"The flow of creativity feels like an avalanche of joy and wonder. Being open to that possibility creates connections with everything." - Feline Dreamers

Friday, February 22, 2008

Food for Thought (and Nourishment)

As a mostly-vegan person who is trying to add more raw and living foods to her diet, as well as bring into balance my consumption of sugars, I’ve been thinking about the various meals my family and I eat on a regular basis. We mostly eat homemade food, with some exceptions based on time constraints.

Breakfast is usually either a fruit smoothie, a banana, or nothing. Many times I’m just not hungry for the first few hours of my day. I do drink a lot of water, though.

Currently I work outside the home, and my lunches are normally a salad and some fruit, or perhaps some leftovers from a previous meal (today I had leftover split pea soup). Occasionally I go out for lunch; BlackLion and I went out yesterday to this great new vegan restaurant (The Green Elephant in Portland) and I had curry and nan.

Here is a sample week of dinners, from this past week. Not sure what we’re having tonight, so I put last Friday’s meal here instead.

Friday: veggie burritos (vegan for those of us who wanted, with cheese for the other folks)
Saturday: a traditional pasta dinner with salad and garlic bread, and cupcakes, at a friend’s house (not entirely vegan)
Sunday: vegetable curry over rice (vegan)
Monday: a pasta dinner with a lot of veggies in the sauce, some homemade bread, and homemade whoopee pies for dessert (vegan)
Tuesday: veggie burgers, a salad and some tater tots (vegan)
Wednesday: split pea soup and homemade oatmeal bread (vegan)
Thursday: salad and a sandwich to go, from Panera Breads (not vegan)

I’d say this was fairly typical, though we were pretty busy in the evenings this week, so Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday’s menus had either time constraints or other locations involved. I like variety, so I tend to be the one in the family who seeks out new recipes and encourages Quester to get creative with dinners. The kids would just happily eat the same things over and over, for the most part. It’ll be interesting to see how our diet changes and/or stays the same when I’m the primary homemaker. I do want to migrate to eating more raw foods, which will be easier in the growing season.

What about you? What do you eat on a regular basis? Are you happy with your foods or would you like to make changes? Leave comments below if you’re inspired by the topic.

In another food-related note, I got a catalog last night from a food supplier, and policies about starting a co-op (they call it a “buying club”) with them. I think it’ll work well. I hope to have it up and running in time for a March order.

2 comments:

Wendy said...

Local, local, local! That pretty much sums up how we try to eat. If it's local, anything goes ... well, almost :). It's a real challenge to stay local this time of year, though, especially when all of those lovely (but not local) fruits and vegetables are staring at me when I walk into the grocery store.

On the plus side, because we're striving for 100% local (grown or raised within 250 miles of our home) we've cut out most of the processed foods which were once so much a part of our diet. Pasta is homemade using our pasta maker. Bread is homemade. Even "convenience" foods like pudding mixes and pancake mixes are homemade, using as many locally sourced incredients as we can find.

I've contemplated starting a local foods buying club, but I haven't figured out how I could make it work, as we would have to contract with various farms in the area, and a lot of them already have CSAs. A co-op would just be redundant ;).

Boo Bear Buns said...

My son and I are vegetarian, I would like to work toward being vegan, but I drink milk (got to have cereal for breakfast) and love cheese. I'd like to try raw, but I find that eating raw fruits and veggies alone never seems to satisfy me. We try to eat locally whenever possible, and I am lucky to have a mother who is an organic farmer! She has been working on her year round greenhouses this year so we'll be able to have fresh, local veggies next winter too! If you ask around at local farms, it's very likely that you will find a local buyers club that is already going strong.