Wordless Wednesday - Rainy Day activities

Yesterday it rained. All. Day. Long.

So first, we made this Zucchini Bread with my CSA bounty from last week.

Then the girls decorated and played with this cardboard box. For three hours.

Then we made homemade granola bars.

I found the recipe on Pinterest. They taste just like the store bought kind with none of the yucky store bought ingredients like High Fructose Corn Syrup.

All these photos are mine. Please don't steal/borrow them. If you want to see more of my photos you can follow me on Instagram @erinroseberry.

Eating more veggies and shopping local

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to eat and cook more real food and less processed junk. One way that I tried to do this was to eat two servings of fruit and vegetables with each meal. Y'all? That is way harder than it sounds! Before this challenge I was lucky if I ate two servings of vegetables a day.

So I started buying more produce at my grocery store. But I found myself buying the same things every week, and not enough to last the week. I also started reading about how long produce from grocery stores takes to get from the field to my store. It's a long time.

A friend of mine told me about a local farm that offered a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) option for produce, meat, and eggs. After crunching the numbers, we decided to take the plunge and ordered a medium share of produce and a monthly meat variety.

First week CSA bounty

Doesn't it look fabulous? I got eight beautiful tomatoes, green and yellow zucchini, sugar snap peas, green beans, and sweet potatoes. So far the kids have been devouring the peas. They weren't interested at first, but when I showed them how to open up the pods to find the peas inside, they thought it was a cool game.

This week I am planning to make zucchini bites, which are kind of like tater tots but with zucchini, and probably a zucchin bread too. I haven't decided how I will cook the green beans yet, and I am going to make sweet potato chips. I'm hoping that I can convince the kids to eat veggie snacks instead of their usual junk. Here's hoping!

I am changing

Isn't it funny how, as we grow up, the things that are important to us change so much? I can remember a time not so long ago that I had my hair highlighted every six weeks. Now, I'm happy if I can shampoo my hair every day. There was a time where I would go to a bookstore and peruse the aisles for hours, walking out with an armful of fiction. Now, I borrow books from the library to read on my Nook. I once shopped for shampoo and cosmetics based on how they would make me look. Now, I base these decisions on how many chemicals my body will or won't absorb from them.

I never used to cook. In fact, when Mr. Rose and I were first together, he did all the cooking. Now, I am still no Julia Child, but I do cook and try to cook healthy food at that. Before I never read an ingredient label, unless it was to check Weight Watchers points. Now, I try not to buy anything with High Fructose Corn Syrup or too many ingredients that I can't pronounce. I used to think that organic food was for hippies and "granola" types. Now, I try to buy as much organic as I can get my hands on and even started shopping at farmers' markets.

Before I used to want a nice house in the suburbs on a road with lots of other houses and families and kids running around. And now that I have it, I want something different all together. I want land. I want space to roam and to plant a garden and to have chickens and maybe even some goats.

I am changing.

I haven't written on this blog in awhile mostly because it overwhelmed me and I wasn't sure what my focus was. Part of it, I have to believe, is because I have been changing. So, this blog is going to change, too. Going forward, I will write once a week. You can expect posts from me on Monday mornings. However, I will probably be sharing lots of stories through my Facebook page. If you want to talk to me, check me out there too.

PS - That's a pic of our most recent Rosebud addition, Miss M. Isn't she sweet?