Would you like to feed your family healthier foods but you feel like you don’t have time or money to do so?
I had the privilege of meeting Jessie from Vanderbilt Wife at the Savvy Blogging Dinner last week and she told me about her current project of cooking a once-a-month menu with only whole foods (no processed foods at all). I knew that many of you would be really interested in hearing about how she’s pulling this off, so I asked her if she could share a little bit of her adventure with you all. Here’s what she wrote:
I’ve been fairly convinced our family needs to go to a whole foods way of eating for quite a while. But it seems that every time I make one baby step forward, something comes around to hinder the path yet again.
There’s cost, of course. Currently living on a high-school teacher’s salary with both a mortgage and a rent, it seems implausible to raise our grocery budget. Maybe after we sell the house. After I am bringing in more freelance income. When…
Time is always another factor. Until a month ago, I was a full-time working mom with a toddler, and my husband lived two hours away during the week. I was feeling blessed to feed my daughter something hot for dinner (and even more happy if she’d actually eat it). And yet every time I’d hand her baby puffs or graham crackers, I’d cringe at the fact that these were processed foods, laced with soy and who-knows-what-else.
As someone who struggled with getting pregnant because of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, I try to be cautious about the amount of artificial hormones in our diet. I don’t want my daughter to have to worry about this like I did. I’ve also always battled my weight, and so I hope to teach her healthy eating habits the best that I can.
When my cousin Tricia, author of Once a Month Mom, asked me to partner with her on an upcoming contest on her site, I knew exactly where I wanted to take once-a-month cooking. I’d done some freezer cooking in the past, but many of the recipes included ingredients like cream of mushroom soup, white pasta, or instant stuffing. I wanted to jump start my whole foods eating by creating what I call “Whole Foods in a Hurry“–a once-a-month cooking menu of only “real food.”
It’s been very exciting to create my menu and think about how I’ll be budgeting it, planning it, and cooking it. And of course, eating it! I’ve picked a variety of recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that will help my family get on the bandwagon with real foods. Cooking it all at once will save me time and money as well as allowing me more time for baking bread and trying other kitchen experiments.
You can see Jessie’s first menu plan here. To follow along with Jessie’s Whole Foods in a Hurry Challenge, be sure to subscribe to her blog for weekly updates, menu plans, and recipes.