Day 15 of "downsize me"

It's been awhile...and I bet some are wondering if my lack of blogging means I've actually fallen off the wagon....HA!  Not totally, only one time did I cave in, and not for the reasons I usually would.  Today is day 15 if the flub up doesn't reset my count.  What was my flub up?  On Monday, I actually suspected that part of the illness of sudden onset migraines I was experiencing might have been some sort of wierd sadistic "detox" of fast food and it's excessive sodium and preservatives, fat, calories and cholesterol from my system.  Since recently prescribed migraine medicine was doing little to help me, and I was desperate for relief from my throbbing head...and a recent rewatch of "Supersize Me" had indicated serious withdrawal headaches being an issue with fast food addiction...I caved.  I got a chili dog and fries at Dairy Queen. The hot dog was all beef and I just tried to block visions of CAFO cows (combined animal feeding operation) in my head.  I shared the fries with my kids so as to spread out the misery.  I waited patiently (at the train station with the kids who were entertaining themselves watching trains) to see if my misery would come to some abrubt ending.  However, to my dismay it did not.  It didn't get any worse though either.  By the next day I had full blown vertigo and headed back to my Doctor for the 2nd time in 4 days.  With prescriptions for steroids, antibiotics and anti vertigo medication, I loaded up and slept it off for a day, taking yesterday very easy, thanks to my husband putting family first and taking the time off work to care for the kids.  Today I am much better and on my way back to sanity.  When your world is spinning around you while you are standing still, the idea things could ever get better again seems far away.

I've spent some time during  my sojourn from fast food locating farms and farm markets to begin purchasing all my meat, eggs and seasonal poultry from.  I have tried my first ever purchase of organic grass fed beef and used it in spaghetti sauce.  It was the best spaghetti I've ever made...a taste of the meat alone you could really taste the variety in the diet of the beef right in the meat.  It was more filling, everyone ate a smaller portion, it cooked quicker and had only 1/4 the amount of fat to drain off as a traditional pound of CAFO beef would.  It just LOOKED healthier.  Even "Sophie" ate every bite, and she is normally difficult to get a bite of meat into.

We resumed our long missed home dairy delivery of Oberweis Dairy milk.  I love this milk for a few reason, 1) the beautifully crafted glass bottles it comes in, shown left 2) the fact that these bottles are collected each week, sterilized and reused just like days of old and giving this planet a much needed break and 3) the milk itself is "cow to front door" in about 36 hours on average...the milk you buy in a store is at least a week old by the time you get it, even longer if it's organic and you don't live in an area where that is a hot selling item.  4) the milk is from cows on small family dairy farms right here in our county and other surrounding counties...so I am shopping local and that is a no brainer.  Oberweis strives to be "better than organic" with standards that go beyond that of organic dairies.  The cost is about that of Organic, roughly twice what your standard large commercial dairy milk goes for, but the taste is better 10 times over.  The milk is pasteurized at minimum necessary temperatures, preserving most of the original nutrients and rich flavors.  In fact, it's so rich that a glass of skim milk has the rich taste of the watered down 2% most grocery stores carry.  The amazing fact for us is that the consumption of milk by our family has gone down by 1-2 gallons per week, since it's so much more satiating,  and the kids gladly prefer it.  "Sophie" asks for the "fresh from the farm" milk and "not" the plastic tasting stuff in a jug.  As expensive as it sounds, it's easily off set by the lack of spending on eating out and fast food...and still ending up spending  less overall. To see if you can find milk in glass bottles take a look at this site: Dairies using glass bottles