5FruitsAndVeggies
...an exploration of the cost commitment in time, effort and finances to cook healthy meals for my family!
I Am Typically Against Food Bribery
…when it comes to food, i try to stay away from bribery—it just does not go well with my overall philosophy of eating…however, on Friday i did bribe them…can we use the word incentivize?…
…but i think i worked out the psychology behind it—and emphasized why i paid them to try something new…
——
Our House Incentive System (AKA Bribery)
…my girls earn points and each point is worth 25 cents…typically they get points for good behavior, showing acts of kindness, doing things that go above and beyond what is normally required of them (in the case of my girls, blinking and breathing—lol), and for chores…
…so it’s quite normal for my girls to have earned for example, $12 in two weeks—that’s their spending money….
…Friday i had to incentivize my girls with money points…i looked at it this way—i am rewarding them for being ‘risk takers’ and trying something new…i was not rewarding them for eating—and i made that clear…
——
‘Raw’ Mock Tuna Salad
…one of my main food (family nutrition) goal’s is to get one ‘raw’ meal a week…seems easy…and actually making raw foods is easy…getting my girls to open their minds to new tastes—not so easy—and not surprising for children…
…the idea of a ‘raw’ mock tuna salad intrigued me…i am always looking for alternatives for their lunches (our school does not offer lunches—a mixed blessing)…i am sick and tired of turkey or PB&J sandwiches…no, i don’t eat them…but i am tired of making them and want to provide even more variety of nutrition on a daily basis…
…i take that back—it’s not all turkey and PB&J sandwiches…once in a while i make them a green salad with avocado, tomatoes, cucumbers and cheddar cheese—um, kinda hard when it’s 6:30am to whip something up like that…so for me, gourmet salads are not a sustainable option…something like a new spread to put on a sprouted wheat wrap that would be easy to assemble and spare me from some morning stress…
…hence the idea of this ‘raw’ mock tuna salad…
…as usual after i present the plates on the table in front of my girls, i get that look of panic—‘what is this mom??’...then the brewing resistance, culminating in a typical anti-new food uprising—i needed a combat strategy quick style (…especially after cooking and cleaning almost 3 hours that day)…
…’how about 2 points (50 cents) to be a risk-taker and try this?’…well my 9 yr. old checked the chalkboard and realized she was only a couple of dollars away from these neon dry eraser markers she had been saving for, and my youngest has been wanting some new earrings for quite some time—they were motivated to earn…
…and of course, once they tried it, they ate it—maybe not with the enthusiasm i would have liked, but they ate it…this just reinforced that my children need some encouragement and prodding…which is way different than forcing—in my book ; )
——
The Ominous Ingredients of Raw Mock Tuna Salad?
…(seriously that’s how my children make me feel…like i am serving them evil ingredients)…
…sunflower seeds, lemon juice, chopped celery, pickles, dill and parsley…that’s it!…
…so yummy…so wholesome…so nutritious!
…thank you Bliss Raw Cafe owner Dee Pissaro for your recipe which can be found here:
dinomiike asked: Hi! Veggie-eating dino, here! Do you have a recipe for kale chips? I'd like to try making them.
dinomike—as i have never been known for simple answers—i always answer a question with a question (…inculcation from my former corporate career in sales…)—have you had kale chips before?…
…if not, i highly recommend first buying and trying a pack at your local Whole Foods…why? just to make sure you like the taste first…before i started making them on my own, i had to develop a taste for nutritional yeast, and understand the health value (great source of vitamin B -12 for someone like me who does not eat meat on a regular basis, and needs to fortify my energy reserves before or after running my humble 5 miles…)…nutritional yeast gives the kale chips a ‘cheezy flavor’ that is satisfying…
…oh, and did i laud the nutritional content of kale?—i won’t go on and on about my love affair with kale (…um didn’t you ask how to make kale chips??…i am working on limiting my tangents…), but wowza! what an amazing green vegetable!
