My Organic REVELATION

I recently finished reading Alicia Silverstone's The Kind Diet.  An interesting read recommended by newly-vegetarianized friend Donna.  (You can read all about her awesomeness here.)  Tim hated me the entire time I read it.  I suspect because he knew I was reading up on all the grossness of eating meat (which he loves).  Or maybe it was because of all the ugly faces I was making while I read the info the book provided.

Anyhoodle, I've decided, after much contemplation, that the Morris family (at least this portion of it) is going organic.

As organic as possible, that it.

And it will likely be a slow process.  Most of you know I have grown accustomed to shopping with a coupon binder in tow, and I will still do so.  But my couponing will likely be restricted to household products like toilet paper, shampoo and conditioner, and cleaning supplies.

When I say organic, I mean we are hitting the organic portion of eating.  I'm not ready to go all "organic" on the cleaning just yet.

(Don't get my wrong -- there are still plenty of coupons for organic food products; just not as much as for the crappy, processed stuff.)

I won't get into the scientific points Silverstone presents (she is a huge animal activist and tree hugger, which I am most certainly not), but I will say that the book is an interesting read that made me say, "Hmmmmm," more than once as I turned the pages.  As I fear that my daughter will start her period in the next few weeks if we don't stop eating antibioticized, hormone-fed chicken, I am going to start buying organic chicken first and foremost.  I'd love to get all the dairy out of our house (Silverstone points out that dairy is not meant to be consumed by humans.  I mean mommy cows feed their baby cows their milk to grow them into 400 lb. cows after all.)  However, this girl loves some cheese.

And Greek yogurt.

And while we (Tim and I) don't drink a lot of milk, my kids do.  So we may have to transition slowly.  Organic milk (which is ridiculously expensive compared to the regular stuff, by the way!) is the way to go for now.

The biggest nasty food I'd love to get out of my life (and especially my kids' lives) is sugar.  I'm talking about the bad kind -- the -ose ones.  I never noticed much that sugar affects Kendall's behavior, but it most definitely affects Tanner's.  Of course, he is a big ball of sugar.  (He gets those cravings from his momma.) It may take a while, but I'd like to find other ways to satiate his hunger for sweets.  We'll see how that goes!

The biggest step (and I've taken it alone, for now) is giving up meat.  I have absolutely no moral reason for doing this.  Silverstone just says that  I will feel better if I don't eat it because my body isn't meant to process meat  So I'm going to try it.  I will say this -- I had a bean burrito at Las Palmas the other night and I didn't feel completely deprived.  And last night we went to dinner and I ordered a tomato, basil, and provolone panini.  It was delish.  Maybe this transition won't be so hard for me.

Getting Tim to jump on board will be hard.  And Tanner, being the chicken nugget aficionado that he is, will fight it tooth-and-nail, I'm certain.

But I'm not here to force anyone to do anything differently.

I just want to feel better.  And live longer and happier.

And I don't want my 7-year-old to have boobs.