Saturday, April 12, 2014

Day 12 of No Refined Sugar

I haven't written in 6 days because I'm trying to get my stuff together. And quite honestly, there hasn't been much to write besides cravings and monotonous meals.


I think I underestimated this challenge, or rather the details. I thought I would be able to, well. Let me start here first: Our plan was to eat everything we already had before the challenge started and we did pretty well at that. We managed to eat the majority of our food and it was a little rough but what I didn't want to do was find out at the end of this month that we weren't ever going back to refined sugar and have to throw out all our food. We pay a lot of money for food and we really don't have much to work with. I think some things we didn't end up being able to eat was some cornbread boxes (because for the life of me, I cannot manage to make cornbread from scratch and I have tried a dozen times, I keep thinking it'll work this time, it'll work and it never does), a gluten free pancake mix with good reviews, our condiments and some cakes mixes, and leftover sugars.

The first few days were rough because it wasn't payday but I managed to squeeze money here and there and get some things. Payday rolled around and I got the majority of things on my list. With cravings, we kind of ate everything up, so I restocked. After that our budget was wiped. How do people do this? This real food is so expensive!

I talked with friends at play-date and they were telling me about subscribe and save on amazon. Okay. It's hard to shop online for food because I can't touch it, but I don't think I can find this stuff local and it's way too expensive when I do. We're on a 1 month trial with Amazon Prime right now. Shipping was so expensive so I really had no other option right then. It's supposed to come on Monday, which is fast for free. I just have to see if Tim will go for the $99 at the end of the month, and that pays for the year. If we do decide to continue with healthier food, it may be a cheaper cost in the long run and I'll be forced to use amazon more. I can save on gas if I do it for toilet paper and things like that.

I read into this challenge for a while before I started, but for me there isn't anything like actually doing it to learn. I can try as much as I'd like but I have to experience it. One of the things that got me interested in this was decreasing depression. I seriously struggle with it and I thought this would help some. It did, for like a week and then it hit me again, just slapped me. I'm trying to deal with it. I know that we aren't completely changing the way we live but I did hope it would help more than it has.

I attempted a bread recipe from Healthy Families For God and found I didn't do it right AND there had to be instructions missing. I really miss bread.

I have mastered mediocre but healthy shakes. I do only as much as my blender can tolerate, which is a little more than I thought it could but not enough to do what I really want it to do. They key I found is to use a LOT of cocoa powder! Makes everything great.

I successfully managed a zucchini bread recipe last night and it was a hit. I have now made 4 little loaves. Three are already eaten, but don't jump to gluttony. We missed it and it's pretty healthy and tastes like cake.

I have 4 other recipes to try out but I can't do anything until my coconut flour comes in with my other things from Amazon. I can wait though.

I went to a fundraiser/yard sale today. The lady who does the Dayton LLL organized it. I ended up find decent cloth diapers for .25 cents each and found Carson enough shorts to last a week without doing laundry. SUPER excited about that. He grew out of most all his clothes and we haven't gotten hand-me-downs in a while so we're out! I seriously hope to find a lot of yard sales this season for .25-.50 shorts for him and the rest of my kids, too. That will help.


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