by Fawn Pattison, CFSA Member from Raleigh, NC
Despite the occasional panic attack caused by weeknight cooking, eating good-for-you food that is grown responsibly and hopefully not-too–far-away is very very high on my priority list. I put a lot of stock in feeding my kids (and myself) food without residues of neurotoxic, carcinogenic, or otherwise doom-inducing chemicals on it (maybe you already know that about me. Stop me if you’ve heard this one).
Making yummy meals from unprocessed food every. single. blessed. day! can get a bit stressful though. The grocery shopping in particular can bring me to tears almost as effectively as a commercial for anything involving pets. So I have a bunch of tricks that I use to make it easier.
Meal Planning
Seriously how did I ever feed myself and others without a plan?? My wonderful spouse got us onto the meal planning wagon back when I was carrying our first child and he wanted to spare me the burden of cooking. For several years, he would spend one whole day in January at the kitchen table, surrounded by cookbooks, literally planning all our dinners for the ENTIRE YEAR. He would even create the shopping lists to go along with them, to alleviate the daily/weekly burden of list-making. Sadly my Beloved’s Annual Meal Plan has long since expired, but the urge to turn the monotony into a time-saving routine has stuck, and I now make a meal plan for the week every Sunday morning while drinking a pot of tea and ignoring enjoying the sounds of small children scampering about.
I used to put my meal plans together like a casserole, with a dash of this and a dollop of that, but now I just lift them wholesale from the wonderful 100 Days of Real Food. Seriously, why bother to think?? Lisa has done all the thinking for me with her wonderful meal plans, including the dreaded SCHOOL LUNCHES. I adapt to our household’s particular food sensitivities, and that’s it folks. Week planned. Go to store.
Recipes for Clean Eating
We have pretty much every cookbook ever published with the words Vegetarian or Vegan in the title, plus some more. Sometimes I love to leaf through them and imagine the smells and flavors of home-cooked meals that we will enjoy throughout the week. But usually I just ask the internets what to cook. Here’s where the internets almost always take me:
Cook for Good – Linda Watson is the author of two books I adore, Wildly Affordable Organic and Fifty Weeks of Green. Linda is my homegirl because (as her book’s title implies) she is all about eating well and being thrifty (that’s the polite word for it) at the same time. If the Whole Foods receipt is giving you heartburn, let Linda’s bi-monthly newsletter (or her books!) help you out.
Emily Levenson – I discovered Emily’s website recently when one of my family members was diagnosed with a nightshade sensitivity and I had to basically throw out all our favorite weeknight go-to meals and start over. THE HORROR. Emily is a therapist foodie who helps people cope with food sensitivities. Her website and recipes are the bomb-diggity. She recently announced that she’s giving up blogging (sad), but her recipe archive will continue to exude allergy-free wonderfulness indefinitely.
Getting your kids to eat the good stuff
If you think Corporate Food America has our children’s best interests at heart, you are very cute but you’re a tool of the Borg. The Borg is all powerful, and parents need help figuring out ways to help the kids develop a palate for fruits and veggies instead of Pop Tarts and Chicken Nuggets. Letting them choose and prepare meals is a guaranteed winner. I adore Chop Chop magazine for its delicious recipes, kid-friendly format and beautiful photography featuring real, diverse kids cooking their own food and having fun. The website is great, and the magazine is worth every penny and then some (use a little of the dough Linda Watson saved you and get a subscription!).
Learn more about your food
Civil Eats is a daily read for me, for the news I might not otherwise hear about the people who grow our food, environmental impacts, the Corporate Food Borg’s latest tricks, and also really good news about how awesome people are changing the food system.
{Shameless plug from CFSA: Sign up to receive the Buzz, our new eNewsletter that will bring all the best sustainable ag. and Carolina local food stories to your inbox each month.}
Eat Clean is definitely the most worthwhile clickbait on Twitter IMHO. Seriously I’m such a sucker for their soft-focus organic food porn and catchy headlines like The 7 Worst (and Best) Chinese Take-Out Dishes and Don’t Waste Your Cash on These Crazy Expensive Health Foods. Also I’ve tried every single smoothie recipe they’ve ever published and they’re all pretty good. What’s not to love??
Finally, the Mother Earth News Real Food Blog is a treasure-trove of whole-grain agape love. If you have a hippie great aunt who pickles her watermelon rinds and makes her own yogurt, reading Mother Earth News is like a rap session with that inspiring old lady. Don’t stop there – Mother Earth News may be super-duper Old School, but their resources are on-point. Natural health, organic gardening, getting your house off the grid… go have a look.
Keep track of healthy recipes
I’m still a cookbook lover at heart, and I find myself overwhelmed by the sheer number of food blogs and other websites devoted to sharing recipes. You don’t need me to tell you that Pinterest is fun and pretty, but you might not already be using a site like BigOven, Epicurious Recipe Box, ChefTap or Paprika to clip recipes from the web (or elsewhere), keep notes on your modifications and keep your favorites nicely organized. I’m old school so I love BigOven, but there are plenty of other tools to try.
Let the farmer plan your meals
One of the best things that ever happened to my meal-planning routine was joining a CSA (which stands for Community Supported Agriculture). You already know how this works, right? You basically buy a subscription from the farmer, and then get fresh local produce every week. I love our CSA because the veggies aren’t pre-selected for me – I choose from her farm stand at the weekly farmers market. CSA pick-up is on Saturday, which means that my Sunday-morning meal planning starts by figuring out how exactly I’m going to use up all the produce I just brought home (and our farmer helpfully sends us a weekly favorite recipe along with our update on what veggies are in season). January is the best time to join a new CSA – go find one on LocalHarvest, or if you’re lucky enough to live in central North Carolina, check out the amazing CSA list at Growing Small Farms.
This story was reprinted with permission from www.fawnpattison.com