Day One

The eating portion of Day One is coming to an end (hopefully). Let's see if I can remember everything I had.

I started off with part of a banana, what was left from the part of banana that went into Baby J's oatmeal with cinnamon. Then for real breakfast, I had the Granola that I made last night with a little organic whole milk. (2% & Non-fat milk have other ingredients besides milk) It was pretty delicious if I do say so.

For lunch I had a leftover hamburger from last night's dinner. It was wonderfully tasty. My husband made them. He started with Organic ground beef from Cost-Co, which is completely acceptable. He added some salsa (also from Cost-Co), which was already in the house. Ingredients: Tomatoes, onions, green-peppers, jalapenos, cilantro, vinegar, lime juice, salt, dehydrated celery, cane sugar, fresh garlic, spices and citric acid. Although, this is a pretty clean list, once this 48 oz jar is gone, we will have to make it ourselves. (However, since we don't have any chips, and I have no idea how to make chips, I have a feeling this salsa isn't going too fast.)
He also used Organic Bread Crumbs from Trader Joe's. Ingredients: Organic wheat flout, organic evaportated cane juice, sea salt, asorbic acid. Then I added to the problem, by putting a slice of cheddar cheese on the burger. This block of cheese has been in the fridge for a while, and I no longer have the packaging, so I don't know the ingredients, but I'm sure it's more than one. Alas, it's almost gone...sigh. I also had a slice of onion and some avocado on the burger. No bun. On the side I had a medley of steamed veggies (Broccoli from TJ, Squash I grew in my community garden and carrots from my Farm Share).

Snacks - Another two bananas shared with Baby J. and a handful of peanuts (salted!).

For dinner we had pasta with pesto sauce. I would have said that eating pasta was just to get it out of the house early, but it turns out that there is only one ingredient: Organic durum wheat semolina, so this is a totally legal food in this project. I was completely surprised by that. (However, it feels like a cheat, and I might still try to learn to make my own pasta.) Anyway, the pesto sauce was left over from a lasagna I made last week. I made the pesto from scratch using basil we grew on our front steps. There was goat cheese in it, so that part couldn't be repeated unless I got a hold of some goat's milk. We also had a salad of tatsoi lettuce, avocado and red bell peppers. We used Trader Joe's Organic Ranch Dressing, ingredients: (all organic except the xantham gum): Fresh Cultured Buttermilk, Vegenaise (Soybean Oil, Water, Brown Rice Syrup, Apple Cider Vinegar, Soy Protein, Sea Salt, Mustart Flour, Lemon Juice Concentrate) Vinegar, Sea Salt, Garlic, Xantham Gum, Onion, Spices, Natural Flavor, Black Pepper, Chives. I'm pretty sure that writing out all of these ingredients will encourage me not to eat things with long lists attached. We finished off a loaf of French Bread left over from Sunday dinner. My brother brought it over, so I don't know the ingredients, but it was probably flour, water, salt and maybe some xanthum gum for good measure. We added butter, garlic salt, onion salt and parmesan, all things we had laying around.

For dessert we each had one of the cookies from the package my mother-in-law gave us to take home from her house on Saturday. Chocolate Chip Cookies from the Ralph's baker. What was I thinking? There are about a dozen cookies in this package. It's going to either take us all month to eat these, or one crazy binge. I don't know which is worse.
Ingredients: Enriched flour (Niacin, Reduced Iron Thiaminmomitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid) Sugar, Vegetable Shortening (Partially Hydrogenated Soybean and/or Cottonseed Oil) Chocolate Chips (Sugar, Chocolate Liquor, Cocoabutter, Dextrose, Soy Lecithin, Natural Flavor) Eggs, Molasses Contains 2% or less of leavening, Sodium Bicarbonate, sodium aluminium phosphate, monocalcium phosphate) salt, natural and artifical flavors, nonfat milk.

After writing that list I'm pretty sure I know which is worse. typing words like sodium aluminium phosphate really brings home the fact that so much of what we buy to put in our bodies is not food at all, and we really have no idea what it is. I think it is actually better for me to start this project still eating processed foods that are in my home, rather than just going cold turkey. This forces me to face the reality of what I really buy and really eat, not just my idealized version of myself.