…so once you start to hanker for kale chips, you will not want to pay the $6.99/bag at Whole Foods…i can eat one bag a day now!…and so can my kiddos…
…i also forgot to ask whether you have a dehydrator?—i have an Excalibur 9 tray…before having my Excalibur, i used my oven on it’s lowest temperature and had to go open the oven every 20 minutes to release the steam or moisture…this technique made decent kale chips, but i always ended up with a baked, cooked flavor as opposed to a ‘raw’ dehydrated, yet alive flavor…
…so after my long-winded, back-story, i offer you my simple recipe for kale chips…please note that there are a ton of recipes out on the web to suit anyone’s taste buds from ‘mesquite’ to ‘sour kream and onion’, but my version i quote for a beginner…
‘Cheezy Kale Chips’
one red bell pepper
1/4 cup of nutritional yeast flakes
juice of one lemon
salt to taste
an overflowing cup of cashews (soaked for at least an hour)
—now blend all ingredients above (through cashews) until you get a smooth consistency…you might need to add a bit of water or more lemon juice to get the mixture going in the blender (…i sometimes add the bored, overipe tomato (s) that sits on my kitchen counter for extra moisture…)
2 bunches of kale—washed, de-ribbed, dried (i use kitchen towels, you can use salad spinner), and torn into what you consider manageable pieces…
—now mix kale leaves with ‘cheeze’ sauce, making sure to coat every pointy, bare ridge and valley of the leaves…
—-place on your dehydrator sheets (…i use Paraflexx sheets to avoid any liquid spillage…)
—-dehydrate at 105F for as long as it takes to reach desired crunchiness…i’d give you a time, but i am still learning how to use my Excalibur (…using the oven requires a more diligent vigil…)…but at a minimum it takes at least 4 hours and longer for the ‘wetter’ kale leaves…also, if i find really wet leaves, i will flip them over to accelerate the dehydrating process…
Hot Water Heater Finally Fixed
…thank goodness!…i’ve experienced dish back-up in the kitchen…i am not adverse to hand washing dishes, but it’s been no fun with cold water…
…so today it’s about getting a grip on my kitchen…as a result, i am not making any new meals today…it’s left-over night…but i have a hankering for a fresh coffee bread for tomorrow’s breakfast…
——
Last Night’s Meals—Rejection
…i feel a bit rejected by my girls…they had troubles with the pumpkin soup and the green dumplings which i made with edamame instead of green peas …in defense of my cooking, it was a Clean Soup—they were just not used to their soup being thickened with a puree of oatmeal instead of potato (with all the produce i have, i just did not have the darn potato!…so oatmeal is a good substitute—and no, not the cinnamon, apple flavored kind…)…
…the edamame dumplings—amazing!
…it was a no-go with my youngest and the crab salad—she told me she was allergic and gets itchy skin (…who did she hear this from??)…so, she accepted her fate of no treats last night…typically i will NOT make another meal, but i did give her a hard boiled egg to prevent a low blood sugar episode…
——
Fig, Applesauce, and Almond Breakfast Loaf
…making this today…from Cooking Light Magazine, October 2010…
http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000002012813
thank you CL Magazine for lending me the photo…and thank you Barbara Estabrook, from Rhinelander, Wis. for the inspiration for my soon to be modified version…when i modify, i am looking to increase the nutritional content…for baking breakfast goodies, i usually substitute almost half of the whole wheat flour for ground flax…and if a recipe calls for white flour, i substitute wheat flour….i just don’t have white flour in the house anymore…and i try to moisten all batters with fruit purees, but sometimes it’s not possible to make a crunchy cookie with applesauce, so i will will almond butter as a substitute for butter…
——
Instead of A Green Smoothie This Morning…
…i juiced two grapefruits, four carrots, and two apples…my girls are getting a bit tired of everyday smoothies, so it’s time to break it up a bit with juices…
