Progress

My biggest fear in trying to improve our diet is that this little cutie will starve before he'll try to eat a new food. Here he is eating a frozen strawberry. He's getting a little desperate with no graham crackers in the house. :)

Last night I felt like I had a little success in making a great recipe a little healthier. We got a bunch of red bell peppers in our produce box this week, and I love to make stuffed peppers when we get them like that. It's a labor of love, but they are really good. I've never searched for the healthiest version of stuffed peppers because of my aversion to most vegetables. My friend said these were great, so I tried them and I agree with her. My kids were not impressed when they came to the dinner table, but they all liked them. Well, they ate the filling anyway. Here is the original recipe a friend gave to me.

Stuffed Peppers from Melissa Hansen
6 bell peppers
1 T. butter
1 T. olive oil
1/2 c. chopped onion
1/2 c. chopped celery
1 15 oz can diced tomatoes
2 cans (8 oz each) tomato sauce, divided (one can is for the sauce)
1 clove crushed garlic
1 t. oregano
1/2 t. basil
2 t. salt, divided
1/2 t. pepper
1 egg, slightly beaten
1 1/2 t. Worcestershire sauce
1 lb. ground beef or turkey
1 1/2 c. cooked rice
1/2 to 3/4 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1 c. sour cream

Cut tops off of peppers. Remove seeds and membranes. Chop edible parts of tops and set aside. Rinse peppers under cold water. Place peppers in a large pot. Cove with salted water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Drain peppers and set aside.

Heat olive oil and butter in a large skillet over medium heat until hot. Saute chopped green pepper, chopped onion, chopped celery for 5 minutes or until tender. Add tomatoes, 1 can of sauce, crushed garlic, oregano, basil, 1 t. of salt, and 1/4 t. of pepper. Simmer 10 minutes.

In a large mixing bowl, combine the egg with remaining salt and pepper and Worcestershire. Gently stir to blend. Add ground beef, cooked rice, and 1 c. of the tomato mixture. Mix well. Stuff peppers with meat mixture and place in a 3 quart baking dish. Pour remaining tomato mixture combined with extra can of tomato sauce and sour cream over the top of the peppers. Bake at 350 for 1 hr. If desired top with cheddar cheese just before done baking.

So, to make it a bit healthier, I sauteed the onion, celery, and peppers in water rather than butter and oil. I also used about 1/2 lb of meat rather than a whole pound. I substituted quinoa in for the rice just because it cooks faster than brown rice, and I am trying to find recipes where I like it (I'm not ready yet for this Mango Quinoa Breakfast). I also cut the salt in half and didn't miss it. I was out of eggs, so I mixed a tablespoon of ground flaxseed with 3 tablespoons of water and let it sit for a couple of minutes and used that as a substitute for the egg. I didn't put the cheddar cheese on top, and I don't think it needed it at all. I used a large dollop of fat-free sour cream rather than a whole cup. I almost used plain Greek yogurt, but the date on my sour cream was almost up. I think it probably would have been fine without that, too, though. It was absolutely delicious. Even Ryan said he liked it. He finally relented and tried some when he saw I was baking oatmeal cookies for dessert. So much for a healthy evening, eh? :) Clearly, I have a long way to go.

Tomatoes: My brother told me once he would give me 50 cents for eating a tomato (I think he upped it from one quarter to two when he saw I wasn't going to do it at first). I almost threw up. It was so nasty. This week, however, I have voluntarily put tomatoes on a few salads I prepared for myself. I am so proud of myself! Can I hear a big cheer from the Littles please? :) They used to pick tomatoes in the greenhouses and pour a little salt on them while eating them like apples. Oh, that grossed me out! But I am making progress. I don't even think the texture bothered me while I was eating them this week. I think I can finally say that it is now just a psychological block. I couldn't bring myself to eat a bite with just a tomato in it -- it had to be filled with lots of other things, too, but I could eat it. And I did like it while I was chewing each bite. I just kept catching myself scooting my fork around them on my plate. I had to make a conscious effort to scoop them up and eat them with each bite. But, that's more than I've ever done before.

Cheese: I love cheese, and Ryan loves cheese. However, in a serving of the cheddar cheese I had in my refrigerator last week, there were 100 calories. Of those 100 calories, 70 of them came from fat. That makes it 70% fat, right? Is my math or my reasoning off there? I read nutrition labels all the time, but just stopping to notice that and say that the cheese was 70% fat really grossed me out. I haven't had a hard time cutting out the cheese this week. Ryan, on the other hand, was not happy when we ran out.

Vegetables

It's not about losing weight. Our children have a family history of high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, anxiety, chronic headaches, migraines, ADHD, asthma, stroke, heart attack, brain tumor, and skin cancer. I'm sure I'm missing something. That's pretty scary when I list it out like that. That's what this post and my recent interest in nutrition is about.

