One thing I've been thinking of that contributes to this has been my way of thinking, in how I slowly graduate my babies from 'baby food' to 'real food'. What was my definition of 'real food' for my first child? Birthday cake with tons of yummy frosting and ice cream on her 1st birthday, shortly followed by easily eaten candies, then cookies and granola bars, followed by fruit snacks, goldfish, hotdogs and chicken nuggets. It's totally normal for little kids to be exposed to this food, and we readily have it available for them to have a a moment's notice. NOW, finally I'm seeing things in a different way. I want my baby now, to slowly graduate from soft pureed veggies and fruits to eating fresh, raw versions of these things, along with healthier versions of other things like dried fruit, homemade granola bars and even homemade cookies are better than from the store. With the other kids I am not buying very many snack foods anymore, almost everything is so sugary and has a definite addictive property. Everyone has felt that overpowering urge to eat just one more, it's just SO good, right? Of course, and that can be fine every once in a while, but I want my kids' main diet to consist of things that I have control over and lots of fruits and veggies.
So this is what I've been trying to do lately. First, I make bread one to two times a week. I mostly do this because it is more cost effective, but I also know it is healthy, usually being half whole wheat flour.
We buy craisins instead of fruit snacks, and I make homemade granola bars when they are wanted instead of buying store bought. I found a great recipe on allrecipes.com HERE. I change it up a bit by replacing the vegetable oil with applesauce and usually just omit the cinnamon and do chocolate chips or something instead of raisins, since my kids don't like raisins cooked in things. We can also add almonds or anything else we like. Anyways, the kids love them, so that's all I need to know!
I also stumbled upon a recipe for graham crackers. We actually usually do buy them, but we were out and I figured who knows what is in those as well, so might as well try! I didn't have graham flour, but in finding out it was a type of wheat flour I made them with half white flour and half wheat and they are good! Once again the kids love them just as much! Here's a pic of those, with cinnamon and sugar on top of course, but even without, they like them.
One more thing we are trying to do every day is a 'smoothy' of raw fruits and veggies. We have a NutriBullet, which purees the food very smoothly. The kids will drink these as well, even when they know there is spinach in there somewhere and even if it's green. ;-)
I even make one for 'L' every day and mix infant cereal into it to thicken it up for spoon feeding.
He loves it! Yum, yum!
So, I know we are still far from perfect and won't become fanatics about it completely, but we want our kids to love food and love being healthy. Oh and one more thing to help with our vegetable consumption is our GARDEN! We can't wait to have all of our home grown, organic, fresh fruits and veggies. Hopefully we will hardly have to buy any produce this year and will be able to preserve our excess for winter/food storage. Also, knowing how to make all of these things and having a garden helps me to feel so much more secure in the possibility of a disaster or something happening where I can't make it to the store for a long time. As long as we keep stocked with baking supplies we will be good to go. :-)
Also wanted to add that I know this probably isn't anything eye opening or new to most, I think all of us on some level are trying to do this. But at the same time, I am still seeing moms everywhere with packaged this and processed that, stuffed into their diaper bags, and in their kids' mouths. So let's GET HEALTHY!
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