Transcript
Speaker: Hey friends welcome to episode 90 where you're talking about what we eat and what we feed our massive amounts of children. We fully understand that just the concept of feeding nine kids a day can seem super overwhelming and people probably wonder how we ever have time to do anything else but we get a lot of questions about this and so we decided to do an entire episode giving you a little glimpse into our menus
Speaker: our health plans, our diet strategies, and how we do our best to keep nine kids healthy and keep ourselves sane at the same time. We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker: Hello and welcome to Outnumber the Podcast. I'm Bonnie. And I'm Audrey. We're experienced moms to a combined total of 18 children. Our mission is to help overwhelmed parents find peace in parenting and humor in the chaos. Come join us as we attempt uninterrupted conversation about parenting with joy and intention.
Speaker: Hey friends, welcome back to another episode. And today we're going to be talking about food, everyone's favorite topic, right? At least my favorite topic. Um, we get a lot of questions about nutrition, especially how and what we feed so many children. So today we're going to pull back the curtain. Yeah. You, but we're not opening our refrigerator doors. No, they're super girls. We don't want to scare you away.
Speaker: All right. First, I'm going to start off by reading a really sweet review we got on iTunes and we appreciate every single review we get because it helps other people find the podcast. So thank you for those reviews. This one comes from IowaGal53 and it says, homeschool is the subject.
Speaker: You guys rock. My husband and I have contemplated homeschooling for a few years, but never thought we could pull it off mostly due to our schedules at the time. With the way COVID has made public schools, we have taken this opportunity to try homeschooling. We talked to our daughter about it and she seemed a little skeptical and nervous. Change is scary, we get it. Then light bulb. We were outside and she was studying, in quotes, a grasshopper and caught him in a jar and showed us and explained all she knew and said that she wanted to learn.
Speaker: and said what she wanted to learn. We looked at her and said, that's homeschooling. Her eyes lit up and she is now totally on board. So I signed her up for Khan Academy and she can't wait to try it. I've recommended you guys several times and I get so giddy talking about this podcast with all my friends and husband, LA.
Speaker: Thank you so much. That's very sweet. And Khan Academy was one thing that we both recommended in a past episode on homeschooling. So we're really super glad to hear that what we're saying to you guys is making a difference.
Speaker: Yeah, best of luck on that fun journey. And just a side note, as we always say about homeschooling, we talk a lot about it because it's worked really well for us, but it doesn't have to be your thing. You just get to pick the best way to educate your child. And I think that's one of the most amazing blessings and opportunities, responsibilities too, but that we all get, right? Yeah. Yeah. And keep, keep curious about those grasshoppers. That's, that's going to take you far. Like just curiosity in your homeschool is going to go a long way. That's right. Totally.
Speaker: All right, so we're going to talk about food today. And we're just this episode is kind of a general overview. And if you guys want us to go in depth on what we feed our kids specifically at all three meals of the day, like give you guys recipe and meal ideas.
Speaker: Reach out and let us know because we'd be glad to do that too. All right. So we both eat and feed our kids somewhat differently, but the most important thing is we're very intentional and we try hard to be conscious of our food sources and our types. So, um, I think I've talked in past podcasts that most of our family is on following the keto diet, which is very high protein and good fats and lots of vegetables and zero sugar and not many carbs.
Speaker: And I have to share, I have to tell a cute story on Bonnie here. So hang on, Bonnie. When we were getting ready to do this podcast, Bonnie was like, uh, I don't know if I want to do this episode because like your family eats what sounds like perfect. And I'm like, I said, Bonnie, you know what? It's maybe the way we eat is quote unquote healthier than you guys.
Speaker: but it's not going to be as relatable to your common mom because it's pretty specific what we eat and why. And so that's out there maybe just for those who are listening who have very specific things that you eat even if it's not the keto diet or the specific one that you can hear that it works for a large family too.
Speaker: Yeah, and I will also say right up front that I don't really think there's one definition of quote -unquote healthy, right? I think we can all agree on some things like sugar, not healthy. But there are so many different diet strategies you can use. I'm going to say diet strategy because when you say diet, people start thinking of restrictions. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the specific way you eat and you feed your family.
