October: Fall colors and Halloween!

The tree in front of our house is amazing in the fall! It is always the first one to change, and go, in the fall, but it is gorgeous!

We always like to go on a drive in the mountains every year in the fall to see the colors.

HALLOWEEN!

We have: a bat, Rapunzel, a Barbie princess, and a little dragon.

We made a witches brew, mummy fingers, and witch brooms for dinner.

Everyone chose a pumpkin pattern to carve, although we all know who does the carving ;)

'W' chose a raccoon

'E' chose a cat

'R' chose a spider

'L' chose Elmo!

Ghost milk jug lights.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Pickled Green Tomatoes

So I decided to try something new today. Since it has been so cold lately, we've had to pick all of our green tomatoes, which is a LOT. I've never even tasted pickled tomatoes before, but why not have 6 quarts of something you've never tried? I mostly used cherry tomatoes, using this recipe here and actually cut enough up to do 3 more quarts or so, and tons of regular sized ones I don't know what I'll do with. Anyways, here is the final product:

More GARDEN FOOD!!

So we have picked tons of food over the last week or so, mostly tomatoes. Here is a pic of ONE DAY'S worth:

And this is what I did with 25 out of the 38 lbs of tomatoes:

It is a yummy pasta sauce with garlic and peppers, which aren't in the picture, but I did pick 4 that day too.

Here is another day when we had an eggplant, zucchini, onion, tomatoes and basil:

I made a Ratatouille of sorts, with Quinoa added as well.

Yum Yum! Now I just have to figure out what is for dinner tonight........besides tomatoes!

Garden Food!

So, over the past month or so we have been getting tons of greens from the garden! Kind of too many to handle, really, but it has been great. I don't have nearly enough pics of it all, I may have to borrow some from Will to update this with later, but here are a few:

Broccoli

Peas when they were still blooming. We ended up getting about 10 lbs of peas!

 Here's one batch of shelled peas we had with a dinner. Yum Yum!

I also had a fresh picked salad with them:

Here is another freshly picked lettuce salad. I only wish the tomatoes were ours, but they will be in a few weeks! Can't wait! We have been using our own spinach every day in smoothies, and have tons of different lettuces we can use with practically every meal. We also have more broccoli to pick and some cabbages now too! 

Healthier Eating

Something that has been on our minds lately is what kinds of things we, and our kids especially, should be eating. It seems like everywhere we go, there is processed this and packaged that and corn syrup and sugar galore. We've just been eating things, mostly snacks, that are fast and easy, which translates into 'unhealthy and addicting'. Now I know we haven't been incredibly bad eating everything the store shelves have to offer, but I have felt like all our kids will eat is processed food and snacks.

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!