Organics revisited

Well I have been meaning to do a follow up for sometime now and tonight is as good as any. In my last blog I briefly mentioned that we had taken a leap to the dark side and are now almost 100% organic. This does not include going out to eat, the Brooklyn Bakery (probably the best bakery in all of Israel because it is American style!), and a few occasional treats. We have been doing this for about 4 weeks now and I have made a lot of disoveries in the process.

The Pro's are that everything tastes better. The spices have more zip, the bread is wheatie and crunchy with flax seed and nuts, the chicken looks like chicken and has not been man handled into oblivion and tastes like....chicken! The fruit is sweeter and I don't have scrub all the pesticides off. I can just make sure they are dirt free! And futher more, the kids eat almost all of it. The only things they have vetoed are the plain yogurt and the whole wheat crackers. We nixed the yogurt and I keep the crackers. The granolas bars are awesome and I have staked claim to them as there are only 6 to a box and D only gets them when I am feeling generous and the kids don't even think to ask as they know these are Eema's breakfast!

I also like that I don't have to worry about all the hidden sugar, what is there is minimal and is plainly stated. There are no "natural flavorings" to hide sugar in.

The fact that certain individuals in the family have better behavior when they are not hopped up on additives and sugar.

I am learning to make everything from scratch.

I get my groceries delivered right to my door!

The downside:
Cost, cost, cost........but I am getting used to it and since D is doing some tutoring on the side right now it is not affecting our budget.

I have to make everything from scratch. More time, mess and energy and it sucks what little creativity I have right up! This also means that when I miss calculate how much everyone will eat, we get anarchy when there is not enough. Fortunately we have our handy back up of peanutbutter sandwhiches.

I feel like I am living my life in the kitchen.

So really the pros' much outweigh the cons'. I never thought I would go organic, but the benefits have been really rewarding. We have also been discussing the reason for the costs, which is that because pesticides and cheap fillers are not being used, there is higher risk and greater loss in the fresh produce and with products like cookies, etc. You have the fact that their costs are higher, but also that you can't sneak in cheap subsidized fillers so it costs more to use real ingredients. And since I feel that I am living in the kitchen I am going to take a lesson from a friend of mine and make all the meals in one night freeze it and re-heat at meal time. She used to do this when she worked full time and the kids were little. This way she always came home to fresh home cooked meals with out the exhaustion and mess. Now her kids are older and can help out more so they make it as they go. I have done this to some extent already on and off and when I do it, it works great! My favorite is with pancakes. I have given up cold cereal since the kids can eat like 2-3 bowls in one sitting and be hungry in an hour. Not worth the cost or the time. We now do oatmeal and pancakes. When the pancakes are pre-made they heat up quick and the clean up is minimal. With oatmeal I don't do it ahead of time, but it does heat up quickly and it is filling. Although I am thinking of keeping cold cereal for Shabbat as a treat. Overall, I am proud of myself for making the effort to switch eating habits, but I have a long way to go as sometimes our meals are smaller. I think pre-making things will help that though.

What we have discovered is that despite ourselves, we are now part of the elite food snobs. It makes us sound more elitist now that, "we keep organic...." It really is not something we do because we think it is, "the only way" we do it because it is tastier and because it is one more way to stay one up on the kids! And truly that is the bottome line isn't it! ;)

*Disclaimer: Note to all of you who tend to send us junk food from time to time, please don't think we have given up all our bad habits. While we are trying to shield the kids from the dangers of horribly processed mystery food, we figure it is too late for us!

In other food news, for those of you who know me well, you know I am a peanut butter addict and that when I am preggers I can keep Skippy operating all on my own. Well it would seem that the peanut butter gene has been passed to M. If ever there is a tub of peanut butter within' her grasp she will stick her hand in and start scooping it out in globs. Last week she got to the end of the tub while I was in the kitchen cleaning up. She looked about like Winnie the Pooh with his head stuck in the honey jar, only she had her whole hand in there and peanut butter from head to toe! Like mother like daughter!