My Healthy Eating Philosophy

Since food is such an interrelated part of what this blog is all about, I can't imagine moving forward without writing a little bit about what I think is healthy.  When it comes to healthy eating, ten dieticians could give you ten different sets of rules for what to eat and what to avoid.  I've had a lot of years to sort through several stacks of books' worth of information from myriad sources, and I've developed some of my own conclusions.  They probably won't match all of yours, and that's ok.  I think that diet is a very personal and individual choice, and I really don't think that there exists a single solution that would be perfect for everyone.  These are just my own thoughts, and will probably influence what I write in the future on here a great deal.

#1 -- Fresher is better (but preserved is good, too).

Ideally, most of our foods would be fresh.  Fresh-picked apples from a tree in the backyard, fresh-cut lettuce from the windowsill, freshly laid egg from the henhouse.  The longer after a food is harvested or collected, the less nutritious it gets until it is actually rotting/moulding/etc.  This requires eating food seasonally.

Since we are a single-family home, there will be times when we cannot eat all of the food that nature gives us immediately.  Conversely, there will be times when nature is not providing nearly enough for us to eat.  Preserving food to cover that gap makes a lot of sense.  I prefer food preserving methods that involve few (if any) chemicals.  I like to freeze using a blanching method (where necessary), can using natural acids like lemon juice and sugar only as necessary.  I'm still a novice at food dehydrating, cheese making, and yogurt making, though I plan to attend some classes through U.C.Davis throughout this year.  http://cesacramento.ucanr.edu/Master_Food_Preservers_181/

#2 -- Meat is a treat.

I've made a couple of attempts to cut meat out of my diet, but I've never been very successful at it long-term.  I do think that Americans, as a group, eat far more meat than is healthy per capita, and more meat than can be healthily sustained by our land.  On the other hand, I like the taste of meat.  I like being able to eat out socially.

Aside from the health aspects of eating animals (and animal products such as dairy, eggs, and honey), there are also moral/religious aspects.  While there are many scriptures that I have read and pondered when studying this subject, one which had a great impact for me is D&C 49:18, "And whoso forbiddeth to abstain from meats, that man should not eat the same, is not ordained of God;"  I could find no scripture that forbade the eating of meat, or any scriptural evidence that we should avoid eating flesh or animal products.  Later in that same chapter, there is a warning given against wasting flesh when there is no need.  And, of course, in the famous Word of Wisdom revelation, D&C 89:12 reads, "Yea, flesh also of beasts and of the fowls of the air, I, the Lord, have ordained for the use of man with thanksgiving; nevertheless they are to be used sparingly;"

How spare is sparingly?  I think that it is up to us to use our own judgement on this, and it depends on where you started from.  Right now, my goal is 2 meats per week.  It's probably still high, but my husband is still very fond of a meat-centric diet.  When I serve meat, I try to serve only a small portion per person; a tablespoon of ground beef encorporated into a taco rather than a whole chicken thigh per person.  Since we have a lot of young children at the table, it's easier for them to chew as well.

#3 -- Control proportions rather than portions.

I try to eat a balanced diet of traditional foods.  When I plan a meal, I try to imagine my plate cut into quarters -- fruit, veggie, protein, carbohydrates.  I'm sure that there are more precise (complicated) formulas out there, but I am a simple person, and if it's not simple, it doesn't stay in my head.  I'm not really worried about How Much each person eats, so long as they keep that same proportion.  If you're going back for seconds, get some more pasta, and also more of the steamed veggies.  If you are eating healthy foods with proper proportions, I think that it is really difficult to overeat.

#4 -- Limit processing, salt, sugars, and oils.

This one is pretty standard.  Of everything I've read, it was almost universally accepted that oils and sugars should be used sparingly.  Again, that word "sparingly", and the experts certainly had widely differing opinions as to the details on this.  I do use a small amount of olive oil for cooking where I think it is necessary, and I sometimes use butter in baking.  I use a variety of spices (including salt) to season my food.  I use some sugar in cooking and baking and in preparing beverages.  I also use honey as a sweetener (local when possible) for its health properties.

