I think I bought our last loaf of bread.

And I'm totally freaking out.

Here is a visual:

My pantry.

My pantry when all grain is removed.

YIKES. Clearly, grain is a huge part of our diets. It's in everything and anything. How can we exist without grains? What the heck will we eat? Can I even do this? Am I being too radical? Is this upheaval worth it?

I've taken several days off from this blog because I admit it...I lost my steam. I've immersed myself in websites and articles and studies trying to decipher what is true and good for my family. But it's so overwhelming - to the point of causing me a lot of stress. As the person in charge of feeding my family, it's a huge undertaking.  And there is so much information out there and people firmly entrenched in their respective camps screaming at the top of their lungs that they are right. What I end up deciding to do with this glut of information could have a huge impact on the 5  people - 4 of whom are still very young and growing - sitting at my kitchen table. AHHH!

So before I really lost it, I turned off the computer and wrote down our goals with this whole eating real foods thing:

#1. Jon and I want to feel healthy and happy. We want to have energy when we wake up in the morning. We want to avoid headaches. We want to feel less foggy. We want to live life more fully.
#2 We would both like to achieve a better level of health through a combination of losing weight and getting stronger.
#3 I want to address my son's occasional belly aches and see if we can narrow down a cause.
#4 I would like to eliminate my daughter's ADD symptoms which I hope will in turn bolster her self-confidence as she approaches middle school in the fall.
#5 I would like to instill in my younger daughters a love and appreciation for real foods before food marketers fully warp their impressionable minds (I'm talking to you, "fruit" snacks.)

I feel like these goals are keeping in line with my crispy motto. I'm not after anything extreme or radical. But I am after a better understanding of the foods we eat and what they do to our well being in turn. And even though I used to think I was the healthiest mom on the block with my whole-grains and organic stuff, I'm thinking my definition of healthy was warped by mainstream influences. I'm looking for a crispy balance.

So with my goals in mind (and hanging on my fridge), I'm going to take my family on a paleo-ish/ real foods journey for the next 60 days. Then we'll evaluate our experiences against the goals above. Today we took our first 2 steps: No industrialized seed oils. No more grains.

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Step #1 to our new crispy way of eating in this house - throw out all industrialized seed oils. Throwing out canola oil, PAM, etc. as well as anything made with corn, vegetable, palm, soybean, cottonseed, etc. oils. That pretty much means most chips, snacks, crackers, etc. etc. I got rid of it. These oils are essentially poisoning us. For one, they are ALL genetically modified. Two, they are refined, processed, and deodorized. Yep - they go through a chemical process so that humans would find them palatable. Basically, they've got nothing good going on. Plus, add to the fact that the whole "saturated fat causes heart disease" theory has been debunked, their "we're so healthy claims" are kind of a lie.

From now on, we will cook with coconut oil and grass-fed butter. We will use true extra virgin olive oil on foods after they've been cooked (oxidizes with heat which can cause carcinogenic compounds). I am still looking into other sources of cooking fats - lard, ghee, etc., but I'm keeping it crispy for now.

Step #2 - Get rid of grains. This is by far the most daunting of anything. You saw the pictures above. I mean, really. What will we eat? Well the answer to that is: I'm working on it. I've printed off about a ream's worth of online recipes and have a cookbook "Everyday Paleo" arriving tomorrow. The biggest challenges will be: breakfast (I have raised cereal fiends), lunch (sandwiches of any kind are as important as air and water in this house), and snacks (which my kids ask for incessantly...which may actually be because they are so carb overloaded from their cereal and sandwiches, they are never really full). Plus, we are a big pasta and pizza household. This is going to be rough. But the nice thing is that step #2 will essentially take care of step #3 - get rid of refined sugars. But that's another post.

So I guess I can say that I have bought my last loaf of bread. I know everyone is going to be looking for it, but the last slice of the last loaf in the house was used today. As for the rest of my grains in my pantry, I'm not tossing them yet - not until after our 60 day experiment. But I have been easing us into letting go of our reliance. For instance, I made stir fry the other night with chicken, ginger, napa cabbage and all sorts of yummy veggies. (Was delicious cooked in coconut oil, by the way.) Typically I put out a big ole bowl of basmati rice along with the veggies. This time, I did not. It just wasn't on the table. About 75% of the way through dinner, I said, "Oops...left the rice on the stove. Anyone want some?" Of course they all said yes. But by that time, they were so full, they left most of the small scoop on their plates. Voila. They were full. Their little bodies weren't dealing with an insulin spike to handle the sugar spike from the rice. Jon and I weren't engaged in annoying kid negotiating ("How many bites do I have to eat before I can have more rice?" Grr.)  And I was happy....I took my first step to weaning us off the grain habit.

Keep reading as I experiment with ways to get us off the grains. I've got a couple of recipes I'm trying this week including coconut flour scones, homemade grain-free cereal, and pot pies with grain-free crust.

I'm also working on budget stuff. Like most people, I've got a food budget and I am also a recovering extreme coupon-er...I'm a force to be reckoned with when I walk into the grocery store. haha. But now that most of what I can buy with my coupons no longer fits into our real food lifestyle, how I can make this lifestyle work financially is a huge issue that can't be ignored.

Stay tuned, my friends. Recipes and advice are definitely welcome!!!