A couple of years ago, I realized that it was not normal for Hannah to spend three hours completing one math homework worksheet. It broke my heart to see her get so stressed out and anxious about not being able to complete her work before bedtime. It was beyond frustrating for me to sit down with her and have to redirect her attention back to her math problem after every step in solving it. She would skip problems on tests. She was always the last in the class to finish, if she finished at all. She would misspell words that she clearly knew how to spell simply because she would skip over letters. When talking to her, I could see her eyes glaze over about half-way through what I was trying to say, and I knew her mind wasn't anywhere close to listening to me. She could not keep track of anything. Where are your shoes, your backpack, your hairbrush, etc., etc., etc.? She was a daydreamer and in a world of her own most of the time. It was just heartbreaking for me to see how hard she was working to keep up with the normal expectations of a third-grader. So, we had her tested for ADHD, and my calm, quiet, gentle daughter was diagnosed with the inattentive type of ADHD, anxiety, and a non-specified learning disorder. What were we supposed to do? The information available regarding ADHD is so confusing. Medicine is dangerous some say, and others say it will give her a new life. Gluten-free and sugar-free diets are supposedly accepted by only radical mothers and not at all scientifically proven to be effective. It was so tough trying to figure out what was right for our daughter and our family. After trying for a few months to make changes in our routines and also working closely with her teacher at school (I will always love Ms. Brown!), we decided that she might benefit from medicine. It was an incredibly hard decision, but it was the best we could do. And it did help. I think it taught her what it feels like to focus on a task. It got her through third and fourth grade. It was wonderful to have her symptoms lessened, but they weren't alleviated. She also had some side effects that made me wary of increasing her dosage to help more with her concentration. She became the pickiest eater in the family. She had no real desire for food some days, and that really worried me. She also didn't sleep well, which is common with these drugs. Sometimes she could be pretty moody, and I would wonder how much is just being a normal girl and how much is side-effects from the medicine. This past summer we tried an alternative kind of therapy called Interactive Metronome Therapy. It was really neat, and the woman who did it for us also recommended a regimen of vitamins that has shown some promise in helping children with ADHD. I was encouraged with the progress Hannah made. Supplements beyond a multivitamin also scare me. It seems just like a drug when you start adding extra substances to your body, so I knew I needed more education. My sister-in-law uses a lot of holistic and homeopathic healing methods for her family, and I really enjoyed talking with her this summer when I was in Utah for a few days. Then later she made a few other recommendations that I could try with Hannah and some books to read as well. Anyway, since I didn't make my long story short, in November we took Hannah off of her Concerta and were just giving her a good multivitamin, fish oil, calcium, and an amino acid for her anxiety. At first, it was pretty tough. She struggled quite a bit in math and piano practice. But she has made great progress. She immediately said she felt happier and more playful when she stopped taking the Concerta. Her moods did improve, her appetite improved, and her sleep has improved. But all of this is just to explain that I have been searching for a while. I want a good, happy, healthy life for all of my children.

I love food documentaries. King Corn, Supersize Me, Food Inc. Recently, we watched "Forks Over Knives" on Netflix. I found it fascinating.

After that a friend told me about this one:

Right now I'm reading a book by one of the doctors mentioned in the Forks Over Knives video called Eat to Live.

Next, I want to read this book by the same author, Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right.

I think my mother must be laughing so hard at me being interested in vegetables! Growing up a tossed salad to me meant iceberg lettuce and carrots. I would lick the butter off of the corn on the cob instead of eating the corn. When I moved in with the Littles I remember being so amazed that Eileen would serve so many vegetables with their meals. It was even more amazing that everyone in their family loved them! My tastes have changed over a period of time. I eat more vegetables now than I did growing up, and I'm even interested in learning to like more. I think it's possible. That's a miracle in itself!

I'm not going for a vegan diet, and I don't think that is necessary. I am interested in really learning to live the Word of Wisdom more closely. The Word of Wisdom is what makes Mormons seem so odd in not drinking coffee or tea. It also instructs us to avoid tobacco and alcohol, but I think the hardest part to live by is what it tells us we should put into our bodies. Meat is to be used sparingly, but how much is sparingly? I'm thinking it's probably a lot less than what I typically eat. I also found it interesting in rereading the Word of Wisdom recently that it doesn't mention dairy at all. It says "flesh" of the animals is for our use. Well, it does make sense that cow's milk is for cows.

Okay, so that's enough rambling for today. I want to be healthy, and I want my family to be healthy. How crazy is it that I have eaten almost every day of my life, and I still have such little knowledge of nutrition? I'd like to change that.

Downton Abbey

This is my new addiction. The first season can be instantly streamed on Netflix. The current season can be watched on pbs.org. It runs on Sunday evenings, but the episodes are online by the next day. It is so good!

By the way, today we had a much better day than yesterday. Whew!

My Bright Spot in the day

Today was awful. AWFUL. But now that I'm at the end of it, I can see how I made it through. Ryan. He was my tender mercy today. That sweet boy woke up happy and stayed happy all day long. When nobody else did. At one point in the day Nikki was complaining about some school work I had given her. She said, "I have to do the whole page?!" Yes, one page. "Why do I have to do all of it?!" Because I'm the meanest mom in the world. Just do it. Probably about five minutes later Ryan was eating a snack and he said, "Mom, you're not the meanest mom in the world. You're nice." Oh, melt my heart. I needed him today. I'm so thankful he is part of our family.