I have a food confession

I was chatting with my friend Tania this morning, who made my day by telling me how she looks forward to my blog.  She starts by whispering a confession to me about sometimes buying frozen meatballs, with a look of utter shame on her face.  My goodness, woman, cut yourself some slack! 

I have worked hard to eliminate unnatural foods from my diet and cut out as many preservatives and processed foods as possible.  To do this, in a cost effective way, I've had to make MOST things I eat from scratch, but I'm also human, a mom of 2, and I'm about to start a new job, so I'd be lying if I told you I never take a short cut.  I'd be lying if I made wild claims of only shopping at a farmers market or storing my root vegetables in the cellar for the winter.  Sometimes, I take a little help.  Last night was an example of that.  I'd literally been running around all day and I'd had NO TIME to make anything from scratch by the end of the day, so I reached for one of my favorite quick helpers from the cabinet.  Bob's Red Mill Vegi Soup Mix (nothing but a pre-mixed bag of green & yellow split peas, barley, lentils, and vegetable pasta) saved me the trouble of mixing all of those things together from my pantry (and/or stopping at the store) I supplemented it with sliced carrots, chopped celery, half an onion, a few chopped small red potatoes, and ~1tbs of herbs de Provence.  I added some water and sea salt and put a lid on it for an hour, while I sat back and regained my sanity from the day.

The end result kind of looked like gruel - a sort of thing you'd expect a character in a Tolkien novel to be eating from a tin cup - but it was warm and delicious, filling, basically devoid of fat, and all natural.  It also had just a hint of sweetness to it that I didn't crave a sweet after dinner either and I'm actually really looking forward to leftovers for lunch!