If you've read any of my blog posts you should have a pretty good idea of what we DON'T eat, drink and use in our daily lives. We are completely organic and free-range in terms of the food we eat, and completely chemical free in terms of beauty AND household products. We recycle ALL of our plastic, glass, aluminium and paper and we compost ALL of our kitchen waste that IS compostable.
I decided to break it down for you so that you can start to get an idea of what life is like in the household of organic, chemical-free, real foodists and I thought I'd start with food and drinks.
This is how my morning usually goes: (if I don't have anywhere to be!)
- Wake up (usually around 7am or whenever GLM's alarm is set for.)
- Head to the kitchen, greeting all of our 6 (hungry) cats along the way;)
- Put the kettle on
- Grab a reaspoon of coconut oil and pop it in my mouth and start swishing
- The next 20 minutes is spent feeding all our cats and swishing oil around my mouth and communicating via hand signals;)
- Fill teapot with whatever tea is necessary for the day (this will depend on whether I'm feeling a bit under the weather or if I've overindulged the night before or if I just feel like I need a pick-me-up! If none of these apply, I skip the tea)
- Pour boiled water into teapot and cover with lid
- Fill any empty glass bottles with boiled water from the kettle and place in fridge
- Grab mug and add quarter teaspoon of sea salt, quarter fill it with boiled water, stir, top it up with cold water and stir again
- Spit out coconut oil after 20mins has passed
- Immediately rinse mouth with salt water thoroughly to get rid of remnants of coconut oil
- Grab 2 more mugs and half fill with boiled water
- Add a teaspoon of honey to each mug and mix until dissolved, sprinkle some cinnamon in the water and top up with cold water and stir. Finally, add 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar to each mug.
- I take one mug through to GLM and I drink the other while I make her lunch for the day
- I pack 2 healthy meals for GLM (usually consists of left over dinner like homemade chicken curry and brown rice with a fruit for something raw. The other meal is always homemade plain yogurt with banana)
- Make our breakfast smoothie
- Place 2 glasses on a tray and divide smoothie between them and add a tablespoon of chia seeds to each glass
- Place 2 coffee mugs on tray (if I've made tea) and add ±10 goji berries (more to come on this) to each mug
- Fill mugs with tea
- Add a teaspoon of honey, a few drops of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper to each mug of tea and stir
- That is our breakfast routine taken care of
I've added links to the parts that I have info on in case you have no idea why, or how, I do some of the things I do! If there are no links it's because I haven't blogged about it yet and it'll be coming soon! You are always welcome to post comments asking questions and I will answer them either in a new blog or in a comment back to you:)
We decided a long time ago, that my wife would take a packed lunch to work every day for several reasons. She wanted to lose some weight and start eating healthier and her work cafeteria, while convenient, wasn't ideal for that. Sometimes she was just too busy to get to the cafeteria and she would have to go hungry and that just didn't sit well with me at all. She also had a thyroid problem and her cafeteria wasn't too interested in chemical-free, organic cooking methods and finally, it's just more frugal. I don't see the point in her spending money on unhealthy food at work, if we have all the good stuff we need at home. In the past we would end up with containers filled with leftovers in the fridge and we weren't eating them fast enough so we were wasting food. Now everything we cook gets eaten or used, even the leftover bones which I use to make bone broth.
You find, when you stick to organic and free-range, that the food IS pricier, so you end up treasuring every last morsel, and food NEVER gets thrown out. It's also far tastier so you don't WANT to waste;) I don't mind using my time in the morning to make her lunch because I know she's eating real, healthy food and it is my mission in life to keep my wife on earth for as long as is humanly possible by keeping her healthy;)
As far as my meals go, I also eat whatever is left over in the fridge but I tend to eat a lot of salads instead of starchy foods because of my IBS. I drink around 2 to 3 litres of water and I also drink a lot of rooibos tea throughout the day because it's another great way to keep hydrated. It's also good for you on so many other levels and I just LOVE the taste of it:) I never drink normal tea or coffee. They dehydrate your body and that's just counterproductive I think.
I usually decide on dinner the night before in case I decide to use my slow cooker. It's handy for when I know I won't have time to cook a meal. It means that I can leave it cooking for the day and go about my business and, by the evening, dinner will be ready to go. These two recipes are my favourite slow cooker recipes: Whole chicken in a slow cooker and Chicken curry in a slow cooker. My wife is amazing at pretty much everything she does, but one thing GLM DOESN'T do, is cook. It's never been her strong point. We joke about the disasters that happen whenever she's in the kitchen;) She tries to help, bless her, but invariably something will go wrong! She has never felt comfortable in a kitchen, just as I have never felt comfortable with spread sheets. For that reason, the kitchen is my domain and she helps clean when she can. In return, she handles all the finances and I love her for that. It's an arrangement that works really well for us. That being said, she makes the best scrambled eggs I've ever tasted so THAT will always be her job!
I love food. I love experimenting with new meals and interesting things like lacto-fermented foods so, if I have some free time, it'll be spent filling some jars with veggies to ferment, making homemade yogurt, or baking some banana bread because we do love our healthy dessert after dinner:) There's usually something brewing in my kitchen. The hardest part is finding the time to actually get it going but it doesn't usually take long and I can do most of it in between other stuff, so it's not really that hard. Once it's prepared, I don't have to think about it until it's ready.
For example, making yogurt involves about 10 minutes of my time to prepare and then, for the next 24 hours, I don't have to think about it while it brews in my oven. At the moment I have some cucumbers lacto-fermenting in jars. It took about 10 minutes of preparation and they have been sitting on the counter ever since. All the good bacteria does all the really hard work! I've currently got two jars of kombucha brewing on top of my fridge which also took me about 10 minutes to prepare and now I just need to leave them covered for 2 weeks while the bacteria works hard to make me some lovely kombucha. I WILL blog about this soon because I think kombucha is amazing for your body.
Being a real foodist may involve a bit more preparation time in terms of cooking, but I CAN say that there something so rewarding about making everything from scratch. There is a real sense of accomplishment when you make your own yogurt and you KNOW it's just so good for you and your family and YOU made it. Eventually, you reach a point where you are making EVERYTHING from scratch just because you know you can and you are saving so much money and you are doing the best thing for you and your family AND for the environment. You no longer need to rely on grocery stores that don't really care about your health needs, but only your convenience needs.
That is pretty much our food and drinks covered. In my next post I'll go into household and beauty products that we use and what I make and what I buy and where I get it all from.
Until then, keep it real!
Until then, keep it real!
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