My food rules

I've made a lot of changes in the way we eat around here lately.  Thought I'd go over a few of them now.  Just note that these are things that work for ME and MY family.  They may not work for yours.  I do have a lot of time and "want to" to prepare foods from scratch, you may not.  This is my way to get back to where food used to be.

1.  Things I avoid:
  a.  High Fructose Corn Syrup.  I know there's a lot of conflicting info out there about this, but as I see it most things that have HFCS aren't healthy to begin with, and so it's an easy way to weed out things our family shouldn't be eating anyway.  I've found HFCS in a number of surprising places since I started looking for it (pickle slices?  yogurt?  really?) and I make it my goal to find alternative products.  There are a few exceptions which I'll go over later.
  b.  Added sodium.  I try and buy everything I can with "No salt added".  If it has too much sodium I look for an alternative, or figure out how to make it myself (canned beans have a ton of sodium, dried beans...none!)
  c.  Artificial ingredients.  Again, like the HFCS, most things with artificial ingredients aren't that healthy anyway, so I look for alternatives.
  d.  Partially hydrogenated..anything.  Bad, very very bad trans fats.  Again, probably means that whatever it is has a healthier alternative, even if I have to make it from scratch myself.

2.  Exceptions to the above rules
  a.  Coffee creamer.  I know there are better ones out there now, that are made from real cream, and I have tried to like them.  But to me, nothing tastes better than International Delight Hazelnut or French Vanilla creamer.  I must have my coffee in the AM.
  b.  Certain cereals.  Cocoa Puffs.  Frosted Flakes.  Corn Pops.  I know they're not good, they don't follow the rules, but again, it's a taste thing. 
  c.  Soda.  Mainly Dr. Pepper.  And sometimes Coke.  And definitely Ginger Ale.  Sometimes you just have to have a soda.  Although I did go from a 5-a-day habit down to maybe 2 a week.  So that's something.
  d.  Heinz 57.  This one is for the Hubs, there isn't anything else like it out there to switch too.  It's a taste thing.

3.  My list of Super Foods (things I always have to have around)
  a.  Greek yogurt.  Preferably Chobani strawberry, or Oikos caramel.  It's all I buy anymore.
  b.  Annie's snacks and mac and cheese.  Love them.
  c.  Eggs.  We go through more eggs in a week than I ever thought possible.  I buy them 2 dozen at a time, sometimes 3.  The Kid and I each have one for breakfast every morning, and I use them for baking/cooking as well. 
  d.  Bananas.  We all eat the heck out of some bananas.  I have to buy them every week.
  e.  Nutella.  Again, the Kid and I have this every morning on our thin bagels that we share.  And we eat it on our bananas.  In fact, we are always looking for more ways to get Nutella in our bodies!

4.  Here's how I get around using bad ingredients
  a.  If a recipe calls for say, a can of soup (toooo much sodium!), I use chicken broth instead (that Trader Joe's stuff maybe I've mentioned before).  If there isn't a substitute for the offending ingredient, I look for a new recipe.  (A friend was just telling me all about these fantastic enchiladas she made.  That called for a can of cream of chicken soup.  Why there's cream of chicken soup in enchiladas I do NOT know, but she raved about it.  And then told me her kids thought it was disgusting and wouldn't eat it.  I'm inclined to agree with them and I didn't even try it.)

  b.  I tend to stick to very simple dishes.  Let me clarify that.  It doesn't have to be a simple dish to make, I'm not afraid of making something very labor intesive (homemade pasta or gnocchi, anyone?), but the end dish should be easily recognizable as to what went in it. 

  c.  The less ingredients something has, the better.  Not necessarily in my cooking, but in what I buy.  For example, I don't buy low/non-fat anything (mayo, sour cream, etc.) but when I went looking for some ricotta cheese here's what I found.  The full fat version had at least 7 ingredients, including quite questionable things.  Shouldn't those be fourd in the Low-fat version, you know, to up the flavor so you don't feel like you're missing out?  But no!  The Lighter version had only about 4 ingredients and nothing artificial.  Surprise!

  d.  Anything I can make at home has to be better than anything I can buy.  Cake mix comes to mind here.  Canned frosting.  Horrible, horrible ingredients.  I can make them both from scratch and they taste so much better.  The Hubs doesn't like cake, doesn't like the frosting, he says.  What I've found out is, it's the canned frosting that he doesn't like.  Cake from scratch?  He'll eat every bite.

  e.  Convenience foods aren't always what they're cracked up to be.  Sure it's easy to grab a packet of taco seasoning.  But it's not like it's backbreaking work to use Adobo, salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin instead.  Or that cake mix.  Sure it's easy to just dump the package into a bowl, but how much harder is it to measure out some flour, sugar, baking soda, vanilla, butter?   Or going to McD's when I don't want to cook.  We can have Kobe burgers for less than what it costs the 3 of us to eat at McD's.  McD's over Kobe?  Never!

So that's what I've been working on changing around here.  And so far it's really working for us.  There are more changes I have plans to make, I'll probably revisit this topic many more times.