DAY 5 Food Challenge: Open spaces in the frig

My challenge this week, was to finish most of the stuff in the frig--the things that go bad first. Our pantry is still pretty stocked with usuals, but I tend to not stock up on those much during the week. I buy a little here and there, but always keep sauces, stock, a few cans of beans and tomatoes and then the usual baking items along with an assortment of healthy snacks, crackers and cereals. But our frig, I'm happy to say looks a bit bare.

My good-sized gathering with some mommy friend today got rid of a lot. I tried to feed people from frig stuff first, but had a few items in the freezer just in case. The apples are gone. The oranges are gone. All the veggies except the carrots and lettuce are gone. There's a little cheese left and quite a bit of yogurt. I think tomorrow we'll be pushing the yogurt and the strawberries! That won't be a difficult task. Yes, the mushrooms are still there.

Must empty out before Sunday's shopping trip.

DAY 2 Food Challenge: Eating Leftovers

I'm lucky my family will eat leftovers. Even cold ones. I really am the only one who feels to the need to reheat and it's hard since we don't have a microwave. Yes, I know, we're primitive. Don't get me started on it. My husband has a general dislike of microwaves so even as much as I beg, I can't get him to bend. Something about it taking the Chi out of our food.

But my kids will eat them cold so there's no problem. Today we worked on finishing up the salad and leftovers from the weekend. I pushed the grapes which have been sitting there for some time and managed to get the half of cucumber into my kids with lunch--without salad dressing. That was a red letter day right there!

Tomorrow I must find something to do with the mushrooms, bacon and zucchini. Or else they're going to go bad!

DAY 1 Food Challenge: When you have bad bananas, make bread

This morning when my husband surveyed the refrigerator, he sighed at my "lack of diligence" to push the leftovers. Already yesterday he had to throw out some old veggies and a significant amount of raisins left in a bowl and this morning, it was the leftover fish, which was well....fishy smelling. "Push these leftovers," he tells me. "I hate to waste it all."

After I groan and grunt about how I am not only having to feed everyone, but remind them to eat the leftovers. I thought OK, I can do this. I will use up what we have. I sent him to the store for our usual list of necessary items like: milk, bread, yogurt, eggs, etc. But this week, I challenge myself to use what we have so by Saturday, Old Mother Hubbard's cupboard is bare.

You'll have to follow up daily on what crazy things I make (or make my kids eat) in order to get rid of our leftovers. We're trying to be green and not waste food.

So today I used up three browning (yes, very brown) bananas for my favorite banana bread recipe. Threw in a handful of leftover chocolate chips, which had been bought for cookies, but broken into for just plain eating. After taking some blue cheese out of the freezer for a recipe (it was in the freezer when someone bought more than I needed) I ended up not using the blue cheese, knowing it would go back, I made a blue cheese salad dressing out of the leftovers.

No More Goldfish

I want to give a big shout out to last week's Washington Post Health section when I read about the U.S. Department of Agriculture's M.O.M. Project starting this spring. I'm never sure what national campaigns really do except bring awareness to their target audience, but this one seems well worth the effort in my opinion since good nutrition is such a good investment.

Recently, our household has been on a food overhaul since this past August when I got tired of finding orange Goldfish in every nook and cranny conceivable to man. While it's only been six months, we've really started to change our family eating habits for the most part. For my husband and I it wasn't too difficult since we have always been good about making smart food choices, but this was a challenge feeding the kids.

To read more, see posting on DC Metro Moms.

What are we feeding our kids?

We are overhauling our pantry. We’re on week 3 of the low-junk-food consumption plan. I have become so tired of the goldfish crackers (that horrid orange color can be found in the strangest places) and fruit snacks. I can’t imagine that anything in there is good for them and it’s just filling them up on poor ingredients. I decided the best way was to handle this was to go cold turkey.

Andrew and I are so careful about what we eat, it only seems fair to be that way with them. We try to buy organic, fresh, no preservative foods for ourselves. Shouldn’t we do the same for them?

I figure I can’t do much about the playgroups or picnics we have with others, but I want to do better about their eating habits at home. So we’ve started substituting fruit, cheese, crackers, milk, veggies, cereal for the more snacky foods. The result: pretty decent success. Once they realize we don’t have cookies, goldfish or sugary snacks, they go to the their favorite “healthier” snacks. As a result, we’ve had better success with dinnertime habits. They will eat the carrots and peas and even try the spinach and salmon. And when they go to playgroups, they can enjoy the treat of goldfish crackers, Shrek fruit chews and yogurt-covered whatevers.