Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Thinking about food...

Last year, I got a little flyer on my door inviting me to become a member of a local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group. I had been wanting to do this for some time, and being pregnant, I figured there was no better time to start eating even healthier with organically grown produce straight from the farm a couple miles down the road. I've always been a relatively healthy eater, but there's always room for improvement, especially because I have an out of control sweet tooth (I could eat a whole pan of brownies by myself in one day- no problem- I am serious).
So, every Monday Memorial Day through Thanksgiving, we made a little trip to the farm to collect and pick our share of the harvest. It was so much fun and we decided to do it again this year.  So far, we have gotten a lot of leafy greens (red leaf lettuce, kale, spinach, cabbage, mesculin, etc.), broccoli, turnips, beets, herbs, peas, fava beans, & sugar snap peas.  I have to look up recipes to use the things that I haven't had before (like Chinese Cabbage, which I got this week). Recently, I made kale chips- you crisp it up in the oven with a little olive oil and salt. Evangeline ate them right up!
I've also been trying to come up with some healthy "treats" for Eva. She has learned that when she eats a good meal, I often offer her a treat. I knew I needed to come up with something fast so she didn't expect cookies and ice cream everyday. So far we have done popsicles of all kinds with fruit and veggies thrown in the blender and put into popsicle molds, as well as whole milk plain yogurt blended with melted chocolate chips (a healthy "fudgesicle"), and frozen dark chocolate covered bananas. Do any of you have other brilliant ideas for fun and healthy treats?!?! I'd love to hear them!
Finally, now that Samuel is 5 months, it's time to start making baby food again. With all the organic vegetables we are getting at the farm, he'll be getting the healthiest and best tasting food possible. What a lucky boy! I've already done peas and carrots, and next week I'll pick green beans at the farm and give him those to try.  I remember looking at all my colorful baby food jars all lined up in the freezer for Eva and what a sense of accomplishment it was- I'm looking forward to that again, although it will be more difficult to muster up the energy this time around. I'm feeling pretty exhausted these days. More on that sometime soon...

Welcome!

We're the Wells family. We currently consist of Michael (husband and daddy), Lauren (wife and mama), Evangeline (daughter and princess), and Samuel (son and prince). We live a pretty simple life loving the many blessings that God grants us each and every day.
Mike is a genius carpenter/contractor and works throughout neighboring counties. Lauren stays at home with Eva and Sam most of the time, but works a few days a week as a therapist.
More than anything else, we love being together as a family- trips to the gardens, swimming at Grammie and Papa's house, and bike rides & walks are probably our most frequent activities. We're surrounded by our family (siblings and parents); they all live within 30 minutes of us!
That's us in a nut shell.
We're thankful you dropped by our site!