin: 5 pounds – Nope.

MILK

No breastfeeding pictures here, though I am a big advocate.
The only member of our family who currently needs milk is Daniel (7 months) and he gets it from me. I have thought about storing some baby formula in case something happened to me in an emergency and I wasn’t able to provide that for him. So far, though, I’m feeling ok with just being his source of milk.
Dry Milk: 210 pounds - nope.
Evaporated Milk: 42 cans – nope.
Other: 44 pounds – I suppose soymilk falls under this, and we do keep a couple dozen quarts of soymilk on hand.

COOKING ESSENTIALS

Baking Powder: 5 pounds - Yep, we get Rumsford aluminum -free in a big tub
Baking Soda: 5 lbs - I store even more because I use it for cleaning
Yeast: 2.5 lbs – Yep
Salt: 19 lbs – Wow that’s a lot! It’s cheap and easy to store and we do use it, but I definitely haven’t felt the need to store that much. I can’t think of a food that we buy pre-salted other than the occasional can of beans or tomatoes or box of cold cereal. And I know we aren’t plowing through a carton and a half of salt a month!
Vinegar: 2.5 gal – We store plain white vinegar and I use it for laundry and cleaning as well, but we also keep plenty of extra apple cider vinegar, rice vinegar, red wine vinegar, and balsamic vinegar on hand as well.

ANNE’S BONUS HEALTHY STORAGE STUFF
This obviously isn’t in the calculator, but we store:
- 1 liter glass bottles of lemon juice we buy at Costco
- seeds so we can grow fresh vegetables
- extra spices (especially whole ones, which keep longer)
- whole, unground flaxseeds and chia seeds (which both store well for a year or more)
- sunflower seeds, brown sesame seeds (~6 months worth)
- quinoa (which stores well for over a year)
- maple syrup
- wheat gluten (I use this in breads and also in bean burger and bean balls)
- canned pumpkin
- home-canned and store-bought unsweetened applesauce
- canned tomatoes, paste, and sauce – lots of these!
- salsa, lots of this!
- canned beans for convenience
- canned peaches in pear juice (we blend these up and warm with cinnamon to top pancakes)
- dried fruit including plenty of raisins, cranberries, mangoes, apples, and dates
- canned chipotle chili peppers in adobo sauce (what, we can’t have flavor in an emergency?)
- canned diced green chili peppers
- dried mushrooms, from Costco
- rolled grain blend (barley, rye, oats, sunflower seeds, wheat… we use it for homemade muesli)
- canned coconut milk (another source of concentrated calories, many of which come from fat)

Again, we store what we use. We just buy lots of each thing to fill our pantry.

The typical food storage calculator operates on the basis that you’re looking for exclusively long-term storage that you’ll need to deliberately rotate. Certainly there is a place for that approach once you’re storing what your family actually eats in terms of healthy staples for a year. At that point you could venture into de-oxygenated wheat buckets, etc. but for most of us I would imagine getting a usable and USEFUL supply and gradually extending it is a more palatable approach.

Next up: Where we buy our healthy pantry staples and how I store them.

Still here

As the slew of nutrition related posts continues, please know I haven’t gone off some sort of vegetarian deep-end. I’ve just been trying to focus on capturing the content of this short-term healthy group while it’s fresh in my mind.

To those who visit the blog for updates on our family and/or pictures of your grandchildren, please know that I will be back to our regularly scheduled blogging in the future.

Hmmm… maybe irregular and unscheduled would be a more realistic prediction based on past performance? At any rate, my “normal” blogging will indeed resume.

I am focused on jotting things down in our family journal and taking photos every month or so to capture this wonderful season of having three little children. But actually blogging about it seems to require 25 hour days for me!

Here is photographic proof that life continues to be exciting and good to us:

Caitlyn is riding the glider bike now, taking very tiny steps and puttering around the yard “beep beeping” anyone that comes remotely near her.

Mackenzie and I continue to enjoy doing art together as part of her homeschool. I’ve always shied away from attempting anything artistic because I know I’m not “artsy” and frankly I don’t like doing things I don’t do well. But I wanted to show Mackenzie that it’s ok to just dive in and try something new without being perfect at it. She tends to be a perfectionist and is easily frustrated with her limitations and I know exactly where she gets it from. Getting out of our comfort zone and creating together has been a wonderful thing for both of us. Here is a quick (shadowy) snapshot of part of a sketch I did of Daniel. I later used chalk pastels to finish it.

Speaking of chalk pastels, they are a five year old’s dream. Messy and colorful and grown-up!

My children are oh so different. Caitlyn dumped 1800 (according to the package) hair ties onto the rug in less than one second and Mackenzie cheerfully offered to help me pick them up… and then insisted on sorting them by color as she did so. Eventually, I had to cut her short and just coax her into scooping the rest into the bag. She would have sorted every one, I think!

As a reward for filling up our family “kindness jar”, the girls opted for an extra pizza and movie night where they could have free rein over the pizza toppings. Free rein ended up being cheese, pineapple, mandarin oranges, asparagus, tomatoes, two colors of bell pepper, and diced apple. They ate so many toppings while making their pizza that Mackenzie didn’t even taste her finished pizza that night. She was too full.

If Mackenzie is using the white board for school and I get distracted, all bets are off.

When I find more hours in my day, I have a post planned for price comparison on homemade muesli vs. store bought cereal.

… and a tutorial on homemade whole wheat tortillas!

Our Easter was lovely and featured carrot cake waffles and for dinner, fish, honeycomb, hummus, pita, and grape juice. We also had gifts for the whole family and balloons to celebrate.

I left my children for 36 hours(!) and went to a homeschooling convention. It was time well spent but I missed Daniel, especially. Pumping is just not the same. Incidentally, my friend fed her baby my pumped milk while we were there since she lost her supply and now uses formula. What do you think? Cool or weird? I was happy not to have to pour it down the drain.

This charmer now has two teeth but you’d never know. He doesn’t put anything in his mouth to munch on and drool all over. Since we do self-feeding he really hasn’t had any solid food and he’s now 7 months. Hmmm… c’mon, kid!

He is now mobile and an expert army crawler and barrel roller. The “long arm of the law” now snags anything and everything left out. It’s making my girls much more motivated to put their things away!

He is still a chunka and so good natured and adorable that we just love on him all day long. Wouldn’t you?

This trooper gets some stroller time every day while Mackenzie and I work on her “marathon in a month” goal.

Him too. And his extra chin.

Love this lanky lady. She’s maturing every day and is a marvel to behold.

I’m trying my best not to be so smitten with this one that she gets away with everything. Drama seems to follow her wherever she and her mischief-making ways go. Yesterday, she fell down nearly an entire flight of stairs while trying to sneak her blanket down them. Today? she lost control of a tricycle down a hill in our front yard and crashed it into the street. Naturally, a car was coming and I was across the lawn juggling a diaper bag, two used diapers, two cans of pumpkin, and an expensive camera while trying to unlock the front door. I dropped everything and ran, the car saw her and stopped, and she ended up with hardly a scratch on her but I think I lost a year of my life from the stress it put on my heart.

Keeping Fresh Produce Fresh Longer

In addition to our gadget discussion at the last meeting, I tackled the topic of storing produce.

Did you know you can dramatically extend the life of your fruits and vegetables in the few minutes it takes to unpack your bags from the store or market? Prepare to be amazed.

