Eating Well

Another thing I can do now that Miss F can occupy herself for small amounts of time is cook from scratch.  I had found 100 Days of Real Food  quite a while back.  I was all gung ho, ready to ditch processed food.  I signed up for the 10 day pledge, and failed by day 2.  I hadn't really gotten *B* on board, and Felicity was still a wee one.

Miss F has been eating solids since Christmas, when she turned 6 months.  I make all of her baby food myself.  *B* noted on a couple of occasions that she ate better than we did:  all organic, fresh foods in gourmet combos like parsnips and pears.

 

When Miss F cracked the caning in her high chair, we had her feed herself on the floor.  

She has a new high chair now.  I believe this was avocado.

With the parsnips, *B* was particularly annoyed since it's his favorite side dish and I pureed the entire huge batch that I made. So we stopped buying food from our local big box grocery store and went back to the organic market instead.

On March 1st, I gave up artificial sweetener.  It was on a whim, really.  It was (and is) a bit hard since I loved iced tea with sweet 'n' low, and always had diet soda with foods like pizza or burgers.  It's been over a month, and I no longer pause when ordering a drink.  I get water, and it's just fine.

Somewhere in all of that, *B* and I rediscovered the real food pledge.  We started to cut out our sugar and substitute small amounts of maple syrup and honey instead.  I'm not a big maple syrup fan.  When I first read that Lisa put maple syrup in her coffee, I was just a little grossed out.   But that's exactly how I drink mine now!  I'm trying to cut back on that, so I'm down to 1 tsp of maple syrup in a whole cup of coffee.  My goal is to get to just coffee with milk.

One night, we just had a moment.  Miss F was in bed, and we decided it was now or never.  We pulled 3 bags full of processed food out of our pantries.  One bag of cookies even had TBHQ in it!  We emptied most condiments out of our refrigerator.

The only condiment we didn't remove is Worcestershire sauce.  Yes, it has more than 5 ingredients.  But do you know how hard it is to make that stuff???  We tossed the Heinz stuff and kept a bottle that we had gotten from our organic shop.

Since that day, we've made a concerted effort to eat much more real food and to really scrutinize what it is we put in our bodies.  Doing that, for us, means making a lot more foods from scratch.

Homemade Toothpaste

My dad, every now and again, talks about how bad fluoride is for our health.  I understand his concern, but since we're on city water, there's not much I could do about the water supply at the moment.  We could, however, change our toothpaste.

This recipe, I got from Thankfully Thrifty.  Just like the deodorant, it's super simple.  Two tablespoons of coconut oil, 3 tablespoons of baking soda, and I cut the salt down to a 1/2 teaspoon. 

 I just mixed the ingredients into a paste and that's it! 

The original recipe calls for flavoring, but all I have is vanilla and I'm not really into that as far as toothpaste goes. It definitely tastes like salty baking soda.  But it isn't really offputting.  It did a fine job of cleaning my teeth.  Perhaps even better than my old toothpaste.  Like the oil cleansing method, I'm going to give this a few weeks to see if I'll stick with it long term.

Oil Cleansing Method

Another trend I've heard a lot about is the oil cleansing method.  It uses the theory that "like dissolves like" to clean your skin.  The original method involves 80% olive oil (or coconut, jojoba, etc) and 20% castor oil.  A lot of people don't use castor oil because it's very drying to your skin.  I only had olive oil* on hand, tried it, and liked the results well enough on its own.

 

I might try castor oil one day in the future, but for now I'm happy.  The steps:

1. Rub the oil into your skin for about two minutes.  I like it - it's pretty much a great face massage.  
2. Put a hot, damp washcloth on your face.  Leave it there until it cools to room temperature.  Again, it feels awesome.  
3. When it cools, use the washcloth to wipe the remaining oil off your face.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 if you like.

I don't smell like olives (I had *B* check), and my skin no longer has that stretched, papery feeling I used to get when I washed my face.  I don't need an exfoliator because the washcloth is just scratchy enough to remove dead skin cells.  And I don't need to moisturize.  The only thing I need is sunscreen, but I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do this year in that respect.  I'm not 100% sold yet, but I'm going to give it a month to see how it goes.



*I heard on the radio that many extra virgin olive oils tend not to be extra virgin.  My brand is on the list of those who weren't always EVOO, but I will use it until it's gone.  If you want to see if your EVOO is real, check out this report.

No 'Poo

I had heard about no 'poo from the Weight Watchers message boards of all places.  There are a number of girls on there who follow no 'poo with great success.  For those who don't know what it is, that could sound kind of gross, huh?  No 'poo refers to getting rid of commercial shampoos as we know it.  DH has actually been doing this for years.  When I first found out he doesn't wash his hair, I was admittedly a little grossed out.  But it doesn't ever look greasy, and it doesn't smell at all.


Since I've got a living testimonial to no 'poo in my own house (two if you count Miss F), how could I not try it?  But my hair's always been really greasy.  When I was working, I washed every.single.day.  If I didn't, I worried about how greasy my hair was, whether it actually was or not.  Now that I (mostly) stay at home, I could stretch that to washing every other day.  But when I worked out, which I do four days a week, I absolutely had to wash my hair.


