What's inside my fridge?

Holy cow! Has it been almost a year?? A year?? I thought surely it had only been a few months. I guess that goes to show what a blur this last chunk of time has been. I perceived 10 months of time as about 5 months. Oops!

But I want to get back into the swing of blogging. So I'm coming back with a 'what's in my fridge?' post. I love seeing these when other people do them. I don't know why. Maybe it's some hidden voyeuristic tendency, but I find it absolutely fascinating. Some magazines have featured celebrity fridge tours, or chef fridge tours, but I find the everyday people way more interesting.

In the past six months or so I've made a big shift toward simplicity. I've made some changes to my home and to my cooking and to my life in general to simplify. I find it aesthetically and mentally pleasing. I'm guessing my fridge will reflect that, and I'm also guessing that what other people perceive as a bare fridge is what I see as sufficient. Because we eat very little processed food, we tend to just have a lot of whole ingredients and those come together into meals. We have very few 'grab and go' food items, even for the kids. If the kids want to grab something quickly, we have plenty of fresh fruit in the pantry.

Ok, here goes!

And here it is! No fancy fridge here. Just a boring, basic white side-by-side. I will say that I do much prefer side-by-sides to the over-under variety. Additionally, this is our fridge about mid-week. I grocery shop once a week, and this is about four days after I did that.

Top shelves... Eggs, of course. Though from the store, not our chickens. With the crazy heat we've been having, they haven't been laying a whole lot, so I've been buying eggs. Gasp! Yogurt(two kinds, blueberry and plain). Sour cream, veggie dip, and behind that a big ol' container of yeast.

Next row down, a pound of bacon, sliced Havarti, deli chicken breast, and a hunk of cheddar cheese(chosen by Ansel).

Next row down..... A package of frozen strawberries from Trader Joe's that are thawing for later use in crepes, overripe bananas waiting to be made into banana bread, a carton of chai, and half-and-half.

Bottom shelf.... This is where I would usually have the giant container of bread dough, but we're in between batches at the moment. A bottle of chilled wine and a bottle of chilled lemonade for guests.

The crisper drawers! These used to be packed to the gills every week, but I've re-worked how we store some items and now the contents are actually accessible. Local tomatoes, local cherry tomatoes, a container of 50/50 mix lettuce and spinach, a head of green leaf lettuce, and a giant stalk of celery. Oh! And what's left of the bag of baby carrots.

Below that, red potatoes, jalapenos(local), onions(local), and half a red onion.

And then the doors.... I so wish we didn't have to hang onto so many things. It makes me kind of twitchy to look at it. But with condiments and sauces, you're sort of stuck. I've pared down as much as I can, but I really do need these things.

Top shelf, pepperoncini, pimientos, red curry paste, peanut butter, garlic paste, ginger paste, and apparently four kinds of jelly!

Below that, the butter. Yum! Three sticks of salted butter, a spreadable butter blend, and cream cheese.

Then, minced garlic(just can't bring myself to mincing my own), dijon mustard, deli mustard, yellow mustard, parmesan cheese, mayonnaise, and ketchup.

And finally, two kinds of milk. Normally we would have two gallons of the kind on the left, which is local non-homogenized milk, but we went through one gallon of that really quickly and rather than drive way out of my way to get an additional gallon, I just picked up an easy to come by organic milk.

Next row, pickles, chocolate sauce, worcestershire sauce, salsa, fish sauce, hoisin sauce, and salad dressing.

And the bottom.... bottled water, seltzer(my newest obsession, no sodium, no sweeteners, yay!), and lemon juice.

Tomorrow..... What's in my freezer?!

Attempting to educate myself

I have done a paltry job of putting anything on this blog except for stuff about food. I assure you, there has been more happening, but it's honestly not been as much the focus as food has. Food, for me, is a big deal. And being successful with such a big change is a big deal for me. And I have been overwhelmingly successful in my opinion. I have never been able to 'conquer' this one. And I haven't entirely. I still have my moments. But I am improving!

One thing that I have been working on is reading. I want to read more in general. But I also want to read more about healthy living and learn how best to feed myself and my family, and to do the best for us and our home.

I am currently reading Fast Food Nation. I admit, I have been 'currently' reading this book for two weeks tomorrow. It's a good book. It's great information. I don't dislike the book. But I'm having a hard time powering through it. I'm almost there! I have about sixty pages to go.

I am simultaneously juggling reading The Omnivore's Dilemma. This is my second time reading the book, but the first time I did not completely finish it. Again, for some reason, I have a hard time getting through it. It's a great book. I love the information. But I just don't feel drawn to, 'oh! I hope I can find time to read this book today.' And as such, I have conveniently not been finding that time.

I'm working on it. My goal is to finish Fast Food Nation today. I can do it!

Earth Day!

So, it's Earth Day. Yay! And, because my life is all kinds of crazy right now and I've been putting off some projects and thus had little to blog about, I figure I can post a bit on what I do to be earth friendly.

So, let's see.

The biggies..... We use cloth diapers. We didn't with Kadin. Heck, I had no idea they even really existed anymore. But we have with Ansel since he was born. And seeing how he's almost 3 1/2 now, that's a LOT of diapers we haven't thrown away. I won't lie and say I love it at this point. It's tedious. But I remember Kadin's last months in diapers being tedious, too, and all I had to do with those was throw them away.

