Our diet

I always find it interesting reading about what other people eat. So, I thought I'd write about our diet, it may not be of any interest to anyone but me ;). About 2 years ago I started switching our diet from mostly pre-prepared packaged foods to organic whole foods. I started cooking and cutting back on our meat consumption. I've read a few things lately saying that eating healthy is too expensive, but as I've stopped buying convenience foods our grocery bill has gone down even though I buy mostly organic. Most whole foods aren't that expensive, rice and grains are pretty cheap. Veggies don't cost much, even the organic ones. It is meat that is expensive so that is something we've been cutting back on.

For the last year and a half we eat beef once a month. Usually it is half a pound of ground beef in spaghetti which lasts about a week. Occasionally we will have hamburgers as our monthly beef. We eat almost no pork, sometimes I will get ham for sandwiches. We do eat chicken, usually 3 nights a week but it is always in something, a pasta dish or a stir-fry. When we do have chicken in our dinner, we use only 1 chicken breast for the whole recipe. So generally 4 nights a week are vegetarian nights. We do eat a lot of pasta and rice but Mark and I seem to have no problem eating a lot of carbs without gaining weight. We do eat only whole wheat pasta and bread. Overall, I feel happy with our diet. I wish more of it was locally grown. I would like to eat more beans but in general I haven't found many beans I like or at least I haven't liked the way they were cooked. We don't eat much fish because I find the whole fish thing very confusing. Should I eat wild caught or farmed? It seems that it varies by the type of fish. I'd like to eat more fish, but that is definitely something we can't get that is local.

Our last weeks of dinners has included:

vegetarian chili with kidney beans (the first time we had made that, we really liked it)
Cajun crawfish pasta (with crayfish tails from LA, not local but good)
Veggie stir-fry over rice
Red curry with chicken (1 breast for the whole dish) and potatoes, also over rice
Vegetable bowtie pasta with olive oil, garlic and pine nuts

And left-overs on the other nights, every dish made enough for 2 dinners. We almost never eat breakfast and lunch for Logan and I is usually sandwiches (grilled cheese, egg, or PB&J) or pita pizza made on whole wheat pitas. Every other week or so we have organic mac and cheese (yes, it is from a box). I also eat left-overs for lunch often.

I'd like to make more bread and the last few things we eat out of a box I'd like to learn to make myself. I'm looking forward to growing more of our food this year.