The last time I washed my hair with commercial shampoo was Monday morning.  On Tuesday, I washed after my workout with hot water only.  I was pretty greasy feeling.  It didn't look terrible, but I itched pretty badly.  Wednesday, I washed with a mixture of 1 tablespoon of baking soda in one cup of water.  I put it in a squeeze bottle (below) to make it easier to apply.

And I felt clean!  Just like if I washed with shampoo.  On Thursday, I washed with only water after working out.  It didn't feel as clean as Wednesday, but I was able to go out in public without worrying about what people thought.  Friday and Saturday went the same way - I washed with baking soda Friday, and on Saturday, you couldn't even tell it hadn't been washed when it was up in a ponytail.

One of these two pictures is me having washed with shampoo, and one is having washed with the baking soda mixture.

Can you tell which one is the no 'poo picture?

Homemade Deodorant

As described in my last post, we've decided to go natural.  *B* started the deodorant aspect of this project.  He bought some deodorant at our local organic co-op because he was worried about aluminum in his current deodorant. 

  

While it doesn't have a lot of the problem compounds we're worried about, check out how long this ingredient list is! Plus, it's rather expensive. 

I, personally, never had luck with the store-bought "natural" deodorants, but I knew that my current deodorant was not good.  So I looked up deodorant recipes.  Turns out, it's really easy to make, and very inexpensive to boot.  I used the recipe from Passionate Homemaking: 6 tablespoons of coconut oil, 1/4 cup of baking soda, and 1/4 cup of cornstarch.  I used the cornstarch because I haven't gotten arrowroot starch (yet), and because our cornstarch is organic and non-GMO certified.  I threw it into my immersion blender's processor for 5 seconds, and voila!

The amount in the tub is half of a batch because I put the other half into my old deodorant tube.  I dumped the rest of my old deodorant, and soaked the tube in hot water.  I wiped out as much of the old stuff as I could manage.  I dialed the stick all the way back down and packed in the new stuff.  Looks just like plain ol' deodorant!

It's been three days, and so far so good.  I don't have that wet feeling I used to get with store-bought natural deodorants. I worked out today, and noticed just a little odor.  Not like anyone would notice, but I smelled like I was working hard - which I was.  I reapplied when I got home, and I was just fine again.  I'm thinking that's something that will change as my body gets used to not being exposed to antiperspirants.

Going Natural

I've always been a bit of a hippie.  I knew from a young age that I wanted to grow most of my own food, that I wanted to cloth diaper my children, and that it was totally possible (and good) to clean your home with natural products.  When I was a kid, my mom canned applesauce and pear sauce, and we had cloth grocery bags and a clothesline in the back yard.

As I got older, I got sucked in to consumerism and the idea that you needed to buy things to have what everyone else had to be normal.  Somehow I accumulated a number of chemical products that I never used before - everything from counter cleaner to face wash with alpha-beta-something-or-others to fabric softener.

Two things have helped us rethink what we're putting in, on, and near our bodies.

Situation 1
We had gotten away from using most chemical products, but still had the bottles around the house.  My mom was watching Miss F at our house one day, and I came home to a strong chemical odor.  I was alarmed.  My mom, beaming, proudly announced that she cleaned our kitchen for me.  She found some Fantastik under my sink, and wiped everything down.  It even got into the hand knit, organic cotton face washcloths I made for Miss F.  I had to wash everything a number of times before I got rid of that smell.

Situation 2
I sometimes put documentaries on in the background while Miss F and I are going about our daily routines.  I just put on a random documentary Netflix recommended called Chemerical.  It was so good that I texted *B* and demanded he watch it when he got home.

I did a quick round up of the most noxious chemicals in our house.  *B* and I plan on going through the house with a fine toothed comb to find the rest of them.  As we go, we're replacing our habits and hygiene products with natural alternatives.  Follow along as we make new changes in our lives:

Homemade deodorant
No 'poo
Oil cleansing method
Homemade toothpaste
Line-drying clothing
Cloth napkins

Links will become available as posts are published.

Reboot

I took a rather nice, long hiatus from blogging there.  I had my hands full with this:

Miss F at 3 months

The family at Renn Fest, Miss F is 4 months

Miss F at 5 months in one of my old dresses

 Miss F, 6 months, and the family at Christmas

 Miss F at 7 months in her great-great aunt's high chair

 Miss F at 8 months, cruising

Miss F at 9 months, using a shot glass rather than a sippy cup :o)

The last few weeks, Miss F has really been exploring her independence and I've been able to work on my own projects for short periods of time.  It also helps that she only recently started taking naps.  Until she was 8 months old or so, she wouldn't sleep for more than 25 minutes during the day unless she was in a car.  

Recently, I've found myself writing blog posts in my head.  So I decided to come back and talk about all the wonderful things that are going on here at home.  I used to get all worked up if I didn't get a post written in a week.  Now, I'll write when I can.  And if you read it, that's wonderful.  If not, that's alright, too.  This reboot will be a less-stress experiment in blogging.