Fun website

www.labelwatch.com

It shows all the ingredients in all kinds of stuff and has them color-coded: green=good, yellow=okay, red=bad. It's fun to scroll through and it helps when I'm looking up some of those ingredients that I can't pronounce. ;)

Vlasic Stackers Roasted Red Pepper Strips

We are trying to do more vegetarian meals. I am also trying to avoid canned foods (if I can find good stuff in jars, though, I do occassionally buy that). I found a yummy looking recipe for cheese tortellini in roasted red pepper sauce. The recipe requires roasted red peppers with a few other things (oregano, garlic, etc) to be blended together into a sauce. I had the worst time finding roasted red peppers, but came across the Vlasic Stackers brand. I, stupidly, did not check the label until I was rinsing the jar to recycle.

The ingredients? Peppers, Water, Distilled Vinegar, Salt, SUGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP. WHY? I honestly will eat HFCS in some items. If I expect it to be in there (store bought cookies, candy bars, etc) I'm (mostly) okay with it. Why? Because I'm consciously making a choice to eat something that isn't good for me. I know that, overall, that candy bar is doing nothing good for me and seriously, what's a little HFCS to top it off? However, it makes me ANGRY when I'm eating something that I think should be heatlhy only to find out that HFCS has been added to it for no apparent reason.

I read an article a while ago that disturbed me. It mentioned that HFCS is added to foods just to make them a liiiiittle sweeter. If all our processed foods are made a liiiiittle sweeter, we start to crave sweeter foods. It also makes us less full than cane sugar. Our bodies aren't recognizing what we're eating, so the calories aren't making an impact. So we eat more of the nasty stuff. We spend more on the foods we shouldn't be eating because they taste good and they don't fill us up. I mention this because I can't think of any other reason to add it to roasted peppers...

No more canned foods

We've been trying to get rid of our canned foods for awhile. I was still using canned tomatoes of all kinds and canned beans (kidney, pinto, black, etc). Well, as of about two weeks ago, we are can free. The tomato thing has been a little complicated--it takes A LOT of tomatoes to can any of my own stuff. To can everything I wanted to, I'd need about 100 lbs of tomatoes. So far I've only canned some tomato paste and a couple jars of sauce. I'm planning to go to a pick-your-own farm in Raleigh in the next few weeks to pick my own tomatoes and hopefully get that 100lbs at a reasonable price. For what our local stores and even farmer's markets charge, I'm not going to be saving any money by canning my own. And for the work and time involved, the money is a motivator for making it worthwhile!

Tonight we are having my yummy Crock Pot chili. The difference is I used some homemade tomato sauce, diced my own tomatoes, and am using dried kidney beans. The chili itself smells sooooo good, and the beans are so big and they also smell amazing. It's crazy to me how much different canned and "fresh" beans look! I read the nutritional content on both, and the difference between the two is ridiculous. Far less sodium, and sugar in the dried, plus more fiber, protein, and calcium. So hopefully we will be enjoying a nice healthy dinner tonight...that also tastes good. I'm still nervous about how the finished product is going to come out.

Terrible...almost 4's??

Ian has been a monster the last week. A holy terror. I will elaborate later, but for right now this is my two minutes to get it out there and hopefully forget it for the rest of the day (or hour or 20 minutes). I don't know what they were thinking when they coined the phrase "terrible two's" but somebody was SERIOUSLY mistaken.

Though, I guess in all fairness, he is adjusting to a lot of things right now. Maybe Mommy just needs more patience?

--total aside, Ian just walked up to the dog and said "Ohhhh, baby boy! I love you" and gave him a big hug. These are the moments that keep him breathing. ;)