Thoughts on whole foods

Week one has gone pretty well. We've been eating tons of fresh fruits and vegetables, but have definitely found ourselves missing crunchy snack items (i.e. blue corn tortilla chips) and the occasional sweet.

Today was grocery shopping day, and I allowed myself to pick out a couple of artisan cheeses that I wouldn't normally have wanted to spend the money on. One is a lemon stilton that I can't wait to try, and the other is a parrano robusto uniekaas gouda. I also bought buttermilk so that I could try making these for brunch on Sunday. Aside from that, I got lots of fruits, lots of veggies, tofu, and a bunch of supplies for making homemade granola bars using this recipe. I added dried cherries and a handful of dark chocolate chips, and they worked out fantastically!

Next week I'll be trying out a bunch of new recipes, so we'll see how that goes. I'm excited for the challenge, though.

I've been reading Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food in order to mentally prepare myself for this challenge and also to better understand the history of food production. Some of the facts and statistics are staggering, and when they're presented so honestly, it's hard to justify the vast majority of the westernized American "diet".

So much of what we're conditioned to want is not really food at all. I'm very drawn to the whole foods movement, and yet there are parts of me that are still trying to rationalize holding on to some things that I know are not good (cupcakes!). Ultimately, I think we'll be moving toward a diet firmly rooted in whole foods, and while I don't imagine we'll ever completely give up certain foods, I'd definitely like to see those things become very occasional "treats".

Tonight we'll be watching Food, Inc.

This also provides some really good food for thought.