Our Food Journey Part IV

We have already lost weight, made bread and root beer, and spaghetti sauce.

The next leg of our journey to healthy eating involves high fructose corn syrup.  Or, rather, a lack thereof.  We just got convicted to stop buying stuff with high fructose corn syrup in it. Meaning, bread all of the sudden got really expensive.  I'm talking $4 a loaf!  And Chris and I, being teachers, loved to bring a nice sandwich to school for lunch.  Let me tell you, after a couple of weeks/months, we rediscovered homemade bread.  I started making bread once a week. 

I discovered a couple of really great resources on the web, the first of which was "The Homestead Kitchen." This website revolutionized my desire to cook for my family, as well as how to cook, and especially how to make bread!  Because of this website, and our desire to eat fresh, whole wheat bread regularly, we purchased a wondermill for Christmas that year. And I have not looked back.  I absolutely love it!  My wondermill grinds wheat berries and spelt (how is that spelt, exactly?), and a myriad of other grains (even beans, if you want to!) into fresh flour that has so many more nutrients available than store bought bread or flour. 

The price of the wondermill is expensive, up front.  But, Chris and I calculated that it paid for itself in less than a year!  I was spending $4 on a loaf of bread every week (Sometimes we would go through more!).  Now, I am spending roughly $2 for two loaves of bread.  So, I am saving $3 a week just from making my own bread! (Ok, so I realize that my math in the prior two statements DOES NOT work out to saving enough money in a year to pay for the wondermill... but it was DEFINITELY worth every penny!)

I guess one more note on this leg of our journey is that we started drinking fresh, raw milk. Yummm. Our pastor and his wife introduced us to it while we were engaged.  I had never really liked milk before, but boy!  Raw milk is delicious! And, since it has not been pasteurized, the enzymes in the milk that are living and beneficial are not dead.  The homogenization process breaks up the big fat molecules in the milk and makes them able to be absorbed into the body.  These fats are bad!

Around this time, our firstborn, Benjamin arrived on the scene!  And our journey continued...