Speaker: There are so many different strategies to that. And so many of them are healthy. And some of them are going to be better for specific kids or for you than others. And that's why we just encourage some trial and error. If you notice that your kid is always a crazy maniac when he gets, I don't know, red food coloring that doesn't like it. Yes, yes. Food dye tends to be really, really a big culprit in bad behavior. Then maybe stop and think about it for a minute. Keep a food diary. That's a recommendation. I always give people who are trying to figure out what's
Speaker: what's working and what's not working for their kids or themselves. But just that as a side note that there are so many different ways of eating healthy and there's probably one diet strategy that is better for your kids than others. Hopefully you can find one that works for everyone, but sometimes like Audrey has mentioned, she's had to have specific more strict strategies for some kids than others because they work so much better for them. So that's just a side note.
Speaker: Our family's strategy right now is that we try to eat mostly whole foods with an emphasis on produce right now We're trying to eliminate a lot more wheat because that tends to be what we default on when life gets crazy And then this episode we are going to break into a couple different sections We're gonna talk about what we avoid feeding our families what we encourage them to eat because let's be honest You can't force a child to eat anything, right?
Speaker: Um, and then as well as how we fill in those nutritional gaps. So when they do refuse to eat anything good, what we do, you know, to, to fix that. Um, and then I will say finally, my caveat is that I am in a bit of a survival time myself, you know, working homeschooling, adjusting to a new pregnancy. Everybody's so far from perfect, but we're just sharing what's working for us now.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. We could probably do a podcast episode once a year on what we're eating right now, but in general, yeah, in general, um, like I said, we're trying to make intentional choices about the way that we feed our families, um, for all the best health reasons. So first we're going to talk about what we avoid. So I mentioned that we avoid sugar and all artificial sweeteners and even most natural sweeteners, except honey.
Speaker: and stevia, and then occasionally monk fruit sweetener. If we have ... Oh, it's derived from the monk fruit, which I don't even know what it looks like. But it doesn't affect the blood sugar and glycemic levels. It doesn't affect your body like regular sugars do. So people in the keto diet can have some of it.
Speaker: Okay, so we don't have any grains or carbohydrates or flowers of any kind.
Speaker: If we do incorporate any flour into our diet, we like to have it soaked or sprouted first because that starts to break down the digestive process before you even cook with it. So if we make a bread, we have a recipe for a sprouted bread. We don't have any pasta and very limited carbohydrates. And usually we try to save our carbohydrate count for the day for a more carby vegetables like sweet potatoes or something like that. We're kind of addicted to sweet potato fries around here.
Speaker: And we're not real strict on, you know, okay, I've had this many carbohydrates today, but what we're, what we try to do is just like you said, by behavior and the way we feel and all that. We also avoid any processed meat, meats and GMO products, factory farmed food. So we try also to grow and eat.
Speaker: whole foods. And another thing that kind of makes our diet seem a little unattainable or maybe not as relatable is that we grow and raise, well, it depends on what season is in the year, but up to I'd say 75 % of our food supply. So that has come to happen over the years. And certainly, you know, if we weren't living where we were and had been working on it all these years to jump, you know, to go from
Speaker: raising and growing zero of your food to 75%, it's just not attainable. It's something we have worked a long time to get there. Right. Oh, that's so amazing. So cool to know where so much of your food is coming from, right? Yeah. Before I hop into what we avoid, I just wanted to make a mention about the word whole foods. People talk about this a lot. And a really simple way to get your kids to understand this, because I really want my kids to understand what
Speaker: what we're eating and why we're choosing it is to ask them if they can tell where a food comes from. So you give them an apple, they're like, yeah, it comes from a tree, right? It grows on a tree, someone picks it or it falls on the ground and you eat it. Okay, bread. Where does bread come from? That was a little trickier, right? Most kids don't know that wheat or another grain is grown from the ground, ground into flour, et cetera.
Speaker: So when kids are aware of this, they can more accurately choose something that comes in its wholest form. I just think that's a really interesting thing to get kids' minds wrapping around. I remember thinking as a kid, I don't even know where I think it was bread comes from because I had never thought through the whole process. And maybe it's something that should be limited because it takes so many steps to get it into its current form. So it's a side note.
