Shopping with Angels

Where has the week gone?  Our littlest has been up to his antics again which makes it super hard to pull off my early mornings.  But it is ok - he'll be two in April and I know this can't go on forever!






Quick health update - hubby is down 11 lbs now and dropping.  I am absolutely so impressed with how incredibly disciplined he's being.  He literally only eats what I hand him.  His snacking habits have disappeared and have been replaced by very weird new choices.  Get this, if he needs a quick snack, instead of grabbing what used to be abundantly around here like cookies or muffins, etc., now he grabs a can of herring, sardines, or tuna - ewwwwww!!  Or is it???  These are awesome alternatives if you go to the grocery store and look in the canned fish aisle.  Now they have amazing flavours, including smoked herring (my favourite, seriously!), tomato basil (herring or tuna) or lemon pepper (tuna).  As long as I find them on sale, I grab at least 5 or 6 for the week and they are an awesome snack on a rice cake.  You would not recognize our family if you were to come over, just by our eating alone.


I've been shopping with angels lately, I'm convinced.  All sorts of new ideas are coming to me and it seems to me that God has been in touch with the owners of the stores and has let them in on our new plan.  Seriously!  When I go shopping, the clearance vegetable section is almost always full of the types of vegetables I'm shopping for.  Not just that - I always go to the store after having gone through all the flyers and I think I've picked all the things that are on sale, but clearly the stores can't possibly put everything that is on sale in just a few pages.  Sure enough, as soon as I get there, I see that there are even more things on sale than I expected, so I feel like I'm succeeding in saving money even more!


The other day when I went to the store, I was in a particularly prayerful mood - just aware of how grateful I should be to have a cart full to the top and running over and I found myself literally putting the food on the conveyor belt one item at a time thanking God for each vegetable, each bottle of shampoo, each carton of eggs - it was a great opportunity to be really specifically thankful.  The experience continued when I got to the van - "Thank you Lord for this toilet paper!  Thank you for the bag of potatoes!"  Then the prayers turn to, "Strengthen my husband's hands with this food.  Help my children to grow strong."  It goes on and on.






One great idea that has been revealed to me is to shop in the international aisle of the food store and not the health food aisle.  The international aisle offers a lot of the same pastas, but they are just not labelled "Gluten-free" which doubles or triples their prices!  The Asian food alternatives are naturally gluten free as many of them are made from brown rice anyway or even from beans or peas, so that is where I buy my pasta now and it saves a ton just because it doesn't have the fancy gluten-free label.


My oldest does not love the new pasta alternatives, but uh, tough luck.  It's amazing to me to walk through grocery stores -  there are literally rows of food that I just walk by as every single thing down certain aisles simply isn't food! 




I will be honest.  After the detox was officially over, I did really long for my coffee again - it was all I had!  So I've been having one cup in the morning, which was all I used to drink in the first place.  I still put cream and sugar in it and it has been really wonderful!  But then the rest of the day it is just water or herbal tea (still black).  I'm down about 3 lbs - it is coming off slower, but I figure it's just taking my body time to adjust to this new way of eating.  We're both in this for the long haul though.  RM told me yesterday that once he's at the weight he wants to be at, he won't gain it back.  He's determined to maintain the newer weight and the newer way of eating.  He has definitely made a lifestyle change. 




Another interesting change is in our salad eating.  We would have a salad once in a while, but mostly I made one dish types of dinners where the veggies were cooked and mixed in with a sauce or something like that.  Perhaps a veggie plate would be on the table.  There were often vegetables left at the back of my fridge or in the veg drawer that had gone bad.  Not now.  Every vegetable gets used by the next shop - these past two weeks didn't see a single one wasted.  There are vegetables (or fruit) at every single meal - in the eggs, in the soups, in the variety of salads.  It is becoming normal and now my 3 year old and 5 year old are always asking for salad.  This is awesome!  That makes me very happy, to know they are getting wholesome food in their bodies - so great.  Homemade Greek dressing is one of our favourites, by the way. 




I normally buy cans of beans or chick peas as my bulk order of beans got used up ages ago.   But yesterday I bought giant bags of dry chick peas.  Way cheaper and not hard to make - simply soak overnight and cook the next day, so that'll go way further as it is a standard snack now.  We make the roasted chickpeas all the time now.




My baking daughter made an awesome cheesecake the other night (a treat for the visiting ladies from church).  To make it gluten-free we ground up a variety of nuts and some gluten-free cookies we had one hand, mixed it with a little butter, and voila! a gluten-free crust!  Yes, it had sugar and dairy for sure, but now these ingredients are seen as occasional treats, not daily indulgences.  It made the cheesecake taste wonderful because we knew it was a special, once-in-a-while event - this is how I want it to be.




So, am I giving credit to God when these ideas seem to be rather unexciting or just the next logical step and approach to healthy eating?  Yup, I am.  For me, these are all rather revolutionary thoughts and new ways of thinking that I just can't take credit for!  I believe he's answering my prayers for leading my family into healthier living and I'm grateful.