Bring on 2019

We have kicked off 2019 with a BIG CHANGE!

OUR FOOD!

We have cut out a lot of sugar and salt.

Now let's face it we can't get rid of it completely we are Southern, but we are cutting it back as much as possible.

This means more cooking for this momma.

No more Hershey's chocolate syrup for little miss. No more instant mac and cheese cups and chicken nuggets for dinner. And no more prepackaged noodles for sides and no more canned veggies.
This means more fresh produce, more beans that have to cook way longer and more ideas and planning ahead. ALSO, being a lot more tired. But week one is almost over!

In week one we have had for dinner so far:

• baked chicken legs with some seasoning, home made mashed potatoes and some frozen corn (decided to finish up one last thing we had in the freezer)
• Spaghetti with sauce and bell pepper with a nice salad
• Stir fry with lots of veggies- cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms, two types of bell peppers, zucchini all over Jasmine rice
• town house cracker coated chicken breast cut into strips baked with fried cauliflower fritters and home made mac and cheese
• Leftover cracker chicken strips on a fresh salad with lettuce, spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese, shredded carrots, home made croutons, and dressing of choice

And you might be wondering how is the three year old handling it? Well her biggest thing was the chocolate milk and today we finally found a mixture that WORKS! It does have sugar but no where near as much as what she was getting. Here is her new mix for anyone who would like to give it a try. 

2/3 cup unsweetened Hershey's coco

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 tsp sea salt

whisk in storage container

take one tbsp and put with 12 oz. milk and mix in blender and bam CHOCOLATE MILK! She has already had her two cups for today. 

And for breakfast we do fresh tomatoes, grits, wheat toast, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, omelets,yogurt with fruit. Lunch is all sorts of things like the mac and cheese, salads, fruit salads. And she has fallen in love with her home made cheerio bars with honey and peanut butter for snacks as well as her block cheese and pita crackers. 

Somethings have changed and some have stayed the same and just gotten more home made. 

Here is a before pic of what the fridge looked like before our grocery trip.

And here is after we went shopping. The drawers and bottom shelf are all just fresh produce!

This is just what we got from our first shopping trip!

Here is the empty pantry after getting rid of everything that needed to go!

And this is it now! Still not much stuff because so many things are now fresh and home made so no more crowded pantry with all the boxes and unhealthy foods. So much room that it might just be made into something else and these few things might be moved to a much smaller cabinet! 

And finally here is everything we got rid of! You never know how much bad you have till you clean out everything. And this doesn't include the half empty bottles and stuff I threw out, that filled out a trashcan full. 

And you might be wondering why we kept certain things over others but it was the less sodium, the less sugar. Might not had much in it so we figured we would just finish it off and not buy more. All in all so far this is our new adventure. We had started off 2019 with cutting back a little bit already and trying to cut little miss back on things and then just last week we had a huge discussion to really change our lifestyle and Thursday morning I emptied all the cabinets and pantry, the fridge and freezer and put everything on the table and got to work. I made out meal plans for dinner, lunch and breakfast along with some snack ideas and then we went grocery shopping and got everything we needed to get started on this adventure. And so far its made it to where in just a week I have been able to zip up a blue jean jacket I own that I couldn't before and we have more energy in this house and sleep better at night without all the sugar and caffeine we were consuming before. We were huge soda and tea fans.