The Facts

I don’t like going to the grocery store any more often than I need to. I have three small children and we are a one car family, so getting to the store is a chore even though it’s simple once we’re there. (We’ll talk at the next meeting about how having a rocking stash of longer-term storage foods like lentils and canned tomatoes can save you time, money and hassle at the grocery store.)

I love having fresh fruits and vegetables on hand. That means when I do go to the store, our fridge is usually bursting. And in the summertime often our counters are covered as well.

Inevitably, when produce goes bad before I use it I have guilt. I hate the wasted money (and often, wasted meal plan since I can’t make the thing I was planning on any longer and I have to come up with an alternative).

At my house, produce goes bad when:
- I totally forget about something in the back of the fridge
- I think we’ve eaten something that we haven’t
- My plans for meals get scrambled up due to unexpected events and something particularly perishable gets pushed back in the schedule too far.
- It also happens when I buy a vegetable that I don’t have concrete plans for using up. We have learned over the years that Scott is in charge of all exotic vegetable purchases and cooking because it stresses me out to have an aging rutabaga and no idea what to do with it. (Actually, over the years our definition of “exotic” has changed as we’ve become more comfortable with different foods. I know just what to do with rutabaga now. )

For a little perspective on the amount of produce we can go through in a big week in the summer, here is a humorous post from several years ago with a detailed list of all the fresh stuff we had to fit in our fridge after a particularly egregious overbuy, and the 72 hour follow-up. I loved re-reading those because I’ve come so far in my knowledge of how to take care of my produce after I bring it home.

Heirloom tomatoes in the fridge? Not anymore.

How Good Food Goes Bad

The five main variables for keeping fruits and vegetables in good condition are:

1. Freshness/quality at the time of purchase
2. Time before you eat it
3. Storage temperature
4. Storage humidity (moisture level in the air)
5. Exposure to ethylene gas, which only affects some fruits and vegetables

We can control many variables in this situation:
- Where to put things in the fridge
- What to store things in
- Where and when we buy our produce
- What goes in the fridge and what stays on the counter
- Whether to wash things before storing them.
- What to eat first, next, and last from our produce stash.

If this is news to you, get excited. Knowledge is power. But don’t worry about blowing it if you can’t swallow all this information at once. Just make small adjustments and see if your results are improved… then build on that.

It matters where we put things in the fridge and what we store things in

In preparation for this meeting, I went to one of my favorite sources for produce a full week beforehand and deliberately stashed each thing I bought in my fridge in different ways to showcase the impact on freshness 7 days later.

Here are the results documented rather feebly in pictures. The differences were more striking in person.

Cilantro, stored in the produce bag I grabbed at the store (not washed beforehand, except for the regular misting that occurs at the store:

Result: Limp, yellowing in parts and black in other parts. There was definitely some that could still be salvaged and used, but the slimy bits were pretty unappealing.

I stored another, comparable, bunch of cilantro in a tupperware fridgesmart container. I untied the bunch when I brought it home from the store, spread it out a bit and picked out any remotely bad looking leaves. This kind of tupperware container has two vent holes and a list on the side of the container of which fruits and vegetables do better with 2 holes open versus 1 hole open or both closed. I followed the instructions for fresh herbs and kept one vent hole open.

One week later, I opened the lid and took this picture:

Aside from one rogue piece at the top that was crunched in the lid and removed, the rest of the bunch probably looks better than when I bought it. No limpness, slime or change of color. It smells great and none went to waste.

Red leaf lettuce

The green leaf lettuce didn’t look good at the store so I ended up with red leaf, which unfortunately makes it more challenging to see wilt and color change. However, you could feel the difference with this one.

For the first head, I kept it wrapped in the produce bag I grabbed at the store and it was just damp from being misted at the store.

Result: Definitely limp and unappealing. I hear you can freshen up lettuce by soaking it very cold water and that may have worked. It wasn’t slimy but it wasn’t anywhere near as crisp enough to entice me to make it into a salad.

For the other head, I brought it home from the store and just popped it in a Kinetic
Go Green Nano Silver food storage container (along with some bell peppers):

The plastic is normally clear, so you can see it is humid in there.

I wish you could reach out and touch the lettuce. It’s still crisp and beautiful and every bit as appealing as the day I bought it.

Strawberries – Although I’ve had wonderful results from storing berries in these containers in the past, unfortunately there weren’t very high quality berries at the store this time around so after a week even the ones that were stored better weren’t in wonderful condition.

This batch was kept in their clamshell in my fridge on the shelf:

They look ok in the picture but pretty gross in person. I honestly debated not feeding them to my kids the next day but they aren’t picky when it comes to berries and gobbled them up anyway after I had cut out the worst parts. These berries were dark, puckered, and the leaves were wilty.

For the other batch of strawberries, I took them out of the clamshell and put them straight into their own Kinetic
Go Green Nano Silver food storage container. I’m not sure whether it’s because they were already looking a bit dodgy at the store or because I didn’t open the container at all during the week they lived in there… but it was TOO moist in the container:

Had I noticed that earlier, I would have dried out the sides of the container a bit mid-week.

At any rate, the berries were definitely better looking than those still in the clamshell. These were still plump with vibrant leaves . Several suffered from soggy bottoms, but I had no qualms about serving these up with lunch the following day.

Finally, I had 4 orange bell peppers, which I stored differently. One went straight onto the fridge shelf:

It was shriveled and still edible but only barely so.

One was put straight in a “crisper” drawer in the fridge:

It seems to have been a bit battered by its stay in the drawer, and it showed mold on the stem and a softening bottom, but it definitely fared better than the pepper on the shelf.

One pepper I left wrapped up in the produce bag from the store:

This pepper looked fine, nearly as good as when I bought it.

Finally, I put a pepper in a Kinetic
Go Green Nano Silver food storage container (with the lettuce):

The pepper was every bit as good looking as the day I bought it.

A fridge “crisper” drawer is simply intended to trap humidity. Refrigerators depend on continual air circulation and it’s very dry air. Keeping something in a drawer protects it from some of that drying cycle. Keeping it contained in a bag would increase that protection somewhat, but some things like fresh herbs need (humid) air circulation to avoid becoming slimy so a bag is really not ideal. And for leafy greens like lettuce, often the moisture on them as they come home from the store is not sufficient to prevent wilting if they are just left in a bag.

Lots of details on my specific recommendations are at the bottom of this post.

Where and When We Buy Our Produce Matters

I’m continually amazed by the difference in quality of produce at the different grocery stores in my area. There’s understandably a dramatic difference from chain to chain, but some specific locations are notoriously bad (or good) for produce as well.

Let me be clear on this: eating produce is miles better than not eating produce, and you certainly don’t need to be fussy to reap the major nutritional benefits from increasing your fruit and vegetable intake. We have just found that since produce constitutes the vast majority of what we buy on a shopping trip, it’s worth finding the best sources for it. And choosing the best melon or leek is another whole topic altogether… one we’ve had the fun of figuring out over time.

I’m sure this varies by area, but we have been happy with nearly all the produce at Costco and Meijer. We have favorite farms to buy peaches and apples from directly when they are in season. We have been less happy with produce from Marc’s and Aldi. It seems that Giant Eagle and Kroger have produce that varies wildly in quality depending on location.

Over time, explore the stores where you live and pay close attention to the freshness and variety of their produce (this happens pretty naturally when you start increasing your consumption of fruits and vegetables).

