Seven days at the Hibbz kitchen table.

I recently promised to make a food journal for someone and keep track of what I was eating.  I admit I totally forgot on occasion (we'll go with Mommy Brain), but I backtracked the best I could.  We totally splurge on occasion.  I'm a believer that if you eat well 90% of the time, your body will be able to handle the 10% crap.  It'll be healthy enough to handle the preservatives and pesticides you throw at it.

I - GASP! - don't eat breakfast:

I don't eat breakfast much (except when I'm pregnant and crave it).  I spent a lot of my life feeling really terrible about this, but I recently read an article that dispelled the myth that we need to eat lots of small meals throughout the day.  Now I don't feel guilty when I skip meals.  I can't find it to link to, but the premise was that when you think back on traditional diets, when in the course of history do you think people had access to enough food to eat six, seven meals a day?  The myth that eating 1500 calories spread through the course of the day or 1500 calories spread through the course of a few hours being different is supposedly just that: a myth.  I'm going with it because it makes sense to me logically and I believe in listening to my body.  When I eat breakfast, I feel sick.  I've tried to adopt a policy of eating when I'm hungry, period.  So that's what I'm doing now and it's working for me.  HOWEVER, I'm going to write down what the kids eat for breakfast and other meals because someone asked me what I feed the kids.  It's boring, but they love it and it works with their strict diets (that we're slowly weaning them off of).  If the kids ate something different than me for a meal, I've typed up what they have vs. what I have. :)

Where our groceries come from:

Since I always seem to get a lot of questions about what kind of things I buy or where I buy them from, I included that info when I remembered.  Since learning about GMOs and their tie to the exponential rise in allergies (and because my kids are SO allergic), we have tried to cut out GMOs 100%.  This means 98% of the stuff we buy is organic, and we only buy non-organic when we have no other option.  So you can assume everything here is organic.  I don't want to come off as snobby, because I used to think it was super snobby when people quantified everything they ate with organic, but this is the world we live in now and I have to give my sickly kids the best shot in the world, so we shifted around things in our budget to increase the amount we can spend on groceries.  Once the farmer's market opens, I get most of my produce in that way rather than at Trader Joe's.

I run a tight snack ship:

My kids rarely finish their breakfast, so it goes into the fridge and that's the only option they get for a snack if they ask for one in the morning.  If they don't ask for a snack in the morning, I give them their leftover oatmeal in addition to whatever they're having for lunch.  And I do the same at lunch.  Whatever they don't eat goes in the fridge and becomes their afternoon snack.  This has seriously alleviated food battles.  I don't say a thing if they don't want to finish their meals.  They now know it goes in the fridge for later.  If they don't want to eat whatever it is for a snack, then they're out of luck.  No snack until the next meal.  If they're truly hungry, they'll eat it.  Otherwise they're just wanting a snack out of boredom.  My mom taught me this and it was night and day difference; we used to have terrible battles over food before starting this a year ago.

Phew, that was a lot of intro!  I'm so wordy, I annoy myself.

Day One:

• Breakfast - Kids: Trader Joe's Oatmeal with homemade almond milk and a drizzle of pure maple syrup with cut up bananas (we think they may be intolerant of bananas so we're slowly re-introducing to test this theory out)


• Lunch - Kids: Applegate Farms hot dog, strips of yellow peppers, broccoli with grassfed butter (we use either Kerrygold if we can make it to Costco or Kalona Supernatural if not - the Kalona Supernatural is from Whole Foods), organic frozen cherries (I set out on the counter about 30 minutes before lunch so they're only a little bit frozen) - from either TJs or WF


• Me: Spinach, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives with balsamic vinegar and a drizzle of olive oil (everything is from Trader Joe's)


• Dinner - Blackened fish (tilapia) with broccoli and quinoa.  We don't like fish but I LOVED this.  My mom was here and made the kids a version with oatmeal and almonds crushed up and then grilled it on the stove and they LOVED it.  The blackened fish is really spicy, FYI.  All from Trader Joe's.  Sense a theme?!


• Snacks - Leftovers and grapes, almonds, raisins (TJs)

Day Two:

• Breakfast - Kids: Trader Joe's Oatmeal with homemade almond milk and a drizzle of pure maple syrup with cut up bananas


• Lunch - Kids: Applegate Farms hot dog, cantaloupe, broccoli with grassfed butter (everything but butter from TJs)


• Me: Brown rice noodles with alfredo sauce (just cream, butter, a little flour and parmesan cheese), cantaloupe and broccoli


• Dinner - Kids: Leftover oatmeal, broccoli and pears.  We did this so we could have an at-home date night once the kiddos were in bed.  So we had burgers and fries takeout from an awesome little restaurant here.