…i’ve been juicing now for about a year—tend to do it more in the summer time…i’ve learned to go slowly with introducing juices to my girls…children naturally find fruit juices more palatable, so i increase veggie content…
…easing my children into a plant-based diet has definitely been a scientific experiment…
—--
Hate To Waste Pulp From Juicing…
…so i am learning to make other food items with the pulp…like using veggie pulps to make veggie burgers or fruit pulp to make fruit leather…
…right now i am making fruit leather for the first time…working with a dehydrator is a scientific experiment for me…i am completely new to it, and it takes time…first time i made dehydrated green beans (…go figure…), it was a disaster…they turned into dental floss…
…then i made Kale Chips and they were an amazing success—and yes, both girls love my kale chips…
…fruits dehydrated successfully so far: persimmons, pear and banana…
…hoping that my fruit leather made from a puree of banana, carrot-apple pulp, and kiwi turn out at least decently…
Eva, Don’t Look At Food Prices
…someone warned that if i started looking at food prices it would make me think twice about my happy, quasi-organic, plant-based eating lifestyle…and she was right…gulp, $20.79 for 6 organic chicken breasts at Costco…that comes out to $3.47/per breast…versus regular Foster Farms non-organic 12 per pack, for around the same total, bringing each chicken breast to $1.73/per breast…
…i am still in sticker shock…however, i can deal with the high price knowing that i only prepare meat once out of my 5 day cooking week, and that i want to give my family the best quality meat possible…
…but i did buy regular ground turkey…it came out to 4 packs at $14.41 or $3.60 per pack…i use one pack per a meat meal…and usually have another meal leftover…so, i can stomach the fact that i did not buy organic in this case, because again, maybe they are eating this ground turkey twice a month…
——
Ideal World
…i would have enough money to buy everything organic and free range…
…i would have Whole Foods only a 5 minute drive away to live in my ideal world…
…shattered reality—i can afford to buy only half organic and Whole Foods is about a 25 minute out-of-my-way drive and in mommy time, that’s 25 minutes each way i don’t have….
——
So What Does This Mommy Do?
…buy organic when i can, but do not bend over backwards to accomplish this…
…buy the freshest looking produce i can at my local Raley’s grocery store on the way to and from my children’s school…
…just cut back on meat consumption—good quality meat is pricy, and we just don’t need so much of it…(tangent here, and always interesting to me is if i bought all organic produce would my grocery costs be the same if i were eating a daily meat-based diet?…it would make sense, right?…warrants further investigation…)
——
Grand Total for Yesterday’s Costco and Trader Joe’s Shopping
…all i can say, is that yesterday’s shopping, which does not include the daily jaunts to pick up particular produce for that day’s meal, came out to $200.50…so over ten days, that comes out to $20.05/day…one day i’ll list what i buy…(ok the Starbuck’s VIA was a my splurge, unnecessary food item)…
——
Today’s Menu
Breakfast--Oatmeal & Walnuts, and Green Smoothie…the GS contained kale, papaya, oranges, kiwi and banana
Lunch—the girls got Chicken Salad made from a non-organic rotisserie chicken from Costco, but pumped up the nutrition to include grape halves, walnuts, fresh parsley and non-fat greek yogurt…(i can’t remember the last time i used mayo)…they also received cheese and apples for snack
AfterSchool Snack—Beta Carotene Green Dumpling Soup From Vegalicious.com http://www.vegalicious.org/2007/03/08/beta-carotene-soup-with-green-pea-dumplings/
(Thank You Vegalicious.com for lending me this picture.)
Dinner—Crab and Avocado Salad (with more veggies—green beans and tomatoes!) From Food Network Magazine
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/crab-and-avocado-salad-recipe/index.html
(Thank You FoodNetwork.com for lending me this lovely photo.)
