An Example of SIMPLE and REAL FOOD.

I always tell people to just eat real food and keep it simple! Many come back saying "I don't know how to plan" or "I need more recipes". The truth is you don't need either- not that there's anything wrong with that, especially on occasion- but if on a daily basis you think you've got to concoct the perfect salad (yuck Lol) or follow the perfect recipe (I call it recipe slavery)- you're going to fail at the starting gate with a transition to real food.

It is easy to get caught up in this mindset because there are so many videos and blogs that overload the mind with the different ways to fix good food and prepare these beautiful dishes. The pictures are often award winning photography and the server nice, neat and trim and it all makes it easy to recoil in the corner in fetal position swearing off cooking forever. We can't meet that standard and we get caught in the lie that we can't obtain it. Don't do it! Resist the urge to even look at recipes if it discourages you even a little. Real food is SIMPLE and in the midst of a stressful-ever-moving society we lose this perspective.

My favorite thoughts go back to mothers of old. They used what they had, they certainly weren't worried about having a mix of cultures- Italian one night, Mexican the next- they just prepared the food according to timeless principles passed on for a host of generations. They didn't have a lot of utensils and kitchen gadgets- oftne they only had a pot and a spoon, yet they prepared nourishing food without wasting a morsel. She certainly didn't have a four burner stove, an instant pot or a costco that packages up organic vegatables and labels "Ready to Eat".

We need to change our thinking about food in general. Not just the ingredients in our food, but the preparation of the food. Just eat simple and real food.

So I decided to share a typical lunch at our house. In my usual fashion I threw something together in between our homeschool math and the dash to gymnastics. Hold on, and reread slowly if I lose you...

I threw on some baby carrots to steam (easy), watered down some bone broth and put it on heat with a dash or two of salt (easy), cut up a cucumber (easy), grabbed a handful of nuts I had prepared earlier in the week (easy) and put a big pat of grass fed butter on the carrots and dished out a bite (yes, just one bite) of saurekraut onto each plate (super easy). This took me less than 20 minutes and it only took that long because the carrots were cooking- so during that time I cleaned up any mess I made and did a few problems in Math with the 11 year old. And yes, this filled those hungry kids right up thanks to the fats in the butter and nuts and very little carbs- and for those who were still hungry there was broth, nuts and cucumbers to freely partake of, which I don't think they did.

Now how hard was that? How much planning did that take? ZERO! I had real food on hand and just did the best I could with what I had- which was throw it on a plate (dramatically wipes brow). And everyone was satisfied and had the energy they needed to carryout the rest of the afternoon, and best of all, noone complained. As a matter of fact, my two youngest cut up their carrots and put them in the broth. (Well, the 8 year old also put the cucumbers in the broth...so that was weird LOL)

You can do this! Stop with the excuses! Today is the day for you to accept real food and enjoy it because it is building your body up with every bite!

And PS: If your kids won't eat this, its time to change their minds too.