• Snacks - Sweet potato chunks sprinkled with a little cinnamon (I buy a big bag of organic sweet potatoes from Trader Joe's at the beginning of the week and cook them all at one time, then dice them up and stick them in containers in the fridge.  My kids love sweet potatoes, Landon now loves sweet potatoes and they're really healthy for you, so we eat them almost every day).

Day Three:

• Breakfast - Kids: Trader Joe's oatmeal with almond milk and a drizzle of pure maple syrup with a banana


• Lunch - Turkey (Applegate Farms again), black olives, avocado slices, applesauce (everything but the applesauce is from Trader Joe's) and a green smoothie:  I buy a giant bag of organic spinach and organic fruit from Costco at the beginning of the month, then I make a really big batch of smoothies, freeze them in ice cube trays and put them in ziploc bags and store them in the freezer.  I either take out some cubes and stick them in cups the night before in the refrigerator, or I just stick a few cubes into the blender with some more coconut milk the day of.  This isn't the most nutritious way to make smoothies since you lose nutrients by freezing them, but it works.  I don't have the time/energy to make green smoothies from scratch every single day.


• Dinner - Flank Steak marinated in a balsamic marinade and grilled in grassfed butter on the stovetop with a spinach, orange, kalamata olive, goat cheese salad (recipe from The Fresh 20 service which I subscribe to and LOVE), kids got some sweet potatoes, too - everything is from TJs except the butter, which is from Whole Foods


• Snacks - Leftovers and almonds/raisins, slices of pear (all from, yep, TJs)

Day Four:

• Breakfast - Kids: Trader Joe's oatmeal with almond milk and a drizzle of maple syrup with raisins and cinnamon


• Me: leftovers - don't laugh, I do this!


• Lunch - Eggs and bacon (eggs were local from a girl who raises backyard chickens and bacon was local from a farm here) and cantaloupe


• Dinner - Quinoa with sauteed veggies (I sauteed everything leftover that needed to be used up, which in our case was zucchini, yellow squash and snap peas).  I added a little drizzle of honey, squeezed two lemons into the mixture and two cloves of garlic and cooked all of that for a few more minutes, then added a little mozzarella cheese on top of each bowl and let it melt.  I've adapted this recipe from the Farmer's Skillet at Iowa Girl Eats.  LOVE.  This is one of my husband's favorites, oddly enough.  Most ingredients from TJs, the honey from the Farmer's Market


• Snacks - Leftovers, dried coconut chips (unsweetened, from the Whole Foods bulk bins), raisins and almond slivers

Day Five: 

• Breakfast - Me and the kids: Trader Joe's oatmeal with almond milk and a drizzle of pure maple syrup


• Lunch - Tinkyada brown rice noodles (I get mine from TJs) with a little celtic sea salt (call them crazy but this is one of my kids' favorite meals, boring as it is!), snow peas, carrots - All from TJs


• Dinner - This ahhhhh-mazing Chicken Dijon dish from The Fresh 20 on mashed potatoes for Tim and I, brown rice noodles for the kids, with sweet potato casserole as dessert.  All ingredients from TJs.


• Snacks - Just leftovers this day

Day Six:

• Breakfast - Trader Joe's brand "cheerios" with sliced bananas and homemade almond milk for Adalyn/cow's milk for Ben.  I reeeeally dislike doing cereal for breakfast, but we were out of oatmeal and had no eggs, so this was really all I had to work with.  Sometimes you do what you've gotta do.  But honestly, I'm not just saying this, my kids whined for food all morning long after this!  At least it's Trader Joe's brand so it's not got GMOs in it, but I really do notice a difference when my kiddos eat processed foods, especially when it's carbs.


• Lunch - Black beans (bulk from Whole Foods bins) seasoned with a little bit of garlic and cumin, avocado slices, sour cream (Whole Foods - Kalona Supernatural),  sweet potato chunks, green smoothies - everything not otherwise noted is from TJs


• Dinner - Barbecue oven chicken with warm corn and brown rice salad and mashed potatoes (sweet potatoes for the kids).  Another one from Fresh 20 that was a HUGE hit.  Everything from TJs


• Snacks - Diced up pears and leftovers

Day Seven: 

• Breakfast - $20 if you can guess.  ;)  TJs oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins and a drizzle of maple syrup.


• Lunch - Leftover brown rice noodles with a little celtic sea salt with cheese melted on top.  When I'm feeling adventurous, I make my own mac and cheese by eyeballing it: a little cream, a little cheese, a little butter and a little salt mixed in with some noodles on the stovetop until it all melts.  Add a little more cream and/or cheese until you get to your desired consistency and taste.  You really don't need a recipe for this.  It's hard to mess up!  Cheese and cream and butter?  Perfection no matter how you slice it.   Sweet potato chunks and pears, too


• Dinner - Barbecue chicken pizzas (again, Fresh 20) - these are gluten-free and served on corn tortillas with yesterday's leftover barbecue chicken, shredded, with spinach, corn, cilantro and red onion slices.  It wasn't my favorite meal ever because I don't love barbecue sauce and my son doesn't love corn tortillas so he refused to eat it all together, but my husband loved it and my daughter gobbled hers up!


