A New Adventure

I have been really into the "natural living" lately. First I tried homemade shampoo, juicing, lots of organic and "raw" foods. Anything I can get my hands on and I like the idea I seem to try. Now this is all good and fun, but it actually takes a lot of dedication and strangely more money.

The shampoo thing came and went very fast. It kept getting into my eyes and stinging them. My hair felt strange and I just didn't want to deal with it. I did hear that it takes a while to adjust, and if you are really interested in doing it I found my source here. I love how passionate she is about it, but its just not for me.

With the juicing, I just love this and will continue doing it as long as my juicer holds out. My kids and I call it "George Juice" after the Curious George episode on juicing. He uses all red items, cabbage, red bell pepper, apple, radish, strawberries, and watermelon. We tried this and just loved it. Right now we are really into our rainbow smoothie! We use one or more fruit/veggie of each color of the rainbow and juice/blend it up. The most recent one was 1 red apple, 1 red bell, 1 pk strawberries, 1 pk raspberries 2 carrots,2 bananas, 1 celery stalk, and 1 cucumber, and Ice. Now I know that blue and purple are not in this one but we usually have grapes and blueberries, we just ran out. This one was sooooo yummy. I juiced everything but the bananas (never put one in a juicer) and added ice and banana to blender then all the juices that we just made. Blend it up and voila super healthy and yummy snack that my kids just love.

Before this year, I had never had organic food. I thought that it was for "hippys" and silly "health nuts". I have to say Ive had a total change of heart. Not only do I buy many more things organic, I tend to go out of my way to procure them. I have a feeling that this is here to stay! I love the choice. Before this year we were eating soo many processed foods. I credit Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution and The Biggest Loser. Both of these shows have shown me how unhealthy I have been living my adult life, and how I need to change for my kids and for myself.

There is a wonderful feeling living in CA, especially Southern CA. There is a whole movement here to craft everything. From beer to bread. This makes it really easy to change. The downside is everything "organic" is so much more expensive. Regular apples might be $.99 a lbs but the same organic apple is $1.49 a lbs. I find it funny to be paying so much more for products that have been not treated, then products that have been. I understand that there is less supply, but what if they lowered the cost, would you by more? I would! I'd buy everything organic. But as it stands my pocket book is only so full each month, so sometimes I have to buy the $.99 apples.

My goal for the next year is to not buy anything at a large chain grocery store. To do that I am going to go hunting for the best farmers markets, butcher shops and bakery's to supply my family with the best quality food stuff I can. I have no doubt that this is going to be very hard to live by and I will of course get my cleaning stuff there. But I am going to try hard to do this. It will make for a very interesting first of the year.