Buy in season. Buy in season. Buy in season. Some fruits and vegetables are so season dependent that the flavor and longevity will be vastly different if you buy them out of season. Also, in general, the further something has traveled to arrive at the store, the worse it’ll taste. Buying in season doesn’t have to be complicated, just ask yourself as you’re making a meal plan, “what’s in season?” and focus more heavily on those things. Again, this is something that becomes second nature over time as you’re eating more fruits and vegetables.

Ask the produce department manager when they get deliveries. Costco, for example, gets produce delivered twice a week. So given the choice, I shop on days when they’ve stocked their shelves with fresh produce rather than on days when the produce is 2 days older.

What goes in the fridge and what stays on the counter

Cooler air slows down or stops the ripening/rotting process. That means that putting some fruits and vegetables straight in the fridge is the best thing you can do for them, but for others… it’s bad news.

Washing things before storing them

Here again, washing before storing can be excellent for some things (sturdy leafy greens) but a death sentence for other things (apples, berries). Usually this comes down to the ideal humidity level for storing the food. Our default is to wash before eating.

What to eat first, next, and last from our produce stash

We have found two helpful tools to guide our consumption:
- I make a list of dinners I intend to make from the produce I bought, and I put our meal list in order so that we’re eating the most fragile produce first and saving the hardier produce to stretch out our next trip to the store.

Example: Our dishes on our list might be: black bean soup, a butter lettuce salad with red pears and onions, a white bean soup with fresh spinach in it, pan-roasted asparagus, baked ratatouille with eggplant and peppers, cashew kale quinoa with red peppers, and lentil and rice burritos. We usually cook enough for 2 dinners when we make things like soup or burritos, so that meal list is for about 10 days. Eggplant and delicate lettuce like butter lettuce take top priority, then probably the asparagus side dish, and the soup with spinach, followed by the cashew kale with peppers. Dishes that mainly come from canned and dry goods such as black bean soup and lentil and rice burritos come last on the list. They help me extend my time between trips to the store.

I rarely am able to “schedule” meals because our appetites and plans seem to change a lot with Scott’s erratic work schedule and the way my day plays out with three small children but I do have a loose “order of meals” that I follow so I know what I hope to make next.

We also have great success using a “Hit List” on the front of our fridge. It’s a very low tech way to make sure things get eaten in a timely manner to minimize waste. When we’re browsing for a snack or trying to pull lunch together, we can glance at the list and know what produce (and leftovers) are top priority to eat soon. I jot one down on an as-needed basis and we just cross off and tack new things on for as long as the list stays readable.

You can see I listed down the left with the least perishable things at the bottom. As I crossed off a few, I added more items off to the right but they are still clustered by perishability (strawberries near the top).

To answer a question someone asked at the healthy group night: How do I know what should get eaten first? My answer was… you learn as you go.

Putting it all together

There are lots of guides you can find online for what to store where. The problem is that they often conflict. Here are two that seem sane to me: this post on The V Spot and this article on ecoki. And this one actually has hard data on ideal temperatures, humidity, and ethylene gas production and sensitivity: Optimal Fruit and Vegetable Storage Conditions.

I highly recommend buying some dedicated storage containers for your fridge because they’ve made such a big difference in our house over the last three years we’ve used them. We’ve noticed two drawbacks: our favorite containers don’t nest well when they’re not in use. And, produce stored in containers will take up more room than if you just stuff it in the fridge while its still in the produce bags. Because of the latter, and to save time, if we plan on eating certain things within two days, we don’t bother boxing those things up. We own one of the biggest size, and one the next size down, as well as a variety pack of smaller sizes and we love them all. You may want to measure your fridge shelf space before investing in the large sizes.

My takeaway from the little experiment I did was not that everyone should run out and buy the exact same containers I use (although I’ve been super happy with them in the ~3 years we’ve owned them). My takeaway is simply that: the way you store produce can have a huge impact on maintaining its quality. So pay a little attention. Do a little experimenting of your own. Try putting a damp paper towel in with your lettuce. Try storing your berries in a regular old tupperware until you eat them and see if you notice a difference.

Here are some things that work for me:

Apples – Pull out any that are bruised and eat those first. Don’t wash until right before eating. Keep in a plastic bag in the fridge if possible, though a loose box in the basement will still keep a few weeks.

Potatoes (all kinds), onions (except for green onions and leeks), winter squash – These need ventilation! No plastic bags. Place in loose mesh or open boxes in a cool, dark place but not in your fridge. There’s some talk about onions and potatoes needing to be separated to increase longevity so you might try that.

Melons of all kinds, and pineapple – keep on the counter until they smell and feel ready to eat. Then cut and refrigerate. I keep my pineapple upside down because it seems to keep the sugar from pooling at the bottom as much.

Pears and avocados – keep on the counter until they are ripe (or almost ripe, in the case of pears since we like them a bit firm) then pop them in the fridge and they’ll keep for weeks. I leave avocados exposed to fridge air and I keep pears wrapped in a plastic bag in the crisper.

Fresh herbs (including green onions) – Just like the cilantro treatment above, I always separate the bunches and fluff them a bit and box them up. I’ll sometimes spray them just a bit if they seem dry to begin with. Others say they trim them and stick them in a glass of water with a plastic bag on top and they keep them in the fridge for weeks with success. I haven’t tried this myself, mainly because I’m a klutz and likely to knock over that glass of water in a hurry.

Lettuce and spinach – These need to be damp and able to breathe and the best way I’ve found to do this is to put them in one of my storage containers in the fridge and take care not to pack them too tightly. You can rinse and spin them mostly dry first, or give them a light spray with water if they look wilty already. If I buy spinach that is pre-bagged, I leave it in there but as soon as we’ve eaten some I toss the rest around in the bag to prevent clumping (which leads to sliminess). I’ve heard a damp paper towel together with the leafies in a perforated plastic bag does a great job. Experiment and see what is a good fit for you.

Other leafy greens (kale, collards, chard) – These tend to be hardier and I usually cut them off the stalks and put them in a produce container. They don’t seem to mind being packed pretty tightly in there, and I don’t usually add any extra moisture.

Eggplant – Eat soon and wrap in plastic wrap in the fridge if you get desperate.

Summer squash - Same protocol as eggplant, but they last longer on the counter.

Berries – Straight into a container in the fridge.

Bananas – Keep on counter and eat until they get spots, then feed to the kids, then if they are really spotty I peel them and freeze them for quick breads and smoothies later.

Peppers, any kind – Straight into a storage container in the fridge

Mangos – On counter until ripe, then start eatin’!

Asparagus – My strategy in the past has been to keep this in the fridge and eat it soon, but apparently the glass of water trick works as well as it does for herbs, so I might try that.

Tomatoes – Used canned tomatoes unless you can get local tomatoes in season. In that case, keep them on the counter and eat them soon. Never refrigerate because it kills the flavor.

Citrus – Keep on the counter.

Grapes – Straight in the fridge, leave in perforated plastic bag or clam shell.

Leeks – I cut them down to size a bit (and save the darker parts for soup, yum!) and put them in an oblong storage container. I will sometimes cut them open and wash them thoroughly first, or I’ll do that right before I cook with them. Those suckers are dirty!

Mushrooms – Refrigerate in original packaging and use soon.

Peaches – Leave on counter until ripe and then eat and eat some more. You can refrigerate if you truly can’t keep up with eating them.

Rutabagas – May or may not be waxed. These will keep a really long time in the fridge if waxed, but the goal is to keep them humid so it’s a good idea to put them in a container.

