Honestly Crazy » Food

Cucumber Harvest

Randa — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 17:54:48 +0000

The cucumber vine has taken over my husband’s garden again. I wish I could bring myself to actually like cucumbers…

Rethinking the food we eat

Randa — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 13:50:27 +0000

Outta sight, outta mind right? That’s how I’ve preferred things when it comes to the food we eat. I’d rather not know because then I don’t feel compelled to change anything. However, with kids in the home, we’ve really got to become more conscious of what they’re eating and try and keep them from the “fat curse”. I’ve been too lazy about it. Big J is almost 5 and it’s taken us this long to really get to a point where we’ve decided to need to make some changes.

What tipped us over the edge was watching Food, Inc. recently. Yeah, we don’t buy any documentary hook, line and sinker, and this one is no different, but it really caused us to think about all the fruit snacks and chicken nuggets. We’re doing our kids a disservice. I’ll let you know how it goes…

Vintage Art for the Boys Room

Randa — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:06:06 +0000

I’ve been busily decorating my walls since we moved in, and had been at sort of a loss as to what to put in the boys’ room. I didn’t want anything too “cute” and don’t care for most of the typical kids room stuff. I finally hit on an idea this weekend and am so excited to have found some awesome vintage artwork in a transportation theme. I could look at vintage posters all day- they’re so beautiful. I already had two Tin Signs with Lionel Trains on them, so I added several to that collection:

And, this awesome print that will be great with the colors in their room:

and finally, this amazing “Ballooning Over Paris” print that I’m am totally in love with:

How cool is that??? Big J loves “Hot Hair Balloons” as he calls them, so I think he’ll like it.

Baby Food on the Cheap

Randa — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 04:37:03 +0000

We’re now into full baby food mode with Little D at 7.5 months, and I can’t stand to spend all that money on baby food when it’s so easy to make my own for the most part. I’m an inherently lazy person, so something needs to be quick and easy or I’m probably not going to be all that motivated to do it. With my first one, I was all gung ho on making almost all his food, and I had the time and it was fun to experiment, but with this one I’m only doing the really easy stuff to save some money. So, I buy cans of fruit in light syrup and no salt vegetables in cans or frozen bags, and then just throw them in this Baby Food Processor. A Magic Bullet works great too. If you make a lot at a time you can always freeze in ice cube trays and then pop them out and store in the freezer in freezer bags.

There is a great homemade baby food site called Wholesome Baby Food where you can find everything from how to prepare simple purees to making homemade teething biscuits. It’s the most thorough site I’ve ever run across.

Did you know parents used to give their babies stuff like beef hearts and liver & bacon when they first started selling baby food in jars? Ugh… blech…yuck!

The Idiot Proof Diet

Randa — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 04:41:04 +0000

I thought I’d post a little diet update since I mentioned the Idiot Proof Diet about a month ago.

The Idiot Proof Diet is awesome!!

I’ve done Weight Watchers with very good success, and until now hadn’t found anything to surpass it. The reason this diet is so good is that you make all your food choices up front and it then spits out a menu for you. You don’t have to constantly be making choices about what you’re going to eat. That’s always been such a downfall for me as I have very little willpower. I could make pretty good choices when I was single, and didn’t have the regular temptation to finish my kid’s chicken nuggets and fries, or my husband’s every other night requests to go out to eat. But now, I find it almost impossible to stick to a diet.

Another nice thing about the diet is that you get to take several days off every 11 days. That makes it MUCH easier to say no to cookies or cake. I just tell myself, I can have that on my day off. It makes it easier to turn down knowing I can have it in several days if I want it. I’ve found that one day is enough. More than that, and I go a little too crazy with the food choices.

So… the 1 month results: I’ve lost about 12 pounds and that’s with very little exercise, some cheating and not doing as well as I should have, especially on days off. I still have a hard time resisting those chicken nuggets- gotta work on that.