Day 4 No Hot Water
…well, the repair guy came on Sunday as promised—for about 10 minutes, and then he says ‘see ya’ in about 4 more days??…how naive was i to think our water heather would actually be replaced 2 days after it burst?…grrr…
…being the mom inventor that i am, i created a whole new dish washing system that takes double the time it takes to wash dishes—but at least they are clean and disinfected…first i boil about 4 kettles worth of water then i add it to my soapy water bin and vinegar washing bin…
…it’s as follows: soapy water bath, rinse, vinegar water bath and then rinse…and, it’s a real pain in the tuckus…
——
Accounting System
…i think i will be excluding weekends from my ‘cost of time and money spent’ from my soon-to-be decided accounting system…hmmm, i can’t get those receipts from his grocery shopping excursions from Whole Foods…not that he won’t show me, but to get him to do something for me on a consistent basis that is not work related—not gonna happen…
…i can only control Monday through Friday…
…i’ll be keeping track of YTD total spending on all edible items (although my girls would debate what they consider edible—lol—ie smoked salmon and cream cheese per Sunday’s lunch)…
…although i am a numbers geek, i’ve have to come to the realization that i don’t have the time to track how much i spend on each item…so totals is where it’s at for me…
…i’ll also keep track of time spent on food preparation—like i’ve said before meal prep, meal planning, meal shopping and clean-up…but already doing a poor job at it because it is taking twice the amount of time to wash up dishes because i can’t use the dishwasher because we don’t have hot water yet…
——
Fruits & Veggies Daily Total
…when it comes to food, for me it’s about the color wheel…
Monday through Friday we have a green smoothie in the morning on the way to school—today it contained: pineapple (Yellow), cranberries (Red), mango (Orange), banana (White), kiwi (Green) and kale (Green) blended with vanilla yogurt, soy milk, and OJ….
lunch for kids was simple—just PB&J and apples (White)…
afterschool snack was a tofu, green bean (Green) and pea (Green) chicken stock based soup…
dinner was an Indian Inspired Rice Pilaf with broccoli (Green), red bell pepper (Red), potato (White)…thank you Viviane Bauquet Farres @ foodandstyle.com for this vegan inspiration….
Adventures With Smoked Salmon & Cream Cheese And My Girls
…i don’t know how long it took to get my girls to appreciate salmon, but i can proudly say after years of presenting it to them in many different forms from grilled, baked and to broiled and from Asian to Mediterranean flavors, they like it—or maybe even love it…
…i just keep thinking of all those amazing Omega 3 Fats (aka Essential Fatty Acids) which are known to be beneficial to the heart, immune function, and helping my kiddos’ brains to develop and learn…
…i seriously disliked salmon growing up (or any fish for that matter—i OD’d as a child when we ate cases of salmon my grandparents fresh fished from some river up North…and i experienced OD on a couple of other things like kumquats—random, i know—and a yucky varietal of kiwi… )… not until about a year ago, when i did my ‘about-face’ with the way i eat, i learned to tolerate it, then like it, and now crave and love it!…
…so i made smoked salmon with cream cheese and capers on brown rice cakes (btw, i have not had a rice cake for eons—just happened to see them recently and want to try them again)…
…my 7 year old, was so enthusiastic about her Sunday lunch, while my 9 year old was doing her best to keep back her dry heaving…if i had to put money on it right there and then, i would have bet the younger would have finished her lunch, but surprisingly my older girl, who has food texture sensitivities, finished it all..
…we never force the kids to finish something they don’t like…both husband and i experience PTS from the 70s & 80s ‘de rigueur ’ clean plate club…
——
Eating Rules At Our House—Simplified
At Home
Outside in The Real World
Sunday—Menu Planning Day
…i really try to menu plan mainly for 2 reasons:
most importantly—maximizing our nutrition
secondly—reducing stress
——
Maximizing Nutrition
…when i plan our meals out a week in advance, i can make sure that we will be eating a rainbow of fruits and veggies, as well as a variety of whole grain and protein sources…
…important to note—and i will add more detail later on somewhere on 5FruitsAndVeggies—that i define the emphasis of our eating style to be home-made, plant-based, clean foods…my goal is to maximizing the nutritional content of every bite we take…
(…a philosophy of moderation and flexibility has been necessary to gain the support of my children (uh, and my husband)—trust me, they did not just wake up one day loving green smoothies in the morning, or high-5’ing each other because salmon was for dinner that night…)
——
Reducing Stress
…before i started to plan our meals, everyday meal preparation was chaotic with no rhyme or reason…it was about making whatever i could quickly…sometimes it was a meal with processed components…sometimes it was a take-out meal…and although there was a quick, convenience element to that chaotic way of eating, it often left me unsettled, or stressed out…i kept thinking there had to be a better way…
..about a year ago i became a Menu Planner…and although i don’t buy all my ingredients on Sunday before the week begins (because i ended up having wilted produce by Friday and often threw it away—a waste of money and food) and hit the grocery store almost everyday after dropping off my girls to school, that stressful lack of love, lack of thoughtfulness chaos is gone and i felt liberated…
——
Vegetarian, Vegan, Raw or Carnivore?
