Going Organic

About a week ago Little Bear started to show more interest in food. She would stare intently at our forks during dinner, watching them move from plate to mouth, and back again. She also started grabbing at food in our hands. My goal with Little Bear was to exclusively breastfeed for 6 months since that is what La Leche League, the World Health Organization (WHO), and my midwife suggested. Apparently, exclusively breastfeeding babies for 6 months lowers the risk of food allergies later on in life, as well as continues to offer them a really great immune system! Since we were 5 ½ months along, I thought it was time to start adding a few bites of food here and there.

Everything I have read, as well as talking with many mothers that I respect, suggests beginning a baby on mashed sweet potato and/or avocado – NOT canned, mashed rice cereal, like they used to. And personally, that makes a lot of sense to me. If we are going to introduce something to Little Bear, it might as well be packed full of great vitamins and nutrients! I also decided many years ago that my children would eat ORGANIC whenever possible. It was this resolution I had made that caused me to stop and ponder … If it is so important for me to feed Little Bear organic foods … and if I’m willing to spend extra money to make sure those foods I give her are organic … why am I not willing to spend extra money to feed Kyle and myself organic foods!?! This question has been nagging me for several weeks now, and the only honest answer I’ve come up with is this one: I’m too cheap! And while that may be an honest answer, it isn’t a good one!

Not that I haven’t tried to buy organic things over the years. I buy organic half-and-half for our morning coffee. I try to buy “natural, hormone-free” chicken and meat. And if I see organic produce at a good price, I will pick it up. But when I see an organic avocado for $1.99 – I usually go for the non-organic that is only $1.00. This behavior, I finally realized, has to change. We are on a pretty tight budget right now while Kyle is job searching and going to school. That means that I’m still not able to buy 100% organic right now for us (Little Bear, however, is getting 100% organic as she eats so very little!). But I am doing better. Today I bought organic apples, salt, butter, zucchini and spinach. The oranges are not organic, but I’ve heard that fruit with a think peel will often carry most of the chemicals in the peel. I hope this is true. Did it cost more? Yep. Is it worth it? I think so.

I’m also focusing on using more and wasting less. That means saving bacon grease and chicken fat for cooking. It means boiling bones and saving ends of vegetables for broths and stocks. We’ve cut down on sugar and white flours – which really helps curb one’s appetite … so we actually end up eating less throughout the day.

We also are trying to eat out less. We make coffee at home every morning so we don’t have to spend $2.00 on a cup at the store. Kyle especially enjoys grabbing food outside of the house (goes back to his bachelor-day habits, I believe) … so I’m trying to send him out the door with plenty of snacks, a sandwich, etc. It’s not going to be easy, though. We just relocated to the Portland area that offers an amazing variety of really good restaurants! But for now, I think we are going to try and limit our eating-out to once a month. Wish us luck!