My journey towards clean eating has not been a sudden rampage, in fact over the past 3 years I have made slow and steady changes to decrease my consumption of processed, preservative and sugar filled foods, to those of the natural unrefined variety. It’s a bit of a daunting thought to suddenly opt for no sugar, no gluten, no dairy (I eat some dairy), no anything and so I ambled it out one step at a time. My pantry is now filled with ‘real food’ ingredients, rather than ‘ready to go’ food – which can be a disaster when I’m having a hangry moment and desperately require food as I routinely come home STARVING. My flat-wife, Leonie, is used to me falling in the door and requiring a teaspoon of honey or some berries to pep me up – not something to strive for folks. Note to self: be more organised.
‘Super foods’ as they are called can cost a small fortune, so if you’re keen to invest in a few I would aim to purchase one a week or so, you don’t need them all at once. Alternatively you actually don’t ‘need them’. Eating clean can be as simple as buying fresh fruit and veges – organic is ideal but these are pretty spendy and you have to start somewhere, so as long as you wash the produce well (use water and white vinegar, then rinse with fresh water), one step at a time is good. I buy organic where I can but I’m no millionaire and prefer to live within my means so realistically you can do your best, but you can’t always do it all. Baby steps. If you’re thinking about etching towards clean eating or to cut out a bit more sugar and a few preservatives, a good way to approach shopping is to focus on the outer isles of a supermarket and less on the inner isles. In general you’ll find your fruit and veges, meat, fish, full fat dairy, bulk bins of nuts, seeds, dried fruit and frozen items – veges, berries etc, in these isles of a supermarket. The middle isles are mostly filled with packaged food items – biscuits, chips, tinned stuff (which depending on what you are buying can be good!!), sweets, chocolate etc. Just after I launched this blog my Mum quizzed me on a couple of ingredients that I had used and it reminded me that I used to spend a lot of time googling ingredients in order to figure out what the heck they were, and where I could buy them without breaking my bank account. So I thought I’d ramble a wee bit about some ingredients that I find useful to have on hand …
Continue reading “Herm …. what is that even?”
