Mama Monday: Healthy Eating

Today's Mama Monday is Healthy Eating:-) In case you missed last week's post, a friend from high school, Erin, has started a GREAT blog idea - Mama Monday. I told y'all about this last week, but forgot to mention that if you haven't checked out her blog, you really should. She's an amazing photographer! And she posts about how to take great pics...now I just need to find that time to get all that together...

Anyway, onto healthy eating. Here's what we try to do to get ourselves to eat the best things possible (and the challenges we have) - let me know if you post about this too:

1. Eating those fruits and veggies - this is a constant struggle for us. Wes hates fruit, and even though I like fruit, fresh fruits always seem to start to get past their peak when I buy them. So I buy more fruits in a can than I would like. I always get stuff in light syrup though or now they have fruit packed w/ water sweetened with splenda (learned that while I was pregnant). We do a better with veggies, but we eat the same ones over and over. It's a problem that we're both picky, and I hate that for Jackson. I hope he eats more than we do, but I'm worried his taste buds may be a bit restricted as well. Luckily my taste buds accomodate many more veggies than they used to, and I try to influence Wes with this (hey, he eats asparagus now!!!).

2. Planning and shopping - we try to plan out our meals at the beginning of the week. Sunday nights we try to figure out what we want for the rest of the week. We do leave a little slack in case we want to go out to eat with some friends. Planning things out really works for us. This way we know what we have to take out of the freezer and if we have to go to the grocery store. Speaking of the grocery store, we try to shop for things when they are on sale and freeze them (aka meat). Usually every 6 weeks or so different meats go on sale, so I encourage you to watch for these sales and use your freezer. We have a deep freeze so that we can keep a turkey and ham on hand as well (get those after Thanksgiving and Easter).

3. Sams - Another place that we go other than the grocery store is Sams. We only go there about every other month, but we stock up on things that we use a lot: peanut butter crackers, olive oil, frozen chicken breast and chicken tenders. We also will buy a few bottles of wine while we are there. It's a great place, but you need to know what you're going there for because their deals aren't always the best (like on cokes).

4. What do we eat - like I said, we plan almost all of our meals. In a typical week we eat a couple of chicken meals, a couple of beef meals, a pork meal, and usually a pasta meal. We have a seafood meal at least every other week. We recently learned that much of the shrimp they have at the seafood counter is previously frozen. One of the meat men told us it's the same shrimp that's in a bag frozen and often on sale buy one get one free. Last week we took one of those bags, defrosted the shrimp by letting it sit in water, then shelling it and made yummy shrimp!!! Here's a quick recipe:
Take the thawed, shelled, and deveined shrimp and toss them in a bowl with EVVO (for you Rachel Ray peps and extra virgin olive oil for everyone else) and some sort of Cajun seasoning (we use Joe's) and put in a skillet that has hot olive oil and garlic (a couple of cloves). Add some lemon juice and lemon rind if you want. Add either 1/2 cup of white wine or add water if you want it nonalcoholic (if you have some fish stock, more power to ya, add it!!). Let this cook for a couple of minutes, then turn when the shrimp turns pink. A couple more minutes and you have yummy and really easy shrimp! We serve this with pasta and asparagus, or just with bread. Super easy and super good!

5. Other meals - we have go to meals that we eat every couple of weeks i.e. tonight we have fajitas. Buy the thin skirt steak, or any other steak on sale, cook in the skillet with fajita seasoning (either bought or made), add any toppings you want and it's great. A great way to add veggies to a meal is to cook them in a casserole. We add frozen mixed veggies to rice and either chicken or pork at least once a month. Much better that way!

6. Sweet tooth - Y'all know I have a huge sweet tooth...and Wes doesn't (not sure what's wrong w/ him :-)) So, I constantly fight the urge to buy sugary substances. Luckily, since Wes doesn't want it, it's easier to keep out of the house. However, I have found that if you really want something sweet, you should keep something in the house and just eat a little bit of it...a piece of chocolate (like a kiss) is the perfect amount.

7. Here we go with Jackson - Tonight we fed J his first rice cereal. I know it's later than most people do, but we wanted to wait because there's an increased chance of allergies in some children if you introduce foods too early. Around 3 months Jackson had a spot of eczema come up on his face, and that sealed the deal - we decided to wait until now. So today he had his first bites of cereal - see the picks below. We've also decided to feed him homemade foods. I know some of you think we're crazy, but I at least want to try. We'll see how he does with it in the upcoming weeks. If any of you have made baby foods, please let us know how it went!
Anyways, here's J in his high chair - thanks to Uncle Rod and Aunt Susie!!!


He loves to sit in it...and throw his toys off of it, lol. So happy before the food :-)



Here's one of the first few bites.


Yep, definitely an acquired taste I guess :-)


What do you think???