• Snacks - Pears and leftovers

Our breakfast sitch:

Yeah, yeah, we boring breakfast peeps.  This started because we went gluten-free and this was the one thing my kids LOVED and would eat day in and day out, and since it's gluten-free, we stuck with it.  It's also so easy.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

Before the gluten-free days, I would make big batches of whole wheat pancakes and waffles, applesauce bread and blueberry muffins at the beginning of the month and freeze them so that I could pop them out for quick breakfasts in the morning.  We also had yogurt every day.  My kids have been dairy-free for the past three months and we have slowly started reintroducing dairy back into Ben's diet.  Adalyn, we're not sure about yet.  I can't WAIT to add yogurt back in every day!  It's so, so healthy for you, so easy to make on your own and so yummy!

If you are gluten-free and are looking for more variety, here are a few tried and true recipes we've found and love: almond flour pancakes and almond flour blueberry muffins

Hope that was semi-helpful!  Our kids get water and water only to drink (aside from their morning milk).  They love it and I'm anti-juice.  Sorry, don't shoot the messenger!  I just think that as long as kids like it (and they like it if it's all they know), there's no reason to introduce other drinks like pop or juice into their diets.  Not only is it not good for them, but it costs money!  Water is essentially free.  I'm also a recovering juice addict (for. reals.) and I want to give my kids the best shot at not becoming like mama.

How much do we spend?

The last few weeks we've averaged about $150 per week on groceries.  I really believe this is due to The Fresh 20, because before that I was lucky to not go over $200 a week.  We're eating almost entirely organic and I'm not going to lie to you and tell you it's cheap.  But I will say there are ways to make it cheaper (like making a lot of food yourself rather than buying the convenience product instead), finding cheaper local sources for produce and meat and dairy.  Right now I pay top dollar for milk because I don't have a better option.  So we're spending $10 a gallon to get "okay" milk (low-temp pasteurized and not homogenized).  And we spend $7.00/lb for ground beef.  Etc.  Some friends who live in other parts of the country have much cheaper options than this.  When we visited Greenville, SC, they sold raw milk on the shelf at their farmer's market for $6/gallon!  If I had options like that, I would cut our budget down more.  We also eat a lot of meat right now because of the strict diet my kids have been on.  When you remove dairy and gluten and soy from a diet, you don't have a lot of options besides meat.  So another way to cut down would be to limit your meat, which I think is probably a good practice anyway.  Before putting my kids on this diet, we'd cut down to only 2 or 3 meals a week that were meat-based.  I am a HUGE believer in the quality of your meat being of utmost importance, so it makes much more sense to me to pay a farmer what he deserves for well-raised meat and to eat it less often than to buy crap meat and eat it two or three times a day.  I also believe that the healthier you eat, the healthier you'll be.  There are things that aren't preventable.  I don't have a crystal ball.  But I do feel that being a good steward to the Earth God gave us and treating my body well are the best ways to guarantee I live longer and live more enjoyably.  So yeah, I buy into the philosophy that you pay now to save later hook, line and sinker.  And not only do I believe I'll save money down the line in what would have been extensive medical bills, but I believe I'll just enjoy life more when I'm in good physical health into my 60s and 70s.  Who doesn't want to retire in good shape?!

Why I use The Fresh 20

The Fresh 20 has in NO WAY sponsored this post even though I have practically become a walking billboard.  I've tried almost every meal planning service over the years because I truly hate meal planning and making a grocery list every week.  It's a time-suck, and I'm terrible at it.  Like I said, I spend $800 and end up throwing way too much food out.  Their "20 ingredients or less" premise and the whole foods spin with gluten-free that doesn't include stuff like xantham gum and highly processed GF flours piqued my interest.  So a few weeks ago, I gave it a try.  And I must say, I am absolutely in love.  They truly are all about whole foods, but in a way that doesn't break the bank (they focus on being budget-friendly), and the meals are amazing.  Guys, I'm serious!  So far I've loved everything except one dish, which was still good, just not AMAZING like everything else.  The part that blows all the other services out of the water, though, is the 20 ingredients or less (meaning fast grocery trips the past two weeks!) and their meal prepping info.  Each week they lay out all the things you can and should prep beforehand.  So since I work a side job in the house now almost full-time plus care for the kiddos and keep the house, you know, functioning, I have very little time for actual cooking.  On Sunday, I prepped everything they told me to prep and it's made meal time a freakin' breeze!  I spent a few hours chopping, slicing, cooking rice and quinoa and getting everything organized for the week.  So come meal time, I literally just throw some things in a skillet and BAM.  Dinner.  I'm finally broadening my recipe horizons,  too!

Now go out and eat healthy, peeps!  :)