My Journey to Health

I got something new in the mail yesterday for my kitchen. A brand new Cuisinart Pressure Cooker. It's so pretty I decided to take a picture of it and post it here on my blog.
You will notice it's sitting next to my beloved Vita-Mix - another purchase I made last spring as I journey to health. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

At the beginning of the year I went to an Enrichment night where a woman in my ward spoke about healthy living and the dietary changes they have made in their home since her husband had been diagnosed with cancer. It was a huge eye opener for me. I've always been interested in healthy eating/living but the information she shared was stuff I'd never heard before (or at least never listened to :)!). Most of her presentation came from D&C 89 and reading The China Study (a must read) and focused on the need to eat MORE vegetables, grains, fruits and legumes (beans) and LESS animal products.

I went home that night and immediately got online to check out The China Study from the local library. Apparantly I wasn't the only one interested in this as I was the 56th person waiting on hold for the book. She had recommended another book - Disease Proof Your Child by Joel Fuhrman. That one was in and a couple days later I picked it up. That's where my journey began. 15 or so books, a Vita Mix, a farm co-op membership and dozens of newly tried recipes later I'm still journeying :).

I began by just trying to eat more vegetables. Joel Fuhrman recommends eating a pound of raw and a pound of cooked vegetables a day. I did that for a couple of weeks at the beginning - that's A LOT of vegetables. I was eating all day just to get everything in! I'm still trying to eat more vegetables. I have a lot of green smoothies, try to put dark leafy veggies on the table at dinner, sneak them into muffins when baking, etc.

My attention this last month though has been on trying to include more grains. I never really cooked with grains before aside from white rice. Imagine my surprise when I found out there were dozens of other grains out there. Of course I new about wheat but I've also discovered Millet, quinoa, barley, and steel cut oats. And there are MORE!! I took a class this summer all about grains - hence the pressure cooker. The pressure cooker is going to revolutionize the way I cook :) - or at least make it easier. I just did a practice run with brown rice though and I'm not sure I'm convinced. As with everything this year in the kitchen, I'll keep trying. Some things are bound to stick.

A final thought about how my family is adjusting to my craziness...Chris is a good sport. He doesn't complain and listens attentively as I share some new alarmingly fascinating nugget of information from the latest book I'm reading. The kids - picky eaters to begin with - are, well, they're adjusting. Nicholas is clearly relishing in his healthy living - here he is slurping down one of my green smoothies and loving it. He loves brown rice mixed with milk (or soy milk) and the avacado/banana mash I feed him. Matthew is more willing than the girls to try something new but I don't know if that's saying much. We'll get there. If anything, we have a lot of good sharing moments about healthy bodies and the kinds of foods we need to eat so we can run and jump and skip and play. What more could I hope for?