…right now, i implement all ways of eating..yes, my goal is to transition out of meat completely, but as you can imagine with a carnivorous husband and something inside of me which thinks my children should at the very least have some animal protein as they are growing—even though i don’t want any—my short term goal is to limit our consumption of meat…
…so if we eat meat, you betcha it’s going to be at a minimum organic, and a bonus to be grass-fed…but this can be expensive as evidenced by the amazing beef wellington my husband chef’d up at our friends’ house last night…let’s see…grass-fed beef tenderloin at Whole Foods—that will be $80 please…although that’s a challenge for me to digest (in more ways that one…) if you divide the cost up by 8 people, that’s $10 per portion—way cheaper than if we had the same meal at a restaurant…
…no, we do not eat like this Monday thru Friday…we save treats like last night’s meals to the weekends exclusively…
…ok, so back to this coming ‘me cooking’ 5 day week…i aim this week for one ‘raw’ meal, 2 vegetarian, 1 vegan, and 1 fish based meal…i’ll be back to report what i actually devise…ps did i tell you that i am not a chef?…i do not create my own recipes, and i gratefully source them here on 5FruitsAndVeggies…
Murphy’s Law
…when i finally resolve to start blogging about the expenses of cooking healthy for the family, our water heater breaks…
——
7:15 am Water Heater/Geyser
…i open the door to our garage to retrieve a box of fresh spinach for our morning smoothie, and find water gushing out of our water heater!…my first thought: ‘dang, i won’t be cooking some yummy food today,’ and my secondary thought ‘yikes—potential for major water damage!’…
…love my husband tremendously, but i did not marry Mr. Fix-It (but he compensates in lots of different ways: good husband and daddy, and great cook!…just thought i should get the disclaimer out of the way…perhaps need to have it permanently on the front page of my blog?)…but he was able to turn off the water to the heater, and attach a hose to ciphon off the excess water into the backyard…
…find out through our supplemental insurance carrier that even though fixing/replacing the water heater for us is an ‘emergency’ that this does not constitute emergency status for them as long as there is some water being supplied—albeit icicle cold…lesson for me: hot water is a luxury…really puts it in perspective-and i am not trying to be funny…
…btw, there will be none of my knee-jerk, reactionary panic ‘water damage’…i was informed that happens during major flooding…ok, now i know really what an emergency is…
——
Canceled This Weekend’s Dinner Party
…remember i said my husband has redeeming qualities?—he’s an amazing weekend warrior chef…we had plans for a beef wellington night (although they were going to have the beef tenderloin, and i would have the roasted veggies…note: grass-fed at least…the movie Food Inc. really had a lasting impression on my husband…)…
…so in lieu of hosting, we invited ourselves and the menu over to the former dinner party’s invitees’ house…works out great, because i hate the clean-up (check out how much time i spent cleaning dishes just yesterday—and that was an easy day!)…
——
Potentially No Cooking Tonight
…i really wanted to cook something tonight, but the thought of washing everything in cold water is not appealing…i really depend on that dish-washer…on my hot water : ( …
…one potential solution is washing in cold water and spraying whatever cooking item in vinegar afterwards—but just so time consuming…but i do vinegar wash all the time—but with warm to hot water…
——
Totals—Thursday, January 20, 2011
…on my to-do list, is to figure out the best way to keep track of my money spent on groceries…but i will relay the time spent yesterday on everything food related and will get back to the money spent in another blog…(maybe if i just keep a weekly total and then at the end of the month divide total receipts and divide it by the number of days?)…
…also need to figure out a way to keep track of the food i make…please note, and i think i need to put a big disclaimer on my main page—I AM NOT A CHEF, PHOTOGRAPHER, or NUTRITIONIST…i will not report ingredients to a recipe or count calories or provide nutritional information…i give credit where credit is due…all i am providing here is my journey about the time i spend making healthy food…
Menu Planning—0 minutes (…i usually menu plan once or twice a week…)
