Food, glorious food
One of the things that I would like to do this year is to take a good look at what our family is eating and make a few changes. As a general rule, we don’t eat too badly – I cook from scratch most nights, we don’t eat much red meat (none at all in my husband’s case as he went veggie last year), we eat home-grown organic veg and I try to limit the amount of junk that we consume.
Having said that, there’s always room for improvement. The food that I ate on my retreat was vegetarian and prepared with little or no sugar, and although I expected massive withdrawal symptoms as I have quite a sweet tooth, I felt instead as though I was bursting with energy. Now, well into the first week back to school, back on our usual diet and still finishing off the Christmas chocolates, I’m ready to crawl into bed and sleep at every possible opportunity! It’s got me thinking that although I don’t want to change to the diet I had whilst I was away, there has to be a significant connection between how I’m feeling and what I’m eating.
But – how to make changes without being too obvious? My husband’s easy, he will eat whatever I put in front of him (very handy when we first got married and I was learning to cook!) but my girls will be trickier. Whilst I could change our diet wholesale and let them just get on with it, I know from experience that it can be quite traumatic for that to happen to a child, especially when they’re used to eating what’s generally termed as “normal” food.
So, I’ve decided to go for the stealth method. Nothing too underhand; we’ll still have the same sorts of food as before, but with just a few alterations. White sugar is the big one, but it’s not impossible to phase it out or at least cut it down – at home, at least. I’ve decided to use brown sugar in my baking instead. There – a simple start! We’re all pretty good at snacking on biscuits so I plan to start making our own and then I can control what’s gone into them. (I could just stop the biscuits altogether, but that feels a bit unkind – and I like a biscuit!) It will mean adding another job to my week – and that’s the thing. I need to find a way of cooking and baking all of these things without it impacting too much on the time that I have available.
Perhaps I have just found myself a resolution for this year after all – to feed my family better and adjust how I’m spending my time so that I can manage it all and still get the odd early night or two. Or perhaps I just need more hours in the day! Either way, I think it will be fun finding out.