Pomegranates – We leave them on our counter but stick them in the fridge if too much time goes by and they keep a long time. You can freeze the seeds!

The Best Gadgets for Healthy Cooking

We had a “meet and greet” with kitchen gadgets at my house last week, with close to 20 women from my new group checking things out and swapping tips. It was so fun!

I began the meeting with a big disclaimer:
Above all else, you have to decide what works for you in your situation, your budget, and your family.

Seriously let that sink in. Because every kitchen gadget you acquire will cost money and take up space in your home. I advise evaluating your own habits and priorities to see if something is a good fit before deciding you need it.

That being said, I am a kitchen appliance junkie. These toys help me get tastier dinner on the table, faster. I currently own and regularly use the following:
A 6 qt stovetop pressure cooker, a rice cooker, a bread machine, a 7 cup food processor, a vitamix, and electric wheat grinder. (And if you’re really going to get picky I’d have to ‘fess to using an electric griddle, a waffle iron, a toaster, a hot air popcorn popper, a food dehydrator, a pressure canner, a mandolin, a microwave, and a salad spinner.) Yeow. High maintenance much?

I could “make do” with much, much less. But I’m grateful I don’t have to. We’ve accumulated the above over 8 1/2 years of marriage and each is put to good use to feed our family.

When it comes to meals for my family I always have to balance:

• Nutrition
• Taste
• My own time
• My own sanity. This is related to time, but also factors in when the prep work needs to take place. If I have to be in the kitchen for an extended amount of time right before dinner, my sanity takes a hit.
• Our budget.

The sweet spot is a moving target. It depends on whether I’m pregnant or just had a baby, how available Scott is to help with cooking or shopping, and what time of year it is. Sometimes I dial up convenience and dial down taste and/or nutrition when time is the major factor.

Example: My friend makes excellent homemade whole wheat bread but recently decided that this year, she’s buying whole wheat bread at the store. She’s losing out to varying degrees on money, taste, and nutrition but she’s scoring big on sanity. She may be able to put that time saved towards cooking better breakfasts, or maybe she needs to focus more on another area of her life right now and keep food simple (but still in line with her health goals!)

You have to run a similar mental cost-to-benefit ratio for things like cooking your own beans, grinding your own wheat, buying a food processor to make your own hummus, etc. Some changes will be worth it to you, others won’t.

My big piece of advice is to stick to your nutrition goals and let the other things fall into place as they need to right now. If your goal is to stop eating meat, then you’re likely going to need to eat a lot more beans. Just buy canned beans for now, then consider a pressure cooker. Don’t keep centering your meals around chicken and cheese just because you don’t have the time to make your own beans!

Put another way, please don’t let the quest for perfection inhibit progress. Venture into the world of healthy eating using what you have on hand, and adapt your kitchen as you go.

Pressure Cookers

The Advantages:

You can cook dried beans fast, without soaking. The temperature inside a pressure cooker reaches 250 degrees Fahrenheit (water typically boils at 212 degrees) allowing you to cook things at a higher heat. But because a pressure cooker locks in steam, you can keep the pot on “low” heat after it reaches pressure and avoid the risk of burning, and the need to scrape the bottom of the pan, etc.

Why cook your own beans? They taste better than canned beans, you can add salt at your discretion and they are a lot cheaper.

- At the meeting, we taste-tested my pressure-canned plain white beans alongside canned beans and canned beans that had been thoroughly rinsed. The difference was huge (to me at least!). Even the rinsed canned beans taste very salty and sort of like metal. The home cooked beans taste like… beans. I served my 5 year old daughter some plain beans with lunch the following day and just mixed the canned ones in with the home cooked beans. She is usually a polite eater but she made a face and told me “some of these beans don’t taste like… beans”. I kid you not.

- Often canned beans have 400 mg per half cup, or more than a half teaspoon of salt per can. Low sodium varieties are available, but can be significantly more expensive.

- You can count on making about 3 15oz cans worth of beans from one pound of dried beans. So if I buy dried garbanzo beans at $1.20/lb then that would be the equivalent of paying $.40 per can for tasty, no salt beans. If the cheapest cans of beans are $.80 at the store, that means I’m paying half price for each can by cooking them myself. We can easily use 4-6 cans of beans when we make a big meal so the savings add up fast!

Specifically for a pressure cooker, you’re going to be able to get your bean cooking down to a science instead of constantly stirring and fussing over a pot on the stove for hours. Your house is going to smell less beany, and you’re going to be able to procrastinate throwing dinner together a bit more.

Purchase Options

You have a choice of stovetop vs. electric, and you also have the choice of size.

My friend, Tiffany, brought her Fagor 6 qt “multi-cooker” pressure cooker to show off, and I showed my Fagor Splendid 6 qt stovetop pressure cooker. We’ve each had ours for years and are very happy with them.

The electric variety is less scary than stovetop (though stovetop now has safety features that make it quite safe), it doesn’t take up room on your stove, it has a delay timer and an automatic shutoff, and it has the benefit of being a rice cooker and a slow cooker in addition to a pressure cooker. It can be more expensive, and the largest size it comes in is 6 qt. That can cook 4 cups of dried beans, which makes about 6 15oz cans worth.

The stovetop variety is very simple to use, doesn’t take up counter space, can be used as a regular pot anytime, is generally less expensive, and can easily be found at 8 and 10 qt sizes. I recommend springing for one with an aluminum disc at the bottom because it distributes heat much better than a purely stainless steel cooker. Generally you don’t want to fill it much more than halfway full and I usually only put 3 cups of dried beans in it (yielding ~4.5 15oz cans). This is not big enough for our growing family so I’m looking to invest in a second pressure cooker. That will also allow me the flexibility to cook different types of beans separately.

If I was buying one today and could afford it, I’d get a 6qt electric pressure cooker and then invest in a 10 qt stovetop cooker down the road to replace my 6qt stovetop cooker. Fagor is a great brand but I’m sure there are others!

Alternatives

- You can soak beans overnight and cook them in a regular pot on the stove. It’ll take several hours but with patience it absolutely can be done.
- You can put your dried beans in a slow cooker to cook them.
- You can buy canned beans! I still do, and keep several cans of each variety on hand for absolutely last-minute meals or sometimes when I only need a single can for something.

More to consider

- There is much debate about whether to salt beans before or after cooking, whether soaking, rinsing, adding baking soda, adding seaweed, etc. helps cut down on digestive gas. My very best advice is to deliberately try it different ways and see what works for you. Write it down! For me, I rarely soak, I don’t add anything but water and beans to the pan, and I generally rinse before I put the beans in and again after they are done cooking. Believe it or not, I’ve posted previously about gas caused by a healthy diet and the short story is: your gut adjusts and it’s no big deal.

- I won’t share any specific cooking times here, because you’ll get instructions with your pressure cooker and you’ll definitely need to do some trial and error to figure out your ideal cooking time. Write down how long you cooked the beans for, if you soaked them, whether you did quick release or let them come down from pressure on their own. Soon you’ll have you’re own personal guide for how long to cook your garbanzo beans so they’re soft for hummus and how long to cook them so they’re perfect for curries. Certainly you can plan on having unsoaked beans ready to eat in under an hour.

- I also use my pressure cooker for magic lentils (recipe in my cookbook) and for steel cut oats. I would love to use it for other one-pot meals but haven’t done much experimenting in that area yet.