Washing Dishes/Emptying & Loading Dishwasher/General CleanUp—27 minutes (…typically way worse than this, but on Thursdays i start to lose my cleaning mojo…)
Food Preparation—99.84 minutes (scary to think this was an easy day…it was…all i did was reheat yesterday’s baked, crushed peanut/orange zest/cumin/cinnamon chicken (happy free range ones) nuggets with a fresh ginger dipping sauce…only thing made was this amazing raw broccoli slaw recipe from Raw Food Rehab’s website http://rawfoodrehab.ning.com/…)
ps …i am not a chef or a photographer…all the credit goes to the amazing folks at RawFoodRehab.ning.com Penni, in particular ; )
Grocery Shop—20 minutes
Exercise—64 minutes (run-47 minutes & yoga 17 minutes)…(minutes not included in any totals)…
Total Time Spent on Food One Day—146.84 minutes =’s 2.45 hours
Total Time Doing Good Things Towards My Health—210.84 minutes =’s 3.514 hours (Food Prep & Exercise combined)
——
Frequency of Produce Shopping
on the way home from dropping off the kidlets at school, i usually stop by the grocery store which is on my way home—(thank you Raleys for being open during ‘mommy hours’, which i define as any time open for my convenience and schedule…)—and pick out fresh produce for my meals of that day…even if it means coming for only one humble bag of kale…
yes, some people have made comments to me that doing this is a ‘waste of time’…even the grocery clerks have asked if it would make more sense for me to plan my grocery shopping…well for me, it’s not an issue of planning—my meals are planned…it’s just that in my experience, fruits and veggies bought on Sunday or Monday, usually don’t make it until Wednesday or Saturday…and in reality, i end up ‘wasting’ not only time, but money and effort…so daily produce shopping makes more sense to me…
——
Cost of Produce
today, as i swiped my AMEX for the $18 of groceries—consisting of a bag of organic long grain brown rice, a marked down carton of OJ, and kale, green beans, one potato and 2 bags of broccoli—the grocery clerk said “Good job today for ALL of that!”…and i kept thinking, as compared to what?…to what other people spend on groceries?…or was it an opinion based on a visual conclusion?…
i was a bit perplexed because in my mind $6 for 2 bags of broccoli seems a bit steep…or is it?…is is cheap compared to buying meat?…or is it cheap if my family eats the broccoli over one meal or 2?…
——
Time It Takes To Cook
my house is usually a mess…not because i don’t care, but because i am spending tons of time cooking all my family’s meals from scratch…i have two girls (7 & 9) in school from 8:00am until 3:00pm…i am lucky to be done preparing a nutritious after school snack and dinner, getting a load of laundry done, superficially tidying one room in the house and getting in my daily exercise each given day before i pick up my girls from school…
i enjoy food preparation, but do not enjoy the by-product—at minimum one or two loads of dishes and accompanying pots and pans…
when all is said and done, i estimate my daily cooking, including cleaning up afterwards to be anywhere from 2-3 hours daily…
——
The Point of This Blog and Future Blog Posts
i am starting to realize that i spend a lot of time, energy and money on preparing my family healthy, nutritious meals…but now i am curious about how much, on paper, this is all really costing me…
tryntobevegan asked: How do we make comments on your posts?
still thinking about doing the blog….just don’t have as much time as i would like…i don’t want to start and then not post—once i do something, i do it full blast or not at all…
geeze, i am working on so many blog posts right now that i will probably not end up posting any of them because i am delving way too deep into some topics…
so here’s a quick blog post about PLU code on fruit and vegetable labels…i had no clue about this until i read a section about this in Ani Phyo’s cookbook “Ani’s Raw Food Essentials”...
did you know that:
a four digit number means an item is conventionally grown
a five-digit number beginning with 9 means its organic
a five-digit number beginning with 8 means it’s been genetically modified (GMO)
i have always seen stickers on fruits and veggies, but now i know what those PLU’s mean…of course when i found out about this, i scoured my fridge to see if i had any GMO produce…thankfully i had none…but i did find an old, squishy bell pepper that could not be resurrected by cooking or juicing—it just needed to be thrown out!
