Meal Plan for the First 4 Days

 I have come up with my meal plan for the first 4 days. 

DAY	BREAKFAST	LUNCH	SNACK	DINNER
Monday5	Granola Cereal with milk and fresh blueberries	Egg Salad(6 hard-boiled eggs mixed with mayo, salt, and mustard. Apple slices, cheddar squares	Apple and popcorn	Veggie Burgers
Tuesday6	Granola Cereal	PB & J(all fruit spread) raisins and ½ banana	Apples with Peanut butter	CX Fajitas on Whole wheat tortilla’s, Monterey Jack cheese, sour cream
Wednesday7	Granola Cereal	Left Over Egg Salad on ww bread with sliced apples and grapes	Fruit Kabob with apple, banana, grapes	Quesadillas with left over fajita mix. On whole wheat tortilla’s
Thursday 8	Granola Cereal	PB & J(all fruit spread) raisins and apples	Yogurt	Left Over Veggie Burgers?

Nothing difficult and yes we are having cereal all those days.  My husband and kids pretty much live off of this stuff. Plus over the weekend I plan to make some Whole Wheat banana pancakes to supplement if they get bored.  My son will eat oatmeal while my daughter won’t. So it will be a juggling act for breakfast. I need to make it as easy as possible since my husband is such a great guy and does the breakfast thing so I can sleep in.  Yes, he is that great. :D

You'll notice I decided to wait until Monday the 5th to start, as I honestly already have a meal plan in place for next week and this will give me a chance to look over items at the store to see prices and what fits into our price range.

What are you giving up?

 Everyone in my family is going to have to give up something that they love. Be it, the sugary ingredient filled cereal they love, the chocolate, or the drink of choice.

One thing I have been looking at today is my drink of choice.  Being pregnant I can, but choose not to, have caffeine.   I do have 1 small cup of coffee at church every Sunday for my fix.  As far as pop goes, I gave it up.  I have had 3 since finding out I was pregnant, and now will have none until the end!  With my other two pregnancies pop and chocolate were my number 1 craving.  With this one, pop tastes like acid and is way to sweet.  I guess that is the point huh?  I digress.

I choose to drink only water at this point.  Lately I had been getting tired of plain boring water.  Instead of switching to juice or some high calorie form of drink, I chose to drink crystal light.  By the gallons!!  I drink a good 65 oz a day, so I make a lot.  Last night, while drinking my amazing strawberry crystal light I grabbed the container to look at the ingredients.  My thoughts, it only has 5 calories so it can't have many ingredients. WRONG!

Ingredients listed: citric acid, Maltodetrin, Aspartame, Red 40, Calcium citrate, Acesulfame, potassium, artificial flavor, calcium silicate, magnesium oxide. 

WHAT?!?!  I don't even know what at least half of those are, nor could I pronounce them.  I was trying to stay away from acid and fake sugars. Guess what?! This is filled with acid and at least 2 different kinds of fake sugars from what I can tell.

I was a bit disappointed, but glad that I realized this now and not after my challenge!  It just goes to show that some things, even "low fat", are not healthy or "real."  Have you checked your pantries and refrigerators?! What did you find?? Were you as shocked as I was?

Menu Plan

Some of you know that I have decided to wait 1 week to start this 10 day challenge.  We plan on starting March 5th, instead of the 1st.  Mostly because I already had a meal plan in place for this week that involved needing very little groceries.  This actually worked out well, because this week I can get part of what I will be needing for next week without going over our weekly grocery budget.

I am going to experiment this week with the whole wheat flour tortillas and honey whole wheat sandwich bread.   These will be 2 staples that will greatly change in our house, so I figured we would practice up this week.  Plus, at the request of my husband, I am already making more granola/cereal!

Monday: BBQ BF Sands.  (On homemade whole wheat buns)

Tuesday: Left Overs (or pancakes)

Wednesday: Taco's (w/ homemade ww flour tortillas)

Thursday: T-bones, potatoes, corn

Friday: Meatballs and potatoes

Saturday: Eat Out for lunch(traveling) and Left Overs for Dinner

Sunday: Left Over Buffet. 

There you have it.  Like I said many of these items I already have on hand.  Therefore, helping stock up for next week will be easy.  Monday I will be trying to turn the ww sandwich bread into buns so if that works out I will let you know.  We will be having our taco's on the ww flour tortillas from the challenge as well.  Just to help semi-incorporate some of the rules, so the kiddo's are not completely shocked when we switch up the next Monday.  Stay tuned for my constantly changing meal plan starting next week.

Snacks/Lunches will be sandwiches and leftovers along with apples, grapes, banana's, and yogurts.  Triscuits are also an approved snack, so we may also add that in this week too!

Do you meal plan and grocery shop on one day? 

What are we going to eat!?!?!

Remember me talking about taking the 10 day "real food" challenge? I know some of you are asking. What on earth will you eat? What will your kids eat?  These are good questions, I suggest checking out her blog and reading through her 100 days.