Wheat Grinder

The Advantages

Grind fresh, better-tasting whole wheat flour and healthier cornmeal anytime you like. This enables you to have a healthy, long-term food storage. Although white flour has a long shelf life, pre-ground whole wheat flour has a fairly short shelf life because of its high vitamin and oil content. Whole wheat berries will keep for years … decades if packaged without oxygen.

I grind flour every week or two and just keep it in a airtight plastic container in the cupboard. (I linked to the same style as mine, but I’m not positive about the size… mine stores 7 lb of flour and that is perfect for me.)

I did not list cost as an advantage because currently it isn’t for me. Five years ago, I purchased wheat from the local LDS cannery for $.19/lb in 25 lb bags. Now? It’s $.46/lb , which is equivalent to paying $2.30 for a 5 lb bag of ground flour at the store. It seems to me you can often find whole wheat flour at the store on sale for $2.50 , so the cost saving is not large, and certainly not worth the trouble of grinding wheat or the cost of investing in a grinder.

However, the cost savings of making your own whole wheat bread is significant (upwards of $1/loaf still) and I’m told the flavor and texture is significantly better when using freshly ground flour as opposed to flour that has been sitting on a shelf for months. I still grind my own because I own a grinder and it’s worth it to me to be able to keep a lot of food on hand for my family and not depend on trips to the store every few weeks to keep making bread.

The cornmeal sold at stores is degerminated and enriched and is therefore akin to white flour rather than a whole grain. With a wheat grinder, you can just throw in popcorn kernels and get fresh, whole grain cornmeal.

Purchase Options

I’m sure there are other good ones out there, but we demoed the Blendtec Kitchen Mill and the L’Equip Nutrimill.

I own the Blendtec and so does my neighbor. It’s LOUD but can grind flour coarsely or fine and I’ve been happy with it for 5+ years. I have had to replace the rubber gasket once and bought an extra filter at the same time to have as a backup.

The Nutrimill is significantly faster and somewhat quieter and my friend is happy with it though she hasn’t used it as often or as long as I’ve used mine.

I’ve owned a kitchenaide wheat grinding attachment before (not the brand-name one, but a different one that had better reviews) and it was slower and didn’t grind as finely. It also seemed to stress the mixer motor quite a bit and since it wasn’t kitchenaide brand, it might have left me with a burnt out motor not under warranty. It also had a small hopper (place to pour wheat) so it required more vigilance to keep refilling it while grinding.

Alternatives

- Buy whole wheat flour from the store, with enough regularity that you avoid rancidity.
- You can find whole grain cornmeal at Indian supermarkets, and it’s a fair bet they carry something similar at Whole Foods.

More to Consider

- My friend pointed out that once she got a wheat grinder, she just switched over everything to whole wheat flour: muffins, pancakes, waffles, cookies, etc. and she says it’s never been a problem in taste or texture.

- In large part because I grind my own wheat, I’ve started making other whole grain things from scratch: pita bread, tortillas, buns, etc. and that adds up to significant money savings and much better taste than anything you can find at a store. You can obviously do this with store-bought flour as well, but I love being able to make all that stuff from my big bin of wheat downstairs whenever I feel like it. What can I say? I’m an independent lady.

- If you buy bread at the store, ignore everything on the front of the package and JUST read the ingredient list. Read it carefully and be picky. We eat a lot of bread at our house and I want to make sure I’m comfortable with everything IN the bread I’m eating.

- A mention of my homemade dough conditioner caused a stir at the meeting so I promised I’d reference it here. You’ll find the recipe in this old post, along with a detailed discussion of other ingredients for whole wheat bread baking. Please note that the post is 4 years old, however, and feel free to post any questions in the comments.

Food Processor

The Advantages

Cut down on vegetable chopping, slicing, and grating time. Make your own peanut butter. Make your own vegetable bouillon to stash in the freezer. Make your own hummus.

Purchase Options

There are a variety of brands and sizes available. I use a 7 cup cuisinart myself, and my neighbor demoed her 9 cup cuisinart.

Although I often find myself doing things in batches because I like to cook a large amount of food, I’m happy with a 7 cup size (9 would be fine also). It’s pretty trivial to dump out and then start again. The disadvantage to buying a large one (you can get a 14 cupper!) is that food processors don’t work very well at chopping a proportionately small amount of food. I’ve found you have to have “enough” of something to really get it whirring around in there.

My other friend brought her manual food processor she picked up at a garage sale: The Kitchen King Pro. I wouldn’t recommend that one for peanut butter but it did a great job dicing up a quartered bell pepper and my friend loves it for making salsa especially.

Alternatives

- A good knife and a cutting board takes you a long way with healthy cooking. In fact, more often than not I won’t use my food processor to chop unless I am going to later use it to slice or grate as well, because it’s one more thing to clean up.
- Buy pre-chopped. My local grocery store sells frozen, pre-chopped onions, green bell peppers, and mirepoix (onion, celery, carrot) for $1/lb on sale. Convenience may win the day at certain periods in your life.
- Borrow. If you only need to use it on specific occasions, say to process fresh herbs to freeze in the summer, to make a year’s supply of frozen vegetable bouillon, or to can homemade applesauce, then just borrow a friend’s for a day or two and crank out everything on your list. Then forget about it for a year.

Other Things to Consider

- Food processors are not great at things that are too liquidy. You’re better off with a blender or an immersion blender. They also are a bit cumbersome to pour from, so they aren’t ideal for blending up hot soups for that reason alone.
- They have a reputation of being a pain in the neck to clean. Here’s what I’ve found: If I rinse it out right away, it’s nearly effortless for fruits and vegetables. If I leave it until after dinner, then I’m stuck trying to scrape dried carrot bits out of all the crevices and it’s a chore for sure. I timed myself cleaning out peanut butter right after I made it yesterday and it took a whopping 4 minutes. Sometimes the dreading is worse than the doing when it comes to dishes for me.

Specific Uses

- I slice summer squash, mushrooms, celery, and carrots. It is blindingly fast at this and does a fabulous job. If I need something sliced very thinly and evenly (like for the ratatouille or zucchini carpaccio referenced in this post, or a summer squash torte, we use a mandolin)
- I grate apple, carrots, rutabaga, and zucchini.
- I grind peanuts to make peanut butter (just take unsalted, dry roasted peanuts and process them until they get creamy. Store in a airtight container like these and keep it on your counter for a few days or in your fridge for weeks. No more trying to stir in oil! I buy peanuts when they are on sale for $2/lb and stock up. Then I make peanut butter once a month or so.)
- I grind rolled oats to make oat flour for pancakes, etc.
- I make my own vegetable bouillon a few times a year, and then never have to buy or make broth for cooking.
- I make my own homemade skins-on, no sugar applesauce by washing apples, roughly chopping them, cooking them down a bit and then food processing them and canning them.
- I make my own hummus and save boatloads of money and lots of empty calories over buying the oil-laden stuff at the store. I actually use my little coffee-mill to grind up raw, unhulled sesame seeds instead of buying tahini. Then I dump the ground up seeds in the food processor with garbanzo beans, lemon juice, salt, water, and whatever else I’m in the mood for.
- I make my Pop ‘em treats in my food processor and I recently discovered a killer recipe for them.
- I run my spaghetti sauce in the food processor (though my vitamix would work fine). I tend to load a lot of vegetables in a pot, saute them, and then add tomatoes and blend it up before I simmer. That way my girls aren’t eyeballing every chunk and I can put whatever I please in it. It all turns red and delicious by the end.

