Eating Clean

Remember last week when I talked about wanting to drastically lower the amount of preservatives and artificial colors/flavoring in our foods? Here it is just in case, for some reason, you aren't obsessively memorizing my every blog post.

We started making changes right away. Thanks in a large part to Pinterest (you can follow me there!). That is the best place to find all kinds of "clean" recipes! I've had such a good time with it. Here are some of the changes we made just in the last week:

Source: mrshappyhomemaker.com via Jessica on Pinterest

I made my own coffee creamer. And it was super easy. And delicious. And by making my own, I'm not adding the following crap to my coffee:
High Fructose Corn Syrup.
Dipotassium phosphate. Which is also sometimes used as a fertilizer.
Mono- and diglycerides, Sodium aluminosilicate and aritificial flavors, which are all chemically made ingredients. No thanks.
There are more, but you get the point. Words that I have to copy and paste because they are so strange.
Now I know what I'm putting into my coffee. Deliciousness. Click on the pin above if you are interested.

Like I said earlier, I realized we were eating far too much "convenient" breakfasts. Too much Eggo brand here for my liking. So I got to work making a few things to have handy.

Source: littlebirdiebaby.blogspot.com via Jessica on Pinterest

Those things are amazing. Perfect to freeze and have handy on the run. And lots of room for mixing it up. We used bacon this time, but I can see adding in all kinds of healthy stuff.

Cooked up some waffles for Andrew to eat in the morning instead of Eggo's. I used this IHOP copycat recipe which never, ever disappoints.

Source: cookinupnorth.blogspot.com via Jessica on Pinterest

I made Taco Seasoning and Ranch Powder. I've used both and they are great! I'm a huge fan of the taco seasoning. All the taste (and better) and SO MUCH less sodium and chemicals. I didn't realize how salty that stuff was until I tried my own. I'm converted!

Source: selfreliancebyjamie.blogspot.com via Jessica on Pinterest

I've made a few other  things homemade this week that I normally wouldn't have and it's really not that difficult. Or any more time consuming.. not a lot anyways. And it tastes so much better! Meatballs and pasta sauce. Yumm! And now I have two more nights of it tucked away in the freezer.

We've switched over to all whole grain products. I won't get into details on that, but I KNOW it's better for Andrew's little system. More fruits and veggies. And there are still some on-the-shelf products that I'm allowing in. I'm just more careful when reading the ingredients. Triscuits are great! Who knew?? The only ingredients being, Whole Grain Soft White Winter Wheat, Soybean Oil and Salt. Perfect! We're also a big fan of fruit snacks around here. Mott's Medley's are wonderful! The box says "All Natural", but we know not to fully trust that, right? Right? When it comes to fruit snacks though, they're golden. They are made with real fruit and vegetable juice. Seriously.. stuff like apples, carrots and sweet potatoes. There is still corn syrup in it, but it's not the first thing listed.

So we're off to a good start! I'm making a few more things this weekend. Protein Bars for my husband. Homemade corndog muffins for Drew. And little turkey sausage pancake muffins for all of us. I'm making a Chicken Broccoli Casserole tonight, using my own Cream Of Whatever mixture instead of the canned soup. I should have enough to freeze at least one extra meal out of it.. hopefully that cream of stuff is good!