I try to avoid chemical processing as much as possible.  This is not a perfect world, and there are times when I am not in an ideal situation.  I accept this, and I eat what is available even when it is not what I would buy myself; I try not to make myself an obnoxioius guest.  But when I do my own food shopping, these things are pretty easy to avoid.

Finally, I just try to keep the empty calories at a minimum.  We don't eat dessert every night.  Sometimes, "dessert" is a small bowl of sugarfree applesauce topped with almond slivers and craisins.  I try to limit sugary foods, candy, ice cream, chips, soda, etc to times of celebration.  I don't ban them, but they're not foods that we need to eat all the time, either.

#5 -- Don't obsess.

This is the way I try to do things generally.  These are more guidelines than rules.  There are days when I just feel like chocolate, or a hamburger, or fresh-baked cookies.  I am grateful that I have access to so many wonderful kinds of foods, and so many choices open to me.

Do you have any healthy-eating rules in your life?  Drop me a comment and tell me about it.

And Then There Were Chicks

Our new chick brooder, made from an old foot locker we had on hand

 The first Thistle Patch Project has begun in earnest! The Missus and I went out and got ourselves six baby chicks that will eventually go into our backyard and provide us with some wonderful eggs (and possibly meat, too, depending on how attached we get to the birds).  They are currently nestled into their brooder box and happily doing their baby chick thing.

The first thing we had to do to get these chicks was get the brooder set up.  A brooder is a special type of pen where chicks are raised for the first 4-12 weeks of their lives.  In our case, the brooder is little more than a foot locker with a heat lamp, pine shavings, food, and water so that the chicks will be healthy and happy until they grow old enough to be moved out to a chicken coop in the backyard.  The footlocker was something that we had on hand already and my mother-in-law gave us a feeder, but we got the rest of the equipment from the Tractor Supply Company, located down in Galt, CA.  They were a pleasant store to work with and the staff were pretty knowledgeable.

After getting the equipment, it was time to get home and set up the brooder box.  Overall, it was a very simple process.  I lined the box with pine shavings for bedding, placed the food and water, and then adjusted the heat lamp so that one end of the box stayed at around 95 degrees Fahrenheit, allowing the chicks to move into and out of the heat, as needed to regulate their own temperatures.  It was very easy, and I had the whole thing done in less than an hour, including clearing a space in our spare bedroom to set up the box in the first place.

Our little chicks are enjoying their new home.

We got the chicks themselves from the Natural Trading Company up in Newcastle, CA.  The Missus and I decided to go with them because they are a local, certified organic farm where we could see how the chicks were raised instead of ordering them through the mail and hoping that they got to us in one piece.  We were impressed with the place and everyone was very friendly and willing to go out of their way to help us.  The chicks themselves are the Delaware breed, although the man at the farm said there may be some Partridge Chanticlers mixed in there, too.  Both breeds are known for both egg and meat production.  We also got them in a straight run, meaning that the chicks were not sexed and we may have both pullets (girls) and cockerels (boys) in the batch.  Unfortunately, since the City of Sacramento does not allow the keeping of male chickens inside city limits, that means that if there are any males in our new flock, we will have to either give them away or sell them when they are old enough for us to tell the gender.  This is also part of why we got six chickens instead of the three that Sacramento says is the maximum for our urban backyard.  We figured that between potential attrition and "undesirable" gender, we should end up with a flock of three chickens in our backyard, ready to supply us with eggs, compost, lawn cleanup, and hopefully a lot of fun!

Welcome to Thistle Patch Garden

Hello everyone, and welcome to my wife's and my blog about our adventures in more natural and sustainable living in the modern city.  We hope to make this blog a chronicle of what we learn and what we do to try and take our urban property and use it to produce food and other goods that our family can use.  Before we begin this adventure, please let me take a moment to introduce myself (my wife, known on this blog as "the Missus", will be introducing herself in another post, which she is typing as I type this one).