Woah, there

After writing this post, it sure reads like healthy cooking means you have to “do it all”. Don’t be alarmed! Consider the following meal:

Burritos: Your old way of eating
You might serve white flour tortillas, seasoned ground beef, grated cheese, salsa, sour cream, and some chopped tomato or shredded lettuce.

You had the option of making your own tortillas, seasoning your own meat rather than using a packet, making your own salsa, grating your own cheese, shredding your own lettuce… even making your own sour cream had you chosen to. Maybe you did one or two of those things, none of them, or all of them. The nutritional outcome is fairly equivalent. The cost in time and money was variable and the payoff in taste and satisfaction variable as well.

Burritos: Your new way of eating
You might serve whole wheat tortillas, vegetarian refried beans, sauteed fajita vegetables (onion, bell peppers, summer squash, and/or mushrooms) with seasonings, salsa, shredded lettuce, maybe some sliced green onions or chopped fresh cilantro.

You could make the tortillas or buy them. You can buy canned refried beans, or buy canned plain beans and “refry” and season them yourself, or you could cook beans from scratch. You might shred your own lettuce or buy it in a bag. You might chop your own vegetables to saute or buy them pre-sliced, or skip the fajita veggies altogether if you’re in a hurry. You can grow your own cilantro, buy it at the store, or skip it. You can make your own salsa or buy it in a tub at costco (like we do). Of course, you can also buy any of the above “organic” and often even at a farmer’s market for extra credit. The nutritional outcome in any of the choices is fairly equivalent and FAR AND AWAY SUPERIOR to your old way of eating. The cost in time and money is variable, as is the payoff in taste and satisfaction.

Healthy eating doesn’t require you to be a gourmet cook, nor spend extra time in the kitchen.

However, I have found that the longer I eat this way, the more satisfaction I find in cooking healthy, from-scratch food for my family so I’ve gradually changed the way I make our meals. I used to buy canned refried beans, now I make my own from dried beans and seasonings and other vegetables. You need to do what works for you and your family, but I want to encourage you to take the plunge and start making the healthy changes you envision. The details will work themselves out with time and practice.

Healthy Eating Primer – kicking off a new group

Last week, nine women and I met in my home and we chatted about healthy eating. Namely, why we sometimes fall short of making the healthy changes we hope for in our diet, and how we can get re-motivated to feed our families well.

We plan to meet four more times before I move away from Columbus, on the following topics:

• Demoing how to make whole wheat tortillas and whole wheat, no-knead pizza crust
• Buying in bulk for healthy food storage and streamlined shopping: What to buy, where to find the best price, and how to store it
• Meet and greet with kitchen gadgets (food processor, pressure cooker, wheat grinder), and a brief treatise on produce storage for minimizing waste
• Recipes – focusing on quick, last-minute dinners as well as breakfast ideas and creative packed lunches

I’ll try to post the best information on the blog for my worldwide audience (ha!) to enjoy.

Healthy Eating Reality Check

I asked the women coming in to call out reasons why eating healthy is hard to do, intimidating to start, or difficult to maintain. We had lots of answers and I addressed them at the end of the meeting. If you’re reading this, I would encourage you to think about what would be on your list. Do you have a picky spouse? A tight food budget? Lack of recipes or know-how? A dislike for salad? A soft spot for ice cream? Make a list, at least mentally…

Here’s a loose transcript of the rest of the meeting:

Before I start I want to put something out there: I’m generally pretty low-key about diet. I have to deliberately be that way because I tend to be passionate about pretty much everything I do and I know that diet is a very personal issue. When you decline taking dessert, those who get dessert tend to feel you’re looking down on them for eating pie. I get that. But please know that I don’t think less of anyone for eating differently than I do. We can still be friends if you walk away tonight and make no changes to your diet. The reason I’m putting myself out there tonight is because I feel like this information is important so that everyone can make a well-informed choice for themselves and for their family.

Ok.

The Fire

There was a very interesting study done on behavior in the 1960s. Participants were told they were going to be doing a survey on urban life and they were directed to a waiting room. In actuality, that waiting room was the scene for the study. In one case, the participant was alone in the waiting room and smoke started coming out of a vent and filling the room. 75% of the time, the participant calmly noticed the smoke and left the room to report it. They ran the experiment again, this time three participants were together in the waiting room when the smoke came in. Only 38% of the time did they report the smoke. In a final experiment, they put one participant in the waiting room with two “plants”, people who deliberately looked at the smoke, shrugged their shoulders and continued filling out their surveys.

How many people reported the smoke in this case? Even when it was enough to make the room hazy and make them cough? How many continued filling out their paperwork even while fanning the smoke out of their faces? 90% !

In every case, those who didn’t report it gave the same reason: they had concluded the smoke wasn’t dangerous or that it was part of the experiment. None of them reported being influenced by the behavior of others in the room but obviously the behavior of others had the largest impact on their own behavior.

When we look at our diet, it’s human nature to look around us and see everyone doing the same things we’re doing. Look at the aisles of the grocery store. Look at the advertisements on tv and in magazines. Everyone is eating this way. In fact, you might even feel good about the fact that some are eating worse than you are. And when you’re in your 20s and 30s, those around you who are doing the same things you’re doing seem to be fine. The smoke starts to fill the room (and the plaque starts to fill your arteries) but still, nobody seems alarmed.

I want to be clear: I think there is a FIRE with the way we are eating as a nation.

The Vision

Hold onto that thought and take a step back and look at your future self. Picture yourself in 20 years. How old will you be? What do you want to look like? How do you want to feel, health-wise? Think about the body you will have. It may help to think of someone else that age who looks and acts how you would like to.

For me, I think of my parents who are actually 35 years older than me and are healthy, thin, fit and vibrant. They play with their grandkids without any physical limitations. They chase them at the park, load them in and out of carseats with ease, ride roller coasters, and do really whatever they want to, physically. Neither of them takes any prescription medications. My dad does triathlons but my mom has never been an athlete and prefers to hike and lift weights to maintain her fitness. When I see myself in 35 years, that is my goal. I want to still be living well.

So have in your mind what you would like to feel like and look like in 20 or 30 years. That’s your vision, your goal.

Now, here is the reality if you eat like everyone else…

(And before you dismiss all this because you’re diet is “pretty healthy”, realize that nearly everything in the aisles of a regular supermarket is terrible for you. Simply choosing whole wheat bread instead of white is NOT enough if you top it with deli meat and a pickle. We are way out of touch with what food actually promotes health.)

The Reality

36% of Americans are obese, and another 33% are overweight.

Sometimes I think these numbers need a little perspective. I am at a healthy weight for my frame. I don’t restrict my calories at all, I have birthed three 7 lb babies, I have plenty of milk for my 6 month old. When I eat a healthy diet, even without regular exercise, my weight stays right where it is right now. This is the right weight for me. Any guesses how many pounds I could gain and still be considered a normal weight for my height? Don’t be shy. I’m 5′ 10″ and weigh between 120-125 lb usually.

(sorry, that pic is a few years old. I’m usually behind the camera!)

The answer? 50 pounds.

I could be 50 lb heavier and still be in the 1/3 of Americans that are considered to be doing just fine weight-wise. But for me, 50lb would *not* be healthy, obviously. So even within the “healthiest third” of Americans, weight-wise, there’s still plenty of room for carrying lots of extra pounds. Pretty sobering thought about the path we’re on, yes?

