Stuck to my guns with the pantry project through the packing of the kids’ lunches this morning, but then having to rush off to an early meeting meant – as it always does – that I didn’t toss a lunch for myself into my bag. There’s that planning ahead notion that I even underlined in yesterday’s post, but I still didn’t do it. Maybe the italics today will do the trick? maybe if I print it out – underlined and in italics – and tape it above the coffeemaker? And then, after doing that, actually put together a lunch for the next day?
Today was not an exemplary food-consciousness day:
- After eating a small bowl of soup at Whole Foods for lunch, I came home in the pouring rain with a fierce desire for jade noodle curry from Mekong River, and that, along with a couple of other dishes, was dinner.
- The Picky One had taquitos (from frozen) and applesauce.
- We had cupcakes for dessert. Fake Hostess-style ones with cream in the middle, baked yesterday from a mix.
I take a middle ground on food. I buy and feed my kids fairly wholesome and nutritious foods, but I don’t buy genuinely whole foods. Fruits & veggies are around, but not prominent. We eat meat, drink milk, love cheese. High-fructose corn syrup is not banned from our house, but I do look at sugar content on labels and pick some items that are lower or that don’t use corn syrup. We all eat a decent variety of foods, although certainly there’s plenty of room for improvement.
I decided to pick one food-related behavior change today and start working towards it.
I stumbled across the fact that it just happens to be National Bulk Foods Week right now (Oct 16-23). I dislike a lot of food packaging for a number of reasons. Some of it is useless – boxes with flaps that don’t stay flapped together properly, packages that don’t come with a zip-seal so you have to tape it shut or put it inside a ziplock bag to keep it fresh, cans containing stuff that I only use a bit at a time, but then have to put foil over the top of the can to keep the rest fresh (for maybe a couple more days.) Plus these foods are often less nutritious, more expensive, and the packaging and transportation have left a significant ecological footprint. So there’s motivation for me to look for package-free options, and figure out how one shops in a bulk aisle, stores the items, and uses them.
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