I am your average urban yuppie in Sacramento, California.  I am 31 years old and work as a training analyst for the consulting arm of a large corporation, which I have been doing for a couple years along with serving in the Army Reserve.  I have been married for a number of years to my beautiful wife, and I also have four wonderful children, ages 9, 4, 2, and less than a year.  I have grown up in a number of rural communities in Northern California, but I would hardly call myself handy with gardening or home production of anything.  Thus, this blog will chronicle an adventure indeed.

As for why the Missus and I are undertaking this process with our home in the first place, there are many reasons.  The first reason is that we really want to know more about our food.  Modern agriculture is becoming less transparent and more reckless with how it operates, and that kinda scares me.  If I can produce my own food for myself and my family, then I don't have to worry about contaminants, additives or harmfully modified foods causing problems for my family.  The missus and I are also worried about any potential disasters that may strike, natural or otherwise, and the more we do to become self sufficient, the better we can handle any possible emergency situations that might arise.  In short, we hope to be as independent as possible so that we don't have to rely too heavily on any one source for our own support.

The Missus and I have plenty of ideas for what we want to do with our property, but we are starting with just a few basics, which are vegetable gardening, beekeeping, and a small flock of chickens. We will be writing about those as we get closer to doing them, so if you want to join us on this adventure, be sure to subscribe to our blog and post any comments and questions of your own along the way.  We look forward to hearing from you!

Who I am, where I stand

Hello!  Welcome!  Thank you for joining us.

This blog is a joint project by my husband and myself.  We wanted a way to record our progress with our various projects around the home, and this seemed like a fun way to do it.  We might even help a few like-minded individuals along the way.

I am The Missus, a 30-year-old wife to the greatest man on earth (sorry, ladies, he's All Mine!), mother to 4 children 10 years old down to 9 months.  We are members of the LDS church, and I homeschool my children.

In recent years, I've found myself being drawn to living just a little bit differently from the average mainstream American.  In part, I feel that I am getting back to my roots.  After all, I was raised in a family of 9 children, and my mother breastfed, co-slept, wore her babies, grew and preserved a large percentage of her own produce, and cooked most foods from scratch.  I more or less thought that this was normal until around high school.  Well, I really didn't make too many decisions about how I was going to raise my family myself until after I married my wonderful husband, and it seemed like we were fairly happy sticking to the mainstream way of doing things.  My oldest son was mostly bottlefed, wore disposable diapers, ate commercial baby food, and wore clothes from Wal-mart.  My second pregnancy came, and things seemed fine until my labor had several medical interventions escalating into an unexpected c-section.  That surgery was a horrible experience for me, and one that left me with a driving need to find some answers.  And after the first few months had passed, we realized that we would have to do something to address my son's continuing skin issues.  I began to research environmental toxins in the home, switched laundry detergents, shampoos, and soaps, and tried numerous lotions and skin treatments.  I found that the most effective solutions were often the ones with little or no chemicals.

My third pregnancy was a time when these influences began to take shape in my life in a more obvious way.  With the encouragement of a friend, I decided to pursue a natural birth (unmedicated VBAC) rather than have another c-section.  As I was researching birth information, I began to come across other ways of doing things that I hadn't thought about before.  Before my husband knew what was happening, I was practicing self-hypnosis, buying cloth diapers, and sewing baby carriers.  The act of seeking a more natural way of doing things really resonated with me.

As I continue to learn new information, I try to incorporate new ways of doing things for my family.  I try to keep things in perspective and understand that there is no one "perfect" way of living.  We have only a finite amount of time and resources at our disposal, and I try to make the best choice for our family's current needs -- considering price, health, sustainability, and time.  And, I will admit, sometimes I just choose something because it sounds like fun.

This year, my husband and I intend to expand our gardening efforts and we hope to become just a little bit more self-sufficient.  We've had some small successes in the past, but we feel  that we really want to take things to the next level.  I would also like to share some of the tips and tricks that I've learned over the last few years, and perhaps help someone else out in learning about these things.

I think that's about it for now.  I promise, my next post will be much more exciting.  Here's hoping for a rich harvest and a prosperous year.  'Bye!