First Goals Met

I looked through our fridge and pantry and found what we need to donate/finish up. It is amazing to look at the ingredient lists and see how much crap is put into things. Stabilizers, preservatives, oodles of sodium, so many words that I would consciously have to sound-out in order to pronounce them. Even the "whole wheat bread" that we've been getting all of these years, thinking we were doing our kids favors by not letting them eat white bread.

Ingredient list for the wheat bread we normally buy:

Wheat Flour Whole, Water, Corn Syrup High Fructose, Wheat Gluten, Yeast, Contains 22% or less Soybean(s) Oil, Salt, Molasses, Dough Conditioner(s) (Datem, Ethoxylated Mono-And Diglycerides, Mono and Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Calcium Dioxide) , Wheat Bran,Vinegar, Yeast Nutrients (Monocalcium Phosphate) , Calcium Sulphate (Sulfate), Enzyme(s),Calcium Propionate To Retain Freshness (Foodfacts.com)

Uhm... Dough conditioners? No thanks.

Here is the ingredient list for three large loaves of homemade whole wheat bread:

Whole wheat flour, high gluten flour, yeast, sugar (to feed the yeast), three eggs, salt, very little oil, water. That's IT.

My mom came over and helped me out with it. I've never made homemade bread before (though I grew up with her making it. SO good) and I just wanted to make sure that I was doing it right. My poor KitchenAid (I have the 4.5 quart mixer, I think) totally wasn't feeling the nine cups of flour that go into this bread. It was groaning by the end of it, so from now on, I will make a half batch once a week, with one loaf of bread for the week for the kiddies and use the leftover dough to freeze rolls. We don't eat a lot of bread, but it'll be nice to have in the freezer on the off-chance we want some for a meal, or for tiny sandwiches.

The house smells great right now. I forgot how great it smelled to have bread baking in a house. Gwen had fun playing with the flour on the counter (and eating it, too-- gross), and kneading the dough was awesome for my upper-body strength, haha!

I think the worst part of cutting the crap out of our diet is going to be giving up my hazelnut creamer. That stuff is awful for me, I know, but I love it. I think I'm going to try to cut coffee out for good, though. I will get my caffeine from tea for a while, and then try to kick it out completely. Shopping was easier, though, not filling our cart with processed foods and snacks. I think it'll be a lot cheaper in the long-run, too. We're going to budget about $50 on meat each month (we don't eat much meat, at all) and $100 on produce, and then $50 on everything else. Cutting out the crap is going to lower our grocery bill so much!!

The timer is about to go off on the bread-- I will post a picture of my first loaves of homemade bread since I lived at home :)

Second goal: Make the bread again-- don't give in to the "ease" of store-bought :) 

Third goal: Start keeping track of what we spend at the grocery store and when. Cut out "Well, we need just this one thing" trips to the store-- make meal plan at the beginning of each week.