Food, Inc.

My husband and I watched the documentary Food, Inc. last night. WOW. What an interesting program, eye-opening... and rather depressing. It definitely did motivate me, however, to put some thought and effort into trying to improve my family's diet.

We already eat fairly well, I think, but could definitely stand to do better, and to consume more veggies. I've really made an effort to make sure my kids are eating well, but it's been getting harder the older they get. At 3, M has become a much pickier eater and would probably happily eat a diet of only pasta and peanut butter and jelly, but she does love fruit and she will eat beans, lentils, and vegetables if you "encourage" her too, so... she's a work-in-progress. So far, E will eat anything you put in front of him, so I'm trying not to rely on pasta and the like too much for him so that he'll continue to desire and enjoy a well-rounded diet.

Since last night, I've started to do a little research, and our plan is to attempt to switch to organic produce and meat, and to switch many of our other products over to products that don't contain high fructose corn syrup and are healthier in other ways, too. It's a big task, but I just have to think that the results will far outweigh the difficulty of the task. We'd like to do it by the summertime, and hopefully by then we'll have some produce growing in our own garden, too. We'll see how it goes!

Homemade Cleaner

I made my own "Comet" today! I found a recipe online and tried it out. It worked really well, which will hopefully inspire me to do things like this more often! The recipe is:

1/2 cup of baking soda
1/8 cup of Borax

Just mix it together and sprinkle it on the area you want to clean. I wet my kitchen sink, sprinkled it on, let it sit for 10 minutes, then scrubbed it with a sponge... and it is SPARKLING! So excited!! :)