whenever i am in harmon’s i always wandered my way over to their health food section. the section where they have all the organic, glutton free, wheat, non processed food & supplements. this has become one of my favorite sections to browse. one of the best perks of this section is a publication they put out every month (i believe) called delicious living. it’s a free publication put out by harmon’s healthy living solutions.

this month i loved an article called meal planning made easy by elisa bosley. here are the five tips she give for making meals around the table a reality at your home: (copied from the article)

1. on saturday or sunday, sit down with a blank piece of paper and the family calendar. find out which nights will require especially quick dinner prep because of after school-school or evening commitments. wide-open evenings? pencil in meals that are easy but best fresh, such as fish. also build in meals that, if you don’t end up making them, can be saved easily, such as chicken breasts (freeze for when you have more time, or cook and use later in something else).

2. look for foods you need to use up, like a few cherry tomatoes, a neglected lemon, leftover herbs, opened jars of salsa. work these into your meals. almost anything can go into a salad, pasta sauce, omelet or soup.

3. think about the seasons: what’s in abundance at the produce stands? what does your body feel like eating? let nature guide your choices. you’ll save money and your food will taste better.

4. make a complete grocery list. based on your menu ideas, and shop at the beginning of the week (sunday, if possible). post the meal plan on your fridge, and check it before bed each night so you know whether you need to defrost something over night. then follow the menu, but feel free to jettison or switch meals around to accommodate unforeseen schedule changes. plan for leftovers: cook extra chicken, beans, rice, vegetables, whatever; plan them into future meals to save time. (for example, roast two chickens instead of one; it saves energy, too).

5. give yourself a night off. one of my friends serves popcorn, cut-up cheese, and apples for saturday dinner. nothing wrong with that, and her kids love it! breakfast food is another restful option: whole-grain pancakes or scrambled eggs make an easy, quick, and fun dinner.

well there you have it. will be doing my meal planning this saturday and doing my grocery shopping on monday after work and the little man’s 18 month doctor appointment. i think one of my favorite statements in the article was “let nature guide your choices”. have you ever realized how much of what we eat isn’t really food? or food found in nature? it’s scary really. our bodies work best when we feed them real food and listen to them. it’s that simple. happy menu planning!

 

 

we have made it a goal to be more active. more a commitment to be active than a goal really. most of our exercise has been done inside of a gym but tonight we decided to take it outside. we walked/ran for an hour up to a park and back. i realized just how different running outside is from running on a treadmill. the last time i tried to run outside was in college and i believe i made it a block. this time was only slightly better but we got outside and we did it. so task complete. i have never been much of a fan of running (am still trying to figure out how people love it so much!) but figure i’ll give it a real tried and true try. give it my all for a little bit here. give it a chance. see if it grows on me? i figure it has to get more enjoyable the better shape i get into? right? maybe?

regardless of my failed running attempt, it was nice to get outdoors with broc and the little man. breathe in the fresh air, take in  the mountain scenery and enjoy an hour together uninterrupted. we are so lucky to live in the area we do. it truly is a gorgeous area. i heart the mountains. i will miss these mountains when we move that is for sure.

 

these three books have become my go to reference points when feeding my “toddler”. i still want my little man to be a baby, but that he is not. not even close. he is definitely a toddler now. still getting used to saying toddler though, thus the quotation marks. 

i like all of these books for various reasons already even though i am still delving into them and have not yet begun really dissecting them. 

the super baby food book is fantastic for all your nutrition needs from birth up through toddler. i wish i had this book when the little man was a newborn. if you are starting with a toddler though i have found about 1/3 of this book will not apply. so i just skip over those parts. otherwise very helpful in learning how to add more nuts, whole grains, and nutrients to your toddler’s meals. loads and loads of information, how-to’s, and recipes in this book.

the eat clean diet for family and kids has won me over because it helps you make meals for the entire family, not just for your toddler. please don’t be scared away by the word diet. this is in no way a diet, other than it changes your overall “diet” as in what you feed yourself and your family to a more healthy, organic, clean way of eating. one tidbit from this book that literally shocked me was the following:

“the jordan school district *(sound familiar to anyone?)* is the largest in utah and also the worst in the state for providing unhealthy school lunches. according to the physician committee for responsible medicine school lunch report, jordan county only scored 56 points out of a possible 100 based on three criteria: obesity and chronic disease prevention, health promotion and nutrition adequacy, and nutritional incentives.

while fruits and vegetables are available at a side bar, menus include only one entree, often a high-fat meal unnecessarily large in portion size such as a foot-long hot dog or a colossal burger. in this county a student must put in a special request for a vegetarian meal and a note is required to receive an alternative drink to dairy milk. also, no nutritional education is offered.

a menu dominated by fatty food, failure to provide healthy alternatives and a lack of nutritional education for students and parents all contribute to a failing grade.”

um. yeah. that hit really close to home. in fact it literally hit home! are you kidding me? jordan school district (now split into canyon and jordan) fails or failed so miserably in their school lunches that they got mentioned in a national best seller as a failing example for healthy eating? come on. that is absurd. why is no one doing anything to clean up the school food? jamie oliver, please make your next stop here. i’m not surprised though, i remember the food…

the insane part of this is, this area is not lacking in money or parents who care. it has an over abundance of money and loving, involved parents. so why are our kids eating crap? again, seriously? 

hmmm…i might have to discuss this more later. i’m thinking i shouldn’t feel to guilty back in the day for spending my lunch money on dorrito’s and a drink from the vending machines, as it sounds like school lunch wouldn’t have been much better. for the record in high school i’m pretty sure i never ate the cafeteria food. if i did it was the tater tots or the chocolate mousse pie made by hershey. oh, or a bagel and cream cheese. yep, that was literally it. junior high was pretty much pizza and elementary school i just didn’t eat period. i was a rather picky eater as a child (and even now). let’s just say my little man will have lunch from home no matter where we live. end of discussion. 

now after all that, briefly, a little about the third book, organic cooking for baby & toddler. this book has tons of useful recipes. i plan on cooking a lot more of them this month. will document any i particularly love. am excited to try recipes from all three books actually. will be doing a very large shopping trip on friday. have lots of cooking planned this weekend! 

*side note – at first i checked these out from the library to test them out, but i have since bought all of them to keep permanently in my cook book library. that to me is the sign of a good book. a lot i get from the library i don’t feel the need to purchase afterwards.