Here are some more facts:

More than half of Americans die of diseases that are completely preventable through eating a healthy diet and abstaining from smoking. Everyone here belongs to a church that teaches us not to smoke so we are doing well in that area. But unfortunately, our church is representative of America as a whole in terms of diet, if not worse. This is despite our belief that bodies are gifts from God and will be perpetuated beyond the grave. And it’s despite a revealed code of health that includes much more wise counsel besides just skipping tobacco.

1/4 of us die from heart disease, 1/4 from cancer, in addition to stroke and diabetes. That means our lives are literally shorter, often dramatically so, because of the things we put in our mouths.

When you think of health, remember it’s not just about when you die. It’s about how fully you live. My husband is a doctor and I’m acutely aware of the years and years that people with a chronic illness trudge along getting sicker and sicker. They may not feel the difference in their health at first. They may think it’s a normal part of being middle age. That is a myth, perpetuated by the sheer number of people in our society walking that same road.

When you are overweight and obese, or taking medications for a chronic illness you just don’t feel as well. More than 1/3 of adults over 60 are taking 5 or more different prescription drugs! Remember that our life expectancy in the United States is 78 so that’s 20 years of taking 5 pills a day, (though you could argue that segment of the population is most unlikely to make it to the average life expectancy). With a poor diet, you are naturally less active and you don’t feel as well. Bad food makes us feel sluggish. It’s really hard to convey in words but go back to that vision of how you want to be in your 50s and 60s. Think of someone you know who is still vibrant and active. That is no longer normal.

To achieve that vision, you have to be abnormal and not everyone is comfortable with that.

Let’s Be Weird

I want to emphasize that every healthy change you make counts and encourage you to take small, incremental steps if that what helps you stay the course. For me, making a dramatic change was the best way and after 6 1/2 years I haven’t regretted it.

I try and get 90% of my calories from healthy foods. I don’t count calories, but I have a pretty good idea of whether I’m meeting that goal or not by just being aware of what I’m eating that is empty calories. Sometimes it’s choosing something at a restaurant that looks yummy, other times it’s ice cream. Most often it’s dark chocolate.

Here’s what I shoot for in 90% of my diet:
Whole Plant Foods.

That’s it. It’s simple, it’s delicious. It’s varied. It can be economical. It doesn’t require eating gross things like soy cheese or giving up leather shoes.

But it IS different. It is eating vegetables, something that has become rare in our culture. It is eating meat sparingly or not at all.

The way I look at it is on the one hand, you’ve got disease, lethargy and pills. On the other, you’ve got broccoli. Honestly, many people will choose disease, lethargy, and pills in the future rather than broccoli today. It’s short-sighted, yes, but that’s their choice.

But in the time remaining, I’d like to help you bridge the gap. Let me make the idea of eating broccoli (and other whole plant foods) less difficult. Let’s explore what you’re willing to do to make that future healthy self you envision a reality.

So much of our culture removes responsibility from the individual. Our genes cause cancer. The food industry makes us fat. The reality is, we are each responsible for what we put in our mouths and as women, we are largely responsible for what our husbands and children put in their mouths as well. That’s empowering and it’s sobering.

My 6’0″ husband weighed nearly 300 pounds when he was 19. His dad died of colon cancer while he was on his mission and he has three uncles who have had the same disease. For those who don’t know, colon cancer has a strong genetic link. If anyone could claim to be a product of their environment or bemoan the certainty of cancer in his future, it would be Scott. But he doesn’t have to sit on the sidelines and wait for researchers in a lab to find a “cure” for cancer. He can choose what he puts in his mouth every day (and choose to work up a sweat on a regular basis, but that’s another topic for another time) and he can have a large say in his future.

Addressing Difficulties

I want to get to the things you mentioned as hang-ups to healthier eating in your houses.

Economics – It’s not more pricey to eat this way and it’s certainly not more pricey to eat this way than it is to pay for health care for a chronic disease… plus who can put a price on extra years of life! When you cut out the money you spend on dairy and meat and processed food from your diet, you have quite a bit to spend on healthy food. Lentils don’t cost much and leafy greens are worth every penny. Our food budget breaks even as long as we don’t overdose on berries. More on the cost of healthy eating here.

Taste – Palates adjust! I used to hate nearly everything I eat now. I think the only vegetable I liked before making the change was corn on the cob. You have to trust the process and start with what you do like and go from there. The first item of business is to STOP eating junk. The food chemists create food to artificially overload your taste buds with fat, sugar, and salt. Real food, like a red bell pepper, will start to taste fantastic but only if you cut out the junk. Scott and I still retain a food or two a piece we don’t like (beets!) but seriously everything else has come with time. I love brussels sprouts, lettuce, broccoli, asparagus… so many things that made me shudder.

Kids- Do your kids wiggle and act out and (depending on their age) grumble and complain when you do family prayer or scripture study? How about when you brush their teeth? My girls have been known to throw a fit when I make them put on clothes. Would you stop doing it? Of course not! In so many areas we make decisions for our children because we know what’s best for them but marketers have successfully preyed on us as mothers to hand over the reins of food choices to our children. It’s sickening what they’d have us feed them and of course the motivation is money. They want us to buy the most cheaply made product and they’ll use advertising, convenience, and coupons to get us to do it. If you only have healthy food in the house, your kids will eat it when they get hungry enough. Their palates will change as well. It’s not going to be an easy transition but remember the vision! We have the opportunity to set our children down a path of healthy eating for life. Involve them in choosing meals, shopping and preparing food. More about getting kids on board in this post.

Know-how - I didn’t grow up in a home where my mom cooked often. We ate macaroni and cheese from a box a LOT. The only thing I really knew how to cook when I left home was cookies. I’ve had to learn as I’ve gone along. I chose recipes carefully but I’ve built up a great repertoire over the years and my foodie husband finds plenty of exciting dishes to try that meet our health goals. Honestly, I didn’t realize before just how limited my diet was. I was eating the same thing (milk, for example) repackaged into 5 different products in the same day. Now the produce section of the grocery store is my playground and there’s true variety there. Colors, seasons, etc. that I’ve learned as I’ve gone along. You’ll get better. Keep it simple in the short term, stick to your guns and keep plugging along. Change is always hard and in this case it’s very good.

Willpower - The people you see with the best “willpower” are the ones who hardly use it at all. They set themselves up for success. I don’t buy junk at the store, and I plan on cooking at home. Done. Worst case scenario, I overdose on whole grain bread and peanut butter and don’t each much broccoli. But I don’t have to battle it out in my head with the double-stuff oreos or lucky charms in the pantry calling my name because they just aren’t in my house. That gives me control over my own palate. I honestly don’t crave most of the things I used to like before: McDonald’s french fries, IN-n-out burgers, cheesy lasagne. Those things are just not on my radar so they require zero willpower not to eat. A great side benefit to this approach is that there’s compelling research that each of us has a certain amount of willpower in each day. If we exhaust it resisting the siren call of ice cream in the freezer, we’re more likely to cave and engage in other behavior we’d rather resist: junky television, skipping a workout, etc. In other words, setting yourself up for success with your diet and finally stopping the craving/guilt cycle actually frees up more willpower and determination to achieve goals and change habits in other areas of your life.

