Step 0: What I Couldn't Do at the Beginning

At first, I was testing the waters slowly, but the more I read and the more I do, the more I feel the need to dive in. So, here goes! I will be getting rid of preservatives and other nasties. My first target was HFCS, which I've almost completely eliminated from our diet. I doubt I'll be able to do 100% at first with preservatives, but I am definitely going to be much more strict about what I allow into our home. I probably should have done this at the beginning, but I don't know if we could have gone "cold turkey" off our old diet onto a completely different diet. Instead, slowly using up the old and replacing it with better has been a good route overall for us. I just feel a need to step it up.

So, we finally made the plunge today. Remember all that stuff I posted about last week? That and more went to one of two piles today: trash, or for my brother.

Why am I getting rid of all of this food if it's still good? Because they each contain things that I've decided aren't good for us. I mentioned it to my hubby and said he was fine with it, so away it goes. I will have to find tasty substitutions for some of it, especially the salad dressing and the pickles because we both really liked it. I'm also kind of sad that some of my canned goods had preservatives in them. (If you're asking why I am giving some of it to my brother if it has things I wouldn't eat in it, the answer is simple: he's pretty tight on money right now and I'm sure he could use the random boost of food to eat. And this food is still better than fast food or nothing at all.)

In a way, I think clearing out all this garbage will be like starting over. I think it will make it harder for me to buy more crap, since I'm getting rid of so much. The sting of wasting so much money and food will drive me to consider each purchase more, and to make sure I am not buying junk!

To my brother:
3 cans of olives
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 box of chicken helper
6 boxes of jell-o mix
1 box of stuffing
4 boxes of mac & cheese
30-ish packs of kool-aid
10-ish packs of ramen
2 containers of bacon bits
3 bags of microwave popcorn
3 boxes of rice-a-roni knock-off
2 sleeves of crackers
1 bottle of salad dressing
5 cans of condensed soup
random pasta
2 shakers of popcorn flavoring

To the Trash:
1 jar each of chicken and beef bullion cubes
1 jar of opened jelly
1/2 a ramen package
2 open salad dressings
1/2 bottle of Worcestershire sauce
1/2 shaker of sprinkles
1/2 large jar of banana peppers

The two things I don't if I can bear to throw away is most of a bottle of white cooking wine (who knew it had preservatives in it) and what's left of our soda stash. The soda I am keeping for hubby and it's better than normal soda because at least it's made with real sugar instead of HFCS. Just last week I cut out caffeine so I will not be having any more of it myself. If I can get him to agree not to drink soda at work, I won't care of he has a soda once or twice a week from our stash. Plus we can keep it for company.

I feel good about this, although I am a little apprehensive about this final big change.

What do you think? Did you go through a cupboard cleansing to eliminate bad ingredients from your house? Was it hard to throw away so much money?

PS!

Yogurt Phase of Step 2 is now complete!!!!

I will probably talk about this more after this week, but my yogurt is awesome.

Step 2: Organic Eggs, Yogurt, and Butter

Step 1 was organic milk. After much ridiculosity, I finally bought my milk and I love knowing that I've cut out one more source of bad things in our food. In just that short time we've already used almost a whole gallon -- can you tell I was in milk withdraw from not having it for a week?

Step 2 is to continue down the dairy path: Eggs, Yogurt, and Butter.

Eggs
I actually just used my first organic egg last night in some scrambled eggs I made myself for dinner. The awesomeness that is Whole Foods makes it so easy to get these products that I want. I bought these eggs from a local farmer (ok, so about 100 miles away, not great, but not terrible), through Whole Foods. It was just easy. They look so much different than store-bought. I mean, apart from the fact that they are brown. They're not perfectly shaped, some are smaller or larger. They have these fun little speckles on the shells. Generally the eggs were actually larger than the normal "grade a large eggs" from the store which I thought was interesting.

Yogurt
So far, I really want to make my own. My first attempt didn't go so well. You can read about my ultra noob-ness here. Really, who knew?

When I have my first solid (get it?) success at yogurt, I will consider step 2 essentially complete. I expect I will only continue to improve my yogurt-making skills, but currently I definitely can see I need to work on it.

Butter
I just opened my last box of regular butter, so probably soon I will switch to organic butter. Once again I am going with Organic Valley brand. They sell it at Whole Foods which makes it easier for me.I might even buy some at the store today when we go.

Stay tuned for step 3: Chicken.

PS, random funness, I posted this at 10am on 10/10/10. mwhahaha.

Step 1: Organic Milk

This is sort of the start of a spontaneous series I just thought of--recording my journey to buying higher quality food. This makes more sense to me than rambling for pages on each grocery budget.

Next time I go to the store, I am going to buy organic milk. I've done a lot of reading and I've decided, yes, organic milk really is better for you. You can read some stuff here and here. I found one hilariously poorly written / designed website bashing organic milk here.

Basically, it doesn't have any growth hormones, pesticides, or any other nasty stuff, and the cows are treated well and given (thanks to the new guideline which you can read about here) or here, a required 120 days in pasture in season.

Now that I decided to go organic for milk, I had to pick a brand. I read around, but I feel really daunted by trying to find a local farmer to buy from. Although I really shouldn't because the Cincinnati area has a lot of small farmers.

I read about Horizon, Organic Valley, and several others. these were the main two I was deciding between.

After I thought I had decided, I thought it was time to look for dirt. So I started searching for things like "organic milk deception" and "top organic brands" to make sure I was finding everything there was to find. One of the most helpful sites I found was here.

After doing my research, I've concluded that I will be buying from Organic Valley. They are basically a ginormous co-op of hundreds(?) of small-time, local farmers. Local milk from local farms goes to local stores--I love it. The only thing I could find negative about Organic Valley, was that they recently banned "raw" milk on their farms. No conspiracies, no hiding behind the regulations or skirting the issues, just making business decisions as businesses sometimes do. Plus, Horizon's website is so irritating to navigate.

Organic Valley has a helpful store locator which I've used so I now am fully equipped to buy milk I feel good about. Also, they have coupons!

I did just buy a gallon of non-organic milk tho, so I'm going to use that up before I buy organic, I don't want to waste it. I'll let you know how it goes!