Rocky Road

Don't get too excited. I am not about to give you some amazingly delicious ice bream recipe. I am about to vent about some failures. One of which was such a MAJOR blunder that it caused my husband to question and doubt the whole process! I obviously knew there would be a bit of a learning curve and expected some challenges along the way but its still hard to not get discouraged when things don't turn out as expected. A lesson I know far to well.

 Lesson #1 Whole Wheat flour and regular white all-purpose four are not always interchangeable. My Husband LOVES cornbread. He is so picky and strange about it though. About 5 years ago I discovered Trader Joe's boxed cornbread. It is good,  I am not going to lie. Sometimes they would be out of stock and I would have to go to the store to buy a different brand. This never ended well! Sometimes I wold try and make my own. "It is OK but it's not TJ's" is what I would usually be met with. So back to the box it would be. A few months ago a found a recipe that was pretty much a dead ringer for his favorite cornbread. I was soo happy. He still complained of course but I could tell that it was a keeper. Shortly after the 10 day real food challenge I decided to make chili and cornbread. The Chili was great but that is never in question. I have to admit, I kinda get nervous every time I make cornbread that is not TJ's. I took the copycat recipe that I had and replaced the white flour with my whole wheat and replaced the sugar with my honey. I knew before I put it in the oven that the appearance was going to be different. I thought if it tastes the same it would be OK. It was sooo dense you guys. The whole wheat completely over powered the cornmeal. I tried to pretend that I liked it in the name of health but it was gross. We had to throw it out gross. OH MAN was he mad!!!! How could I try and trick him.,He was looking forward to this all day, WHY CANT I HAVE MY BOXED TRADER JOE CORNBREAD. There was a look in his eyes that questioned my sanity. He truly thought I had lost my mind. There may or may not have even been pouting involved. I learned that you don't mess with my husbands cornbread. I also learned about WHITE WHOLE WHEAT flour. All of the same nutrition and fiber but with a lighter flavor, texture and obviously color. I may have a death wish but I am going to try it again...with a few adjustments and A LOT of prayers!!!!

Lesson #2 Just because somebody says their recipe is delicious doesn't mean it is true. I have a new found love of green smoothies (more on that later) and in the spirit of St. Patrick's day I decided to try one that claimed to taste like a mint chocolate chip shake.  only ingredients were frozen banana, spinach, milk and mint extract. Garnish with chocolate chips. I gloated that I had found this great recipe to several friends before I even tried it. BIG mistake!! After one sip it was straight to the trash. everything about it was wrong. Not because of the spinach like you might think but the mint just didn't taste right. too overpowering and I barely used any. Plus, there was No chocolate flavor. I do have an idea to make it more of an alternative to ice cream with some adjustments but I promise to keep my mouth closed about it until I actually try it.

Lesson #3 Don't announce to the world that you have a replacement (I seem to have a problem with this) to the beloved flavored coffee "creamer" and fail to deliver! People who drink this stuff, take it VERY seriously and are quite addicted. Much of my family and friends partake in the chemically and preservative laden white stuff every morning. I knew right away that it was a habit I wanted to help break them of. In my mind I was going to be some real food super hero flying in to swap out their white liquid science experiment with my morning liquid gold. Not only were they going to be impressed with this real and natural flavored creamer, they are never going to want to go back to the other stuff. I even went as far as to think that my morning liquid gold recipes would be like a gateway drug. It would turn them on to wanting to replace more of their bad habits with healthy real food options. Well...Just because a recipe "looks good" in no way means it tastes good. I tried several different recipes and they all had a different set of problems. some were not thick enough or creamy enough and not a single one was flavorful enough once it was poured into the coffee. I thought I could fix them by adding this and that, but I was wrong. I don't even use creamer and I knew it would never fly. Coffee creamer has been my rockiest road yet. Not because I have made several different trips to store and bought quite a bit of ingredients but because i was making it for others. This was my chance to convince my biggest critics and skeptics that they didn't have to give up anything, they could have it all. I was wrong and being wrong sucks.



Ps. If in a few weeks I end up dead, and there is left over chili in my fridge.....I think that it is safe to assume who did it....just saying.