(I will also add that Ansel wore this same diaper today, as a matter of fact. The color's lost some of it's brightness, but the diaper is every bit as functional as it was in this picture, when Ansel was a little over a year old.)

We breastfeed. Feeding artificial human milk(also known as "formula") creates a TON of waste. If you can possibly breastfeed, I highly recommend it!

This is about 3 days post-partum, our first outing.

I use reusable menstrual pads. I'll spare you a picture on this one. Really, you don't want to see. But I promise you it's NOT gross. And an unexpected plus of it has been that they're WAY more comfortable than anything disposable ever was.

One of our cars is a hybrid, and we LOVE it! It's fun and cute and spacious enough and gets great gas mileage! The blue one on the right. The grey SUV is my parents'.

We buy organic products and local products when we can. This is less strain on the environment, especially the local products. Organic products also reduce the amount of impact each crop has on the land itself.

There are a lot of other smaller things we do here and there, and a lot of other things we'd like to do, but at this point don't because of financial constraints or the time involved or other things. We're working on it, though, and doing what we can.

My weekly challenge

Every week, I get to solve a puzzle. The puzzle is how to fit this much stuff into two produce drawers. And lemme tell ya, it's challenging! Yes, we use this much fresh produce in a week, PLUS some! Not pictured are the week's pears, tangerines, bananas, and onions. (and frozen vegetables, which we eat probably twice a week)
The vast majority of this is organic, with only a few exceptions based on availablity and cost. Apples are always organic, because my kids eat so many of them. Potatoes always are, too, as I've heard they have some of the highest levels of pesticides among conventional produce. In this particular week, the strawberries were conventional, along with the cilantro and jalapenos. The tomatoes were local, but not organic.

And this is what we did, later in the day. It's Spring Break for Kadin, and this was about the most exciting thing that happened all week. Sad, I know, but we're(ok, I'm) still recovering from last week's time served at Disneyworld.
Ansel showing his true colors.

The weekly haul

So I know I've been slacking. But, I was sick, so I think I'm excused.

Being sick threw things off again, so I didn't go shopping on Monday, my usual day. I went on Tuesday.


First order of business was to make the list(and drink coffee). Sometimes the list is easy to make because I keep a whiteboard on the fridge to write down things we need as they come up. Then I just rewrite my list so it makes sense for going through the store.

Ansel was.... excited? About.... shopping? I'm not sure. But I do know he has egg on his face.

In a perfect situation, I would go shopping first thing in the morning and be back for lunch. But this week I didn't leave until the afternoon, so I wanted to put dinner in the slow cooker. Chili won, because it was a lousy rainy, cold day.

This does use a lot of canned items, but eh. Someday I'll get past that, but for now, I'm ok with it.
Nicole's Chili Recipe:

1lb ground beef
2 15oz. cans diced tomatoes
2 15oz. cans tomato sauce
15oz. can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
15oz. can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 large chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green bell pepper
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper(I use more, but we like things spicy)
1/2 teaspoon white sugar
1/2 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
1/4 chili powder(I make my own)

Brown the ground beef. Combine everything else in slow cooker. Cook on low 8 hours.

Everything in. This smells soooo good as it's cooking.
And.... then we went to the store. On a nicer day, when I get started sooner, I'll take some pictures of the shopping excursion, too. But for now, pictures of the haul will have to do.

This is a pretty normal shopping trip for us. I didn't buy any meat because we had a lot in the freezer already. I didn't do as much cooking when I was sick as I normally would have, so there was enough that I skipped it for this week.

This cost $99. Everything is organic or at least pesticide/hormone/HFCS free.
The dairy. Two gallons of local, non-homogenized milk. It comes from here. I got to meet the man who owns the farm once at our local store. He had just started selling his products there and he was very nice and let Ansel have a LOT of samples. That won me over. The price for organic, non-local milk is the same as this milk. It's not the "organic" status that pulls me in so much as the idea of a more conscious product, so knowing the background of this product and the way it's produced is plenty for me.

The produce. Pretty normal for a week. We'll eat all of this, except maybe a couple of potatoes, by the time I go to the store again next week. We'll also use more apples, but we still had a bag and a half. Everything is either organic or local/pesticide free.

The other grocery items. I think everything is organic except the mayonnaise and the curry sauce. I replaced all the canned items I had used to make the chili earlier. I like to keep things like that stocked so I can use them as needed. The boys also begged for this cereal, and there was a coupon and a sale, so... I said ok.

The laundry stuff. I just started using this detergent, and will post about that soon in more depth. I also use Bac-Out for washing diapers, and will post about that at some point I am sure. Both of these items had coupons, so I wanted to take advantage of that even though I didn't need more right now.

When we got home, dinner was done! My husband was already eating as he had to get off to work. The boys ate as soon as it had cooled down enough. It was really good(always is). I think I might start aiming to have a slow cooker meal on all my shopping days just to make life easier.

Now it's really late, but I wanted to get this up tonight before it goes too many days in blog silence.