from scratch

i like food. i like to cook. i like to eat.

and i like to think that i cook and eat pretty healthy. (with the occasional indulgence here and there.)

recently my thinking has been shaken up a bit. i watched food, inc. and jamie oliver's food revolution. (both provide excellent insight on how americans eat.)

jamie mentioned in his show a 2005 study published in the new england journal of medicine that reported for the first time in two centuries, the current generation of children in america may have shorter life expectancies than their parents. horrifying, huh?

well, now i'm feeling a little more conscientious about the food we eat at the pike home. i want mr. pike and i to be healthy. and more importantly, i want baby girl to be healthy.

so what's changed around here? i'm more considerate about where and how my food is grown. i like to get local produce when i can -- that has more time to stay on the vine and be enriched with nutrients because it has less distance to get to me. this summer, mr. pike and i have joined a csa (community supported agriculture) farm -- where you buy into the farm and get some of its harvest. find a csa farm near you here. we're members of simply wisconsin -- a group of farms outside of madison about 2.5 hours from us. our membership is for nine deliveries, every other week from june through october. i'm excited for our first batch of produce -- coming june 16! (plus the bounty from our own little garden!)

i'm also more concerned about how animals are raised, fed, and processed. mr. pike, baby girl, and i like meat -- so we're not becoming vegetarians. but, we are eating less of it. (you learn some scary facts about meat in food, inc.) over the past few weeks, i've been incorporating other sources of protein into our diet. we've added fish, tofu, quinoa, barley, and beans into our meals and only eating meat/chicken 2-3 times a week. and this has led to a lot of experimenting with new recipes. (some good, some not worth repeating!)

i'm also trying to make more foods from scratch. so i can control the ingredients. (i'm even using less canned goods that sometimes have lots of sodium,sugar, and other preservatives added.)

i'm reading a lot more labels. and trying to give our family the best options that work in our food budget. (that's the hard part.) but i think my efforts will be well worth the future results.