All about food

I was recently reflecting back on things that have changed in my life the past couple of years. A lot of these things have been a gradual change, but changes nonetheless. These changes are also, seemingly, just the start of even more changes. Not only am I changing, but I also see Seth changing and growing in new ways too. It’s becoming more and more real to us that we’re adults now, which I suppose we should have recognized a while ago, but whatever. I’ve been wanting to write on these things for a while, so I am thinking about doing a small series of things that have been changing around the Rouggly house. So here’s round 1 of a few things I’ve been processing through…

1. We’ve radically changed our diet!

It’s true…we have. We no longer eat random crap anymore! That’s got to be a sure sign of growing up, right? But this change has probably been the most dramatic by far. For starters – we joined a Community Supported Agricultural group or a CSA. It’s been a really hard but really good experience for us! It’s been great because it’s really broadened our horizons as far as what is grown seasonally/locally/organically, etc. The CSA we use is called Abundant Harvest Organics and you can find out more about them here. If I am being completely honest, it’s also been hard because we let some of the items spoil too fast, which is hard. I think when 2 out of the 3 people living in the commune aren’t in school it might get a little easier. Next quarter, I have NO night classes, which will be AMAZING….and unheard of yet in my grad career. We’ve also made other changes to our diet and are in process of making more.

Some of the changes have easily been spearheaded by Seth. He’s gotten a bit…ahem….authoritative on some of our diet things. First – he is a CRAZY person about our eggs. I made the mistake of sending him this chart that ranks egg companies and how well they do on different scales and so now, there are few brands of eggs allowed into our house. He’s also crazy about his coffee creamer. It has to be organic and he also has certain brand preferences. He’s also been researching lately on BPA and how it affects our diet. I am getting the feeling soon that BPA is going to cut out of our diet by Food Dictator Seth (as I’ve officially now dubbed him) which means a LOT of changes. I’ve requested that this BPA-cutting gets implemented after school is over because at this moment, cutting out BPA completely is not something I can do. It would  mean cutting out ALL canned goods and virtually all plastic packaging which translates to a LOT of freaking work. There are nights now when I come home and dinner consists of a can of Trader Joe’s organic Spaghetti-O’s. So until I have time to make Spaghetti-O’s from scratch – the BPA stays. The most recent change happened just last night when our roommate, Becky Sue threw out the suggestion that the commune should switch to Almond Milk, from it’s current diet of Raw milk. That was immediately met with a chorus of “Huzzah!!!”‘s from Food Dictator Seth who has been worried from the beginning about our cooking with raw milk. Finally, the hubs, as much as I love him, is quite the conspiracy theorist. I personally think that his job as a technician and his love of post-apocalyptic movies and tv shows REALLY contribute to that, but that’s besides the point. He has a general distrust of stores and farmers markets. This has been a big t0-do with the eggs. We can’t get good eggs anywhere close to us and he doesn’t trust any local farmers markets so we’re driving all over Timbuktu to get eggs because they are a BIG staple in our house…like a carton a week kind of staple. So until we get our own chickens, a trapesing we will go.

I shouldn’t give him all the credit….or blame for a lot of the changes. I am making some of my own as well. I’d been thinking about trying to eat completely vegetarian when we go out to eat for a long time and I decided last week, whilst standing in line at Chipotle, that I was indeed going to try. I did make the disclaimer though that my one exception would be in-n-out, because why on EARTH would you go to in-n-out if you didn’t want a delish cheeseburger? That’s just ridonkulous, really. Granted, we’ve also drastically reduced the amount we eat out, so it’s not a super big thing, but it’s a small think I can do….CRAP! I just realized I had ham on pizza on Friday….dang. oh well. There’s grace :) So chalk it up to still being a work in progress! It’s hard! For the last couple of months, I’ve been examining menus of places searching for vegetarian items and let me just say, they are few and far between. I see the reason why vegetarians have their own restaurants and do a lot of their own cooking. I’ve also worked really hard at being a lunch-packer. I try and be diligent to pack left-overs and fruits and veggies from the box to keep the food spoiling down to a minimum. There are still a few things that are difficult to choke down (broccoli and cauliflower being the two majors) but I feel like I am learning all about a new world of veggies, which is great! I now am a huge lover of asparagus and brussel sprouts, which I never would have guessed, as well as becoming more adequate in the kitchen for cooking said veggies.

So those are a few of the changes we’ve tried making here and there! I think next I’ll look at how we’re making some big changes to our lifestyle! So stay tuned!