Speaker: We also try to avoid sugar as the number one. I have serious problems with this sometimes, but I know how much it affects my family, so we try really hard to avoid it. Processed foods, so that's basically anything that comes in plastic, right? Fast food, white flour, excessive meat or meat from cheap sources. So when we do buy meat, I try to buy it either from a local source, like a local farm,
Speaker: or we have a family member that has a farm, that sort of thing. Farm -to -table beef is what's usually in our freezer from a family member, and we're constantly looking for better sources for other meats as well. All right. So we're going to have a little fun here and talk about what it would be like in a perfect world. Yeah. Food -wise. So in a perfect world, everything would be made of chocolate. No, wait.
Speaker: sugar -free chocolate that would be totally healthy for you. Make your teeth shiny white. That's right. No, in a perfect world, I guess we could go even farther and have more acreage. We just have three acres where we live and we could raise 100 % of our food. We can't raise much of our beef or bigger animals because we just don't have the space for it.
Speaker: And another challenge that we have is on our little three acre hobby farm here. We're surrounded on three sides by commercial farmers. So we raise our food as organically as we can and with as little as spray as we can, and we only use organic spray and all that, but we do get drift from the farmers that are next to us. So yeah, it's the biggest irritation in putting all this
Speaker: effort and energy into raising healthy nutrient dense food is having... Somebody's poison come on your leg. I know. I know. Because we're across the back of the property is a little bit of a slope. And even if it doesn't drift in the wind when it rains, the runoff comes across the back of the property. So Audrey is going to get off her soap box and just say, go back to in a perfect world, everything would be made out of chocolate.
Speaker: I love it. So in my perfect world, we would make everything from scratch. We do eat probably more bread than we should, but I love homemade bread and I love knowing where my grains come from. So in a perfect world, I would do all that from scratch and we would eat a whole lot less of it, you know, just as a treat.
Speaker: Um, we would either avoid most meat or source all of our own. Um, but like I mentioned earlier, that's not always super possible and we would grow all our own produce. Wouldn't that be fantastic? I'm still working on my fledgling garden. I'm talking about on Instagram all the time and I am determined to make stuff actually grow in this.
Speaker: terrible desert, but we're going to make it work, I hope. You guys need to start eating. Up here in the Midwest, they actually had some cactus fruit the other day and we bought it and we tried it and we were like, okay, this is kind of weird, but you guys could grow that. Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think I'd also learn how to make sourdough bread, like I'd have in a perfect world, the time to learn how to make sourdough bread because I've watched everybody make it and it's just gorgeous. Oh, it's so good too.
Speaker: Okay, so what we eat. Now, first I'm gonna talk about kind of the philosophy. So when we go to the grocery store, when we do have to go to the grocery store for the things we do,
Speaker: We shop the edges and not the aisles at the grocery store. So the nutrient dense food and the food with the most protein and the most nutrition for you is around the edges. It's in the freezer sections, it's in the produce section, and all the crackers and cereal and chips, where are those? In the aisles, right? And the ding dongs and all that. Okay, so we shop, that's just a general philosophy. We shop around the edges and not the aisles at the grocery store.
Speaker: When we plan our meals, we start by planning the meat, and then we plan a vegetable to go with it. And then sometimes as a treat, we'll have like sweet potato fries or something that's a little more carbohydrate dense with it. But most people in our family have now become keto adapted. And so they're used to eating a high level of these good fats. And so I'll talk a little bit more about this later, but when we get into the section about snacks,
Speaker: When you're full on fat, you don't eat as much, like you don't snack as much. So when a kid is hungrier, when you have the munchies and you just want a handful of goldfish crackers or whatever, well, your body's asking you for that because it's hungry for nutrients. And the goldfish crackers aren't going to give you the nutrients, but it's going to, you know, I don't know, push down the hunger craving for a little bit.
Speaker: All right, I'm getting sidetracked, but what I wanted to say is that when your keto adapted, your body is used to filling itself with the good things, fats and proteins and nutrients, and it doesn't crave those sugary things as much anymore. And then we do have fresh fruit occasionally and sprouted or soaked breads.
Speaker: Yeah, so we try to base most of our meals on vegetables, healthy meats, and some whole grains. But like Audrey, I've noticed that when the base is a grain, kids don't fill up quite as quickly, or rather, they don't stay full as long. And so healthy fats, healthy meats, that sort of thing will keep them full longer. And if you've got a lot of kids that want to eat nonstop, that's really important that they stay full.
