Zero Waste (Nearly) Lunch & Grocery Shopping As a Family, Yay! We're Invited To a Cookout!, & Today's School Lunches

Good Morning!

Here is what my kiddos took for lunch today...

A wedge of organic sourdough from Whole Foods, organic corn chips, 1/2 an organic orange, & a thermos of Bob's Red Mill 13 bean soup.  They love dipping the bread and corn chips into the soup, and they always get a bottle of filtered water.

So many things happened over the weekend, so much to share with you!  

Saturday is the day we shop for groceries, and this Saturday was no exception.  A whole food vegetarian's fridge is pretty bare after a week passes! These aren't your average shopping trips.  The nearest healthy supermarket is an hour away, as is the largest farmer's market.  We don't live in a highly populated area.  We are rural...cows & chickens & great big barns rural, and I like that...most of the time.  When I plan well, it's not a problem.  So, I try to do my best.  

Sometimes these shopping trips are stressful.  No, it's not leaving the house by 8 am, or making sure I have my Hartzler's bottles to turn in, or have all of my bulk and grocery bags, or even making sure we have coolers with ice.  And my list...making that isn't the biggest stress, either.  I pretty much buy the same things all the time, and pick up whatever else I can find a good price on (or impulse buy). 

 These trips take up a Saturday.  It's typically 2 1/2 hours on the road, round trip, and then there is the time to shop and eat lunch. We usually hit 3 or 4 places.  It's not that we don't enjoy it, because we do.  I love the satisfaction I get from buying only healthy foods.  I love sitting all of it out on my breakfast bar...it's so pretty.  I love knowing that we are reducing our footprint by reusing our bags, buying in bulk, recycling, and refusing bags we don't need (even produce bags).  

It isn't any of those things.  It is the kids.  It is important to me that we do something as a family every week.  Ok, that makes it seem like we never see each other (I'm a SAHM), like we never have meals together (every night), and we never have fun, but it's not so.  I just want to make all of the memories that I can with them, though Mommy and Daddy do still need a break (Are you reading this Daddy?) from time to time.

  

The trick is to make it a family event, a family day.  I want them to enjoy this lifestyle, so they need to be a part of shopping for it, and preparing it, not just eating it.  So, this is where the stress comes in.  We have to have clothes laid out & lunches prepared for the whole family, the night before.  We have to have the whole family up, bathed, dressed, fed, and out the door early.  It's a lot of work, feels like another work day actually, but there's great satisfaction when we pull it off.  

There are only a couple of places that we will eat out at, and it isn't always possible to do so.  When it isn't, I pack a picnic (yet another cooler), and we stop at a park to eat our lunch, and play.  We then end our day at home, make dinner, watch a movie as a family, and make kale chips, which my babies absolutely pig out on.  :) 

Another challenge is the new journey that my family is on, inspired by Zero Waste Home.  I tried very hard to be zero waste on this outing, and here is how I did it...

The night before...

I found a glass bottle/jar for everyone (except the baby, who had his own cup) and filled them with filtered water.  I save ALL of my glass containers!  

I then did a quick inventory of what I had in the house that I could throw together for the next day.  I thought of muffins...the recipe from Lisa over at 100 Days of Real Food makes 12, so 6 for breakfast and 6 for lunch. Perfect for our family of 6!

I used what I had on hand...I threw in frozen strawberries (that I cut into small pieces), sliced organic almonds, raw sunflower seeds, dark chocolate chunks, & black chia seeds.  My kids loved them!  

(For breakfast we had a muffin, organic egg, organic orange slices, & green drink.)

This is what I thought to throw together for lunch...I boiled some all natural (and not enriched) Chinese noodles.  While those were boiling, I lightly sauteed some fresh organic garlic, frozen bell pepper strips (red, yellow, orange, & green), frozen organic corn, fresh kale (torn into pieces), and some shredded organic carrot.  I tossed the drained and rinsed noodles with the veggies, organic sesame seeds, organic soy sauce, & homemade organic tahini.  (While I was making all of this, I was doing a quick soak of about 1/2 cup of organic chick peas.  After the 1 hour quick soak, I drained, rinsed & boiled the chick peas for 2 hours.  I actually had to set an alarm to wake me up to take the beans off, because it was so late by this time!)

I let all of the foods cool in the fridge overnight, because I'm using plastics here, and I never mix warm/hot foods and plastics.  In the morning, I added the chick peas & put it all in this container.

Here are the leftover muffins...all ready for lunch.

Here is what I brought to eat with and out of, trying to avoid anything that wasn't reusable, and then recyclable.  I haven't gotten around to making cloth napkins, yet, but will soon.  After that, there will be no more paper napkins in the house.  We took all but the used napkins home with us to be washed and reused.

Look at all of these happy faces!  They loved their lunch, and it was plenty with the samples we had at the stores (Whole Foods was celebrating Cinco de Mayo!) and our (very) small special treat at Menchie's.   I'll have to tell you how I do Menchie's in another post.  ;)

We faced another challenge this weekend...our first cookout invite.  I've been mentally preparing for this, because these things could get dicey.  I mean, you don't want to offend anyone, right?  I don't want people to feel like I'm judging their food choices.  I'm not.  I'm only judging mine.  I'm very particular about what my family eats, and the change in the way we feel is unbelievable.  Chemical-free whole foods is where it's at, baby!  I never ask others to prepare foods that meet our lifestyle, I just ask for acceptance of our food choices, as we accept theirs.

So, my plan for the cookout season, and how I handled this one is this...

Bring our own "meat" and then a side or 2 to share with everyone.  

I say "meat", because that will most likely be portabella caps.  I do allow the kids to eat meat when out, but that isn't very often, and not every time.  My husband and I choose not to.  However, I thought this was a good time for them to have some, since they were going to be faced with everyone else eating hot dogs and burgers.  So, I stopped by the grocery store for some pastured, grass fed, antibiotic/hormone free ground beef, but they didn't have any.  Small town problems, I suppose.  They did have turkey burgers that met the above standards, so I bought those.  The husband and I had organic portabella caps.  

I cleaned the caps and marinated them in a Ziploc bag (that I reuse) with some organic soy sauce, fresh organic garlic, a tiny bit of nonGMO canola, & organic rosemary.  

We threw these on the grill with the burgers and hot dogs, and they were delicious!  Who needs a burger?  If you're a mushroom lover, you will love these!

Another big small town problem is bread.  I have yet to find any chemical free/nonGMO breads in our area.  I have to travel over half an hour to find any.  So, buns weren't happening.  I did have some homemade whole wheat flatbreads in the freezer, so I got those out, let them thaw, and put them on the oven rack on low heat for a few minutes to dry out.

The kids ate their burgers in these, and we sliced up our portabellas, wrapped them up,  and pigged out!

For my side to share, I made this pasta salad...

Organic rotini, organic cucumber (diced), frozen organic sweet corn (that I sort of dried out in a skillet, for a few minutes, on low heat), organic chick peas, red onion (diced), sliced organic carrot, organic sesame seeds, organic cilantro (chopped), salt & my homemade dressing.  

 This was a huge hit, and not just with my family!  I brought home an empty bowl.  :)  

Have a great day!  

:)