Thursday Things

There are some things I'd like to keep track of here.

I've always been a little proud of my ability to budget. Particularly grocery budget. I happen to really like to cook and we eat a diet that I consider extremely healthy. It's *not* what many others think of as healthy.

We tend to eat very few carbohydrates. And the ones we eat are whole grain. We eat as much protein as we desire. And we eat as much fat as we want too. But only certain kinds of course.

I do not think that "good" fat is "bad" for you. I think that sugar is bad for you. Pretty much any kind.

Where did I get all these weird notions?

Well, I started off with a nutrition class. ; ) Then I looked at a diabetic diet (a good friend of mine has insulin dependent diabetes). Then it was mostly trial and error. Things that worked for me and my family in the area of weight control (something I've struggled with my whole life), blood sugar, mood swings, ability to concentrate, and then of course the "major" things like blood pressure and cholesterol, iron levels, etc.

Whew.

And let me just say that we are *far* from perfect. We have sweets here sometimes. We eat the "bad" stuff around the holidays like fudge, cake, cookies, etc. We eat fast food sometimes. But overall we try to eat healthy.

A typical food day generally looks something like this:

Breakfast:
steel cut oatmeal
or
scrambled eggs with garlic, onions and peppers cooked in olive oil and butter with either bacon, sausage, or meat that was left-over from the last nights supper
or
an "instant" hot flax cereal (for morning that we have no time)

Lunch:
Leftovers from last nights supper
or
tuna or chicken "salad" with raw vegetables
or
apples and peanut butter
or
canned soup

Supper:
some type of meat and vegetables (most often cooked in the crockpot in the winter or on the grill in the summer)

Snacks are usually cheese cubes, olives (preferably with garlic), a homemade fruit smoothie, frozen juice pops, a piece of fruit, a spoon of peanut butter (the real kind), etc.

Nothing spectacular I know. But it seems that the grocery budget has gotten bigger and bigger. And it's time to scale it down if possible while still following our convictions on nutrition. And I fully realize that it may not be possible to do that.

But I hope to have the fortitude to bore you to insanity with first, what we've eaten the day before. And then to be disciplined enough to do a grocery menu a couple of weeks in advance (to be followed loosely).

So. Yesterday.

Breakfast:
eggs with onions, peppers, garlic in olive oil and butter with bacon.

Lunch:
hot flax cereal for me and ham and dressing for everyone else (leftover)

Supper:
We ate out last night at a little Thai restaurant that we've been wanting to get to. The girls were at a youth function.

Total: $4.50
(Not including the meal out or the leftovers. With the leftovers, I will count the whole meal in it's entirely the day it's made. Subsequent days will be $0.)

Anyone else want to share a typical day's menu?