Embarking on a new journey.......

With the encouragement of friends, I have decided to share with you my new food journey.  For now I am planning to share every couple of weeks about the ups adn downs and the back stories.  In between I will continue to cook and bake and make cards and do all that I enjoy. You will undoubtedly see some changes in the ingredients I am choosing to use in my cooking and baking.  This is an experiment and whether or not it works, I hope it will help others who have similar issues and/or are wondering some of the same things that I have been over the past few months.

So what am I doing?  It's not faddish or trendy, at least not as I see it.  It's not weird - ok parts of it may be a little unusual, but it makes more sense to me than a lot of food trends out there now.  Let's just call my new life plan - "Back to Basics".

For many years now I have been buying what I considered to be "good" ingredients".   I now question it so much that I am putting it to the test. When I think back about our predecessors and how they made their food and ate from the land, I believe they had the right idea.....

I have been making my own bread, yogurt and ice cream.  But..... I wasn't necessarily using the best ingredients - the natural, unprocessed REAL ones.  I was cooking many things "from scratch" so that had to be good, right?  Wrong!  My ingredients were not pure - they had additives and many had been chemically treated - yuck!  Now I am not advising or advocating that everyone jump on the same bandwagon that I have.  These are my choices, and only time will tell if they are as helpful as I hope. And if I can get healthier from these major alterations, I will be shouting it from the rooftops!

What is driving these changes? My age...my body...diseases I am unsuccessfully fighting... and pain. The short story is that I have had cervical torticollis for 19 years.  I woke up with it one morning.  That's all I will say about it right now. But that has led to my whole body suffering over time. Sometimes the pain is unbearable and it never goes away - not completely - not ever.  The past year things have been on a downward spiral with stomach issues, more pain in my back, and on and on. The doctors can't seem to figure out what to do and I have seen many. Pain pills are out of the question because they will make the stomach condition worse.  Besides, I don't want to live my life on narcotics. That is not living.

So I have decided to take my control back.  I am determined to try to eat as healthy and as real as I can.  Whole unprocessed milk (raw when I can get it), cream, butter, grass fed meats,wild fish,  pastured eggs (not just cage free), organic fruits and vegetables as recommended , minimal refined sugar, and a conviction to avoid additives as much as possible.  If I go out, I will eat what is there to eat - I am not going to go crazy over this. But when I am home, I will control what I eat.

I am grinding my own flours using three different varieties of organic wheat berries.  I am making my own bone broths - beef and chicken to help heal my stomach.  And I am continuing to cook and bake from scratch, only this time it will be truly good for me.

Have I bored you to tears yet?   I will stop here and add more next time.  I will continue to share recipes, but expect to see a change in the ingredients. I cannot wait to see the difference in the food I make and eat.  I believe that there will be many changes for the better.  I want to be the best I can be.  I am excited to get started............. Pin It Now!