Social Events – These used to be tricky but I made a decision to take responsibility for what I put in my mouth. If I’m really in the mood for a dessert and feel good about what I’ve been eating lately, I take a dessert at a get-together and I enjoy it. But I don’t just eat it because it’s there. That would be allowing someone else to decide for me what I am going to put in my body. I choose. I’ll be honest, I feel like people are watching me sometimes but I try not to worry about it. People sometimes freak out if they see me eat something unhealthy, or they make self-deprecating remarks about themselves if they’re eating cake and I’m not. But at the end of the day, I can only control my own actions so I eat things that are worth it to me, I pass on what isn’t. My neighbor’s homemade cookies, for example, are worth it to me. Pretty much anything store-bought is not. (I addressed this much more in a previous post, including being a gracious guest.)

There were dozens of helpful comments from the women in attendance and I wish I could document them all here. I’ll share just a handful:

“Be frank with your kids. Tell them the reason why your family is making some changes and why. Let them know that some foods help us be healthy and strong and other foods don’t so we don’t eat those foods very often.”

“Emphasize the way healthy food makes you feel, rather than the way it makes you look. Kids don’t need to be thinking about thin vs. fat and they can really identify with being able to run faster, etc.

“You do NOT have to have your act together totally to change your diet. Start acquiring go-to, healthy recipes and swap them in for your unhealthy standbys.

“Quit snacking. Come to the table hungry and whatever is for dinner will taste much better. If you must, munch on raw veggies or fresh fruit between meals. Snack food is often the worst for us and saving money here frees it up to invest in real food (and your health).”

What is a Healthy Diet and Why Should I Eat One? (Part IX of ?)

Read Part I: Highlights
Read Part II: Our Journey to Better Eating
Read Part III: We’re not THAT weird
Read Part IV: Recommended Reading and Watching
Read Part V: Recipe Finding
Read Part VI: Grocery Shopping – What We Buy and How Much We Spend
Read Part VII: Supplements, or The Lack Thereof
Read Part VIII: Getting Your Kids On Board

Part IX: Frequently Asked Questions

My goal is to keep this post updated so please shout out questions you have in the comments and I’ll get to them when I can.

Just to make sure nobody feels shy about asking what’s really on your mind, I’ll start with:

1. What about gas?

We eat a lot of beans, people! Are we gassier than we were 8 years ago when we were eating meat and cheese and white bread?

Before I answer that… I’m going to quote Dr. Michael Greger, the man behind NutritionFacts.org:

“More than a decade ago, the Quarterly Journal of Medicine published a review entitled: “Vegetarian Diet: Panacea for modern lifestyle disease?” The answer was in the affirmative, noting those eating vegetarian appear to have less obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, cancers, kidney disease, maybe less stroke, less age-related vision loss, less diverticulosis, fewer gallstones and of course, less constipation. But after going through the laundry list of benefits, the researchers did identify two drawbacks of a plant-based diet: 1) the risk of vitamin B12 deficiency, which I’ve covered previously, and 2) increased intestinal gas production. So on one hand, we have half of the top 10 causes of death in the United States, and on the other, flatulence.” You can read the rest of his great article here

That’s pretty much how I feel about it. I mean, so what if I’m gassier now?! I’m enjoying what I eat and I’m dramatically lowering my risk of developing a host of devastating diseases.

But, because I’ve been asked this, I will answer honestly. Aside from the initial transition time of a few weeks… I don’t think I pass gas any more or less frequently than I did before. Eating dairy always made me somewhat gassy before, and it was uncomfortable. I can’t recall the last time I was uncomfortable from eating a healthy meal, so combined with the fact that I’m breaking even on flatulence I would call it another win for a healthy diet overall. In the article linked above, Dr. Greger shares average daily flatulence counts, which I found pretty interesting.

2. What about PROTEIN?!

This one still makes me chuckle. Have you ever in your life met a person in a developed country who was protein deficient? Seriously, think about it.

Yet it is probably the #1 question we get when we tell people we’re mostly vegetarian.

They remain genuinely concerned about our health until I reassure them that we eat beans, lentils, etc. What they don’t internalize is that pretty much every healthy food has protein in it. From whole grains to broccoli, there isn’t a real need to seek out protein-rich sources of healthy food. Just eat whole plants and you’ll do fine!

(I usually don’t bring this up, but although protein deficiency is not spreading like wildfire across America, the diseases caused by eating low-nutrient foods like meat and dairy are. In fact, “contains protein” is about the only health claim, however dubious, that the standard american diet can make.)

3. What do your kids drink instead of cow’s milk?

The same thing their parents drink instead of cow’s milk. As far as we are concerned, once kids are weaned from breastmilk (which, so far, happens at our house somewhere between 14 and 18 months), they no longer need milk. If I felt they did need milk longer than that, I would continue to breastfeed them longer than that. Fortunately (because Scott is a little bit squeamish about toddlers nursing), our kids seem to do just fine drinking water and the occasional smoothie by that point.

Cow’s milk is the perfect drink… for baby cows.

4. Do you ever fall off the wagon?

Yep. Taste buds absolutely adapt to your diet and we’ve gone through weeks at a time where we’ve been gradually eating more and more unhealthy food and old cravings start to resurface. Veggies stop tasting as good and we find ourselves seeking out sweets. Whenever this happens, Scott and I both notice significant decreases in our energy levels and find that we don’t sleep as well. If it lasts for more than a week then Scott will usually find that he gains a few pounds as well (possibly because he used to weigh 120 pounds more than he does now).

When we notice the shift in eating habits (and/or he sees the needle on the scale move more than 5 pounds), we talk about it together and then jump back on the wagon. Although we like to make ~90% of our calories healthy, and allow ~10% to be anything we want to eat, when we’re doing a course-correction we’ve found it’s easiest to go 100% until our taste buds and habits get back to normal.

Your turn: What questions do you have for us?

Math in our House – Pattern Blocks, Logic Puzzles, Base 10 Blocks

I blogged previously about using a math curriculum: Singapore Math and Kumon. Here are a few of the other math-related resources we have at our house. They are things my kids often play with on their own. School and play overlap a lot at our house!

Pattern Blocks

We love these simple, colorful wooden blocks and Mackenzie has spent hours playing with them.

We do have a few books (inherited from my mom, again) and a stack of cardstock activity sheets that have puzzles and problems to solve using the blocks and I know Mackenzie loves it when I throw in some of these activities to change up our school days.

They start simple enough that my 2 year old likes to “match” blocks to the picture.

They get more advanced…

Logic Puzzles

I loved logic puzzles growing up and recently discovered The Critical Thinking Company sells logic puzzle books called “Mind Benders” that go all the way down to the kindergarten level. I bought the first three in the series, removed the pages and slipped them into plastic page protectors in a binder. Now Mackenzie is working her way through the binder with a dry erase marker and when she gets one correct, she writes her initial on the page in pencil and moves on to the next one. It a great introduction to the format and method of solving these kinds of puzzles.

After book three, she should be able to tackle puzzles at the level of most free online printables so we may stick with those. But Mind Benders go through book 8 and considering I still like to do these as an adult, I suspect we’ll be looking to buy the others at some point as well.

Base 10 blocks
We bought a simple plastic Base 10 Block Set and I inherited an activity book from, you guessed it, my mom who never throws anything away. Yay! There is nothing better for teaching 10s, 100s, and 1000s, in my opinion and I know we’ll come back to these again and again when we talk about carrying, dividing, etc.

We regularly use lots of other math games/tools in our home and I’ll share our favorites in future posts.