Introducing My Family

I've been reading Becki's blog since she started and since I also know her in real life I know that we have similar ideas for how we want to feed our families... healthy, yummy, sustainable meals that won't kill our bank accounts.

I'll be posting about my family's dinners as well as lunches and snacks and the occasional trick to cleaning up the food one of my young children smushed into the rug.

Here are some of the challenges I'll be facing along the way:

1. Money. We are a family of four living on one income. This has been our choice for over 3 years. We love that I get to be home with our kids all day. We do not love that we can't go out to eat whenever we want or totally fill the shopping cart with all the organic, sustainable products we could eat in a week. We participate in a little game of give and take.

2. Allergies and food preferences. My 3-year-old is allergic to nuts. It's not so severe that she stops breathing if she comes into contact with one but she will wake up in the middle of the night and vomit for several hours. It took a year of regular GI problems before we figured it out with an allergist. In general a nut allergy like this is not hard to plan around but she also does not like meat. So nuts; peanut butter, cashews, almond milk, walnut bread, were all staples in her diet. I am always on the lookout for creative ways to get protein into her diet without meat or nuts. Our youngest daughter doesn't like meat either. Other than those things we all eat just about everything. And since Grant doesn't cook (by choice)he loves to eat whatever I set before him.

3. Time. I love playing with my kids. I love reading books. I love sewing and making craft things. And even though I do love to cook I do not have extra hours to be in the kitchen every day. Most days 30 minutes is my max... and once or twice a week I'll have an hour or more if Grant is home hanging out with the girls. I don't love cleaning though, so there's some extra time in each day..and also the reason pictures of my food will always be close-up and never include the backdrop of our living space!



Here's a little virtual 'cheers!' to Becki as I join her in sharing our stories of successes and fails and everything in-between from our kitchens.