PPs. Wholly long post!!! I am surprised you made it to the end with out falling asleep first! :)

Up for a challenge???

 via

Last month in a quest to find new and healthy recipes to try, I stumbled across THIS blog. I quickly became addicted to it! The premise is simple; only eat real food. That sounds so obvious and easy. If not eating real food, that what exactly are you eating???? Truthfully, you probably don’t want to know, but you should…you need to.  Lisa and her family were a lot like most typical American families. They ate whatever they felt like eating without knowledge that they were doing anything wrong. After reading a Michael Pollan book she decided that her eating habits needed an overhaul. After getting her husband on board, her blog was born: 100 days of real food. Here, she documents where her and her family go 100 days with only eating real food. Nothing processed. Nothing added. I was kinda mesmerized. OK I maybe even developed what some may call a girl crush! Every extra minute of every day for the next few days I would go back to her site. I basically read every page and some more than once.  I decided that I would take her 10 day real food challenge. I asked Ry if he wanted to give it a try with me….and he said YES!?!??! I was not expecting this in the slightest. Now I had the pressure to make everything go as smoothly as possible. I had 10 days to show him that it would be EASY to completely change our eating habits and our life for that matter. The challenge was just as much about me becoming a salesman as it was about eating real food. I knew I could do it, but could he??? We made the decision on Saturday and by Sunday night our cupboards were cleared of the bad and replaced with the good. A few things we weren’t ready to throw away or give up completely, so we boxed them up and put them in the guest room closet. We made (by we, I mean me) whole grain waffles, whole wheat tortillas, homemade refried beans and even made blood orange sherbet. Stocked the fridge with organic cheeses, lots of produce and humanly raised meats and eggs.  We officially began the Challenge on a Monday. The 10 days went by fairly quickly with neither of us truly missing or wanting anything that we were not able to have.  Surprise Surprise at the end of the challenge neither of us ran to get the taboo items out of the closet and 90% of it ended up in the trash once we did. In the end we decided that I will not buy or bring into our home processed junk.  When we are out or invited in to someones home it is harder to control, so we can eat it if we want. For our family this is a big step in the right direction. If you know my husband then you know that 10 years ago the list of foods he would eat was MUCH MUCH smaller than the list of foods he would not. It’s amazing to me that the same person who would not touch lettuce now sometimes craves salad and when we are deciding on where to eat for dinner, he Googles if the restaurant uses pink slim. The moral of the story is: if he can not only complete the 10 day challenge but see the benefit then I know that ANY one can!!

I thoroughly recommend everyone check out Lisa and her family’s site and try the 10 day challenge. Even if you do not change your lifestyle after, it will open your eyes to the food or lack thereof, you are truly eating.

It’s not hard, it’s just new

Getting fat on low fat foods

This is not my opinion but this is a fact! Sounds kinda crazy, but it’s true. The fad of low fat dieting started roughly 30 years ago and a TIMES Magazine article in 1984 didn't help slow down the movement. Since then the obesity rate has more than doubled! For the first time in our lives Diabetes and it’s related illnesses are taking more lives than both Cancer and AIDS combined. Yikes.


The bigger challenge right now is trying to figure out what to do about it. First of all, I think that it goes without saying that eating low fat does not give you the green light to eat MORE!! One of the problems with “low fat” foods are that they aren’t satisfying so you end up consuming more fat than you would if you had just ate a smaller amount of the real thing. Also, when you remove fat from a product you then must replace it with something else which usually includes more sugar, salt and gum along with many other thickeners and random chemicals!?!?!  I think that somewhere along the way Americans got confused. Yes, eating NATURALLY low fat foods such as whole fruits and veggies is good. Eating highly processed low fat packaged snacks are NOT. Believe me when I say that I have fallen victim to these pigs in sheep’s clothing for years. (I think that is how the saying goes but something is telling me that I am wrong) The Grocery store houses almost 50,000 products within their 4 walls and much of it is the same. When all the smoke and mirrors fade away, most of it is simply rearrangements of corn. If you don’t believe me start reading the ingredients list and I promise you will be surprised. The shelves are laden with  products that Michael Pollan calls “edible food like substances” that are packaged to look like food. 


Whether you are no carb, meat free, low fat, dairy free or all of the above I would put money on the fact that you are replacing something real with something fake in your diet. So I challenge you to start looking at your food in a different light. Read labels and ask yourself if what you are buying or eating is real. Chances are if it has more than 5 ingredients, then it is not. 


Let’s make a conscience effort to eat more REAL FOOD. In doing this the need to diet will most likely be unnecessary. Just by eliminating the pretend food you will be a forced to be a much healthier version of yourself. If you do want a special treat you will have to make it yourself and that in its self will help you to lose weight. I don’t know about you but I don’t have the time or the energy to make cookies, brownies or cakes on a daily or even weekly basis.