I will admit I may cheat a tad. No, not like that.  I will NOT be cheating as much as I can help it as far as the food part goes however, no one said anything about the planning part. :D  She has 2 meal plans (free) that outline  Breakfast, Lunch, Snack, and Dinner for 14 FULL days.  So basically you have 14 days to pick and choose from.  One thing I am honestly excited to try are the vegetable burgers.  Made completely from Veggies!  While this is not on her meal plan, it was one of the meals that she made while on the 100 day challenge.

I will write up a plan for our first few days and post for all of you to see.  It may not be exactly as she has outlined, but very similar. We will be making changes as far as fish (YUCK) and meat go.  Mostly because my family is not a fish lovin' family and finding local meat around here is pretty non-existent.  If I am wrong on that PLEASE let me know!

I have already tested out a few of the recipes and am thrilled that the her granola/cereal recipe will be a huge snack/breakfast substitute in our house. Now if I can only keep up with making it!  The great thing about these recipes is that they are totally flexible.  If you don't have an ingredient, omit it, it will not make or break any recipe.

The main thing is learning what foods you should and should not consume because they are highly processed.  The 5 ingredient thing will definitely be a shocker.  Just tonight at the store, I picked up a few different items and was shocked at the amount of ingredients in them.  Luckily, I'm pregnant so the pop thing isn't an issue. The chocolate thing however, may be a bit harder. I'm a chocolate NUT!  So we shall see! :)  My kids are condiment nuts, so omitting ketchup, bbq sauce, and mayo may be a shocker for them at first.  But again, it's only 10 days.

Like I said I'm pregnant, but that will not keep me from following this.  I don't see how eating "real food" would in anyway be bad.  Granted, I'm not a doctor so don't quote that.  :D

Have you looked in your cupboards???

I am not one to judge. By no means is my pantry perfect or clean for that matter.  I decided after working on this meal plan that I should check out what I have and see what I need.  I was shocked to say the least.  Looking at the back of the containers I was surprised to see that basically everything had sugar or some form of "non approved" sugar in it.

In my head I see the dollar signs racking up, however, I also was brought to the realization that we, as a society, do not feed out kids or our bodies properly.  No wonder we are all addicted to sugar. It's in everything!!!! 

This weekend will be a different look at what I have going on in my pantry and getting rid of or donating most items that are not "real foods."  Will this be hard to give up my beloved chocolate and peanut butter of course.  I have to just remember anyone can do 10 days.  I also have to remember that what I'm putting in not only my body but my kids' bodies is all processed and, to be blunt, crap.

I don't want my kids to grow up being dependent on that. I want them to be able to make choices that are healthy AND real.   Okay, enough ranting for now.  My point of this post was to challenge you to look in your pantry and refrigerator and take stock.  Look at the ingredients lists and be aware of the food you are putting into your bodies.

10 Days of "real food" Challenge

Hello friends <3 Who has missed me???  I know all of my 1 readers have.  I know you are wondering where I have been and why I haven't been blogging.  To be honest I ran out of things that I felt were interesting enough to keep you all interested.  Alas, I found something.  Not only something that many people are starting to focus on, but something that by blogging, can help keep my family and I accountable.

I have currently been reading a blog about eating "real foods." I have already started cooking healthier for my family and been making more homemade items. I think this challenge will be a good challenge for our family. I often get lazy, yes I will admit that, and run through the drive through. I am hoping that by doing a modification of this challenge that will help to curb that nasty habit.

Modification? Why not just do the challenge as is. A couple reasons; 1.living in NE leaves very few options as far as local meats, fruits, and veggies. A large part in this persons diet is shopping at a farmers market. 2. We have been trying to stay away from wheat as my daughter has serious skin and tummy issues when eating to much. So I will continue with our bread that we currently use. However, I am going to give the Ezekiel bread a shot.

For the most part we will be following this challenge as closely as possible. If you would like to know what you can and cannot eat go HERE and read this article.

Benefits of Taking the 10-Day Pledge (taken directly from the website)

Upon completing your goal we predict you will gain the following:

* A first-hand, eye opening experience of how to identify the real food in our processed food world.
* At least one improved health benefit such as having more energy, losing weight, improving regularity, or just feeling healthier overall.
* The realization that some of those pre-packaged processed “food-like substances” don’t even taste that good compared to real food.
* The opportunity to teach your children (if you have them), by example, the healthiest way to eat and enjoy the food mother nature has given us.
* The ability to continue on with your life however you chose, but with the new knowledge of how and why to avoid processed foods. Hopefully your 10-day experience will convince you to consider making at least a few changes for life.

So, we begin. I will be taking a few days to get the meal plan figured out and clear out some of what we have going on in our pantry. My goal is to start this challenge on March 1, 2012. With a couple of "curve balls" thrown our way this will be an interested time to do it. (ie. out of town for BOTH weekends involved) That will mostly just take a lot more planning on my part!

I encourage you to join with me and eat as many "real foods" as possible. Here's to a HEALTHY and CHALLENGING 10 days! :)