Monday, April 2, 2012

Holy Cow...We bought a cow!

Well, not actually a whole cow. More like a quarter of a cow. And our cow, which Andy affectionately nicknamed "Prime Reba", will be delivered to us in individual packages, labeled and frozen. Right now, she's still lazily grazing her pastureland here in beautiful California, unaware of the fate that awaits her.

This all started with a conversation (or series of conversations) that Andy & I have had, primarily with Filipe & Mandy. We got on the topic of processed foods at one of our kid's birthday parties recently, while I'm sure we were all stuffing our faces with plenty of processed foods. Mandy told everyone about a company she heard of here in California that raises grass-fed cows and sells them to individual buyers. It seemed like such a strange and foreign idea at the time.

The more and more we talked about way meat is handled, the food that we put in our bodies with very little thought, and the effect it is having on our health, the more I was feeling like I didn't want to eat anything at all! Hormones, pesticides, refined flours/sugars, etc... It was totally overwhelming and left me feeling guilty every time I went to the grocery store or ate a snack.

Mandy also told me about a blog called 100 Days of Real Food. On this blog, a typical suburban family from North Carolina took a pledge to eat nothing but whole grains, natural products, and real food for 100 days. It's pretty extreme, but so fascinating and educational.

As I began reading the blog and learning more about it, I slowly began to go from being totally overwhelmed with an "Only rich people eat organic" mindset to feeling like it wouldn't be so difficult to make some changes around here.

Then, Mandy sent me an email this weekend saying they took the plunge and bought a cow (a split-half)! Andy and I jumped on the website to do a little research and number-crunching, and decided to join them! I couldn't believe we did it, but if you're interested in joining us you can click here to get more info.

At this point, I'm quite confident that many of my friends from South Carolina and Texas are shaking their heads and thinking, "We knew it wouldn't be long before you turned all 'California-crazy' on us." Well, maybe. But I would like to remind everyone that the 100 Days of Real Food blog is written by a gal in North Carolina, the good ol' biscuit and gravy lovin' South.

So, at this point, I'm still in the "gathering information" phase. I will continue to make changes slowly as I understand more and more, but I'm not yet ready to throw out all my cookbooks and start over with only whole foods. Maybe one day I'll get there, but today I simply bought Triscuits instead of Wheat Thins. Baby steps, People, baby steps.

2 comments:

Mandy said...

I'm just glad you guys did it too- now I don't feel like the only crazy person around here! :)

Vivian said...

We looked into it before. Great choice :)