Speaker: Oh, I have a quick little illustration to show this. I figured out something ... Oh, I think it was last year. Whenever we go to a sushi restaurant, I will just gorge myself on sushi and eat absolutely just as much as I can because I love it. It's a lot of rice, so a lot of white rice, a lot of grain.
Speaker: By the time we would get home, like my husband and I on date night having sushi, by the time we would get home, I would be so starving hungry and rating the refrigerator for food once we got home. And my husband would be like, we just paid $75 for all that sushi. You wait, how could you be hungry? I noticed the same thing about sushi. I'll get to where I feel full, but by the time I'm home, I'm like, did we have leftovers? I'll have another one. Okay, so here's the trick. I figured out most Japanese or Asian restaurants have a seaweed salad on their menu.
Speaker: And that is one of the most nutrient dense foods you can eat is seaweed. So order their seaweed salad. It's really, really delicious. And eat that first and then eat all the sushi you want. And that makes me full for hours. So that's my little sushi trick. Interesting. Okay. I'm going to do it. Do it.
Speaker: I also wanted to mention about vegetables. Okay, so most kids at some point or another have a problem with vegetables. They don't like green, they don't like, you know, something that looks like a tree, they don't, whatever. So I have found that the best trick for us to make sure that my kids are getting vegetables and not complaining about it all the time, leaving it on the side of their plate, is to make the meal based on the vegetable instead of as a side. I rarely, rarely make vegetable sides.
Speaker: Because if the kids are given an option, they don't eat it. So an example might be like a lasagna, but instead of the pasta, you use zucchini. Or you get creative to put the vegetables inside of things that they're already familiar with so that they don't get super picky about it. Now, my older kids are fine. They like them. They've adapted to them. I think making sure that the kids see the vegetables at some point or another is important, or else they're always going to reject them. But for the little ones, if they just absolutely refuse, that's my favorite trick.
Speaker: That is a really good trick. Some of our favorite meals have the vegetables and the rest of the meal mixed together too. All right, so we kind of have a philosophy. I have a philosophy when I'm thinking about a meal and preparing it and planning it. We try to eat the rainbow. And what I mean by that is just have a lot of different colors on your plate.
Speaker: So if you've got red tomatoes and maybe a brown hamburger and yellow cheese and green lettuce and I don't know what, purple eggplant or something on there, you've got a lot of variety, a lot of different nutrients. And then maybe for dessert, you have some frozen blueberries with whipping cream over it. But nutrient dense foods are rich in color. And so you can kind of tell if you look at your plate and there's white mashed potatoes and white
Speaker: seafood and, I mean, help me out here, right? You're just not getting as much nutrients. So even in vegetables, for example, your more darkly colored vegetables and fruits have more nutrients and like higher vitamin C and whatever nutrient you're looking at than lesser colored vegetables. That's just something to keep in mind.
Speaker: And then I did mention a little bit before about filling up on fats. So what I mean by this is like good fats, like avocados and lots of cream, sour cream, fish. We're going to talk about our kids' favorites next in a little bit, but filling up on fats means your kids are not as hungry as often.
Speaker: I will also make mention of how to save a little bit of money when you're feeding a crowd or just feeding kids in general. We try to find sources of good organic produce, but it's a little bit cheaper. Usually you can find a farmer's market in your area or like a health food store that's maybe a little bit more farm to table type of a, you know,
Speaker: delivery system. And then we often try to do meats and dairy almost as like a garnish because we don't produce our own meat and dairy. We have our own eggs now, which is super exciting. So we can eat some of those. And I know, I'm so excited. But that's just a side note is if you find yourself constantly spending a lot on X, Y, or Z, and it's very often meat or dairy,
Speaker: Maybe you can find a cheaper source for it or just have things a little bit more on the produce based, a little bit less of those things. It's just kind of an idea of mixing things up. Sometimes we get so settled in our way of eating, usually the way we were raised, right? That we forget that there are other ways of making things work.
Speaker: It's definitely a lot easier to feed kids than we make it seem sometimes. Yeah. I had a little bit of thoughts on saving money, feeding kids too. Although I do have to say that our food bill, if you incorporate in what we feed our animals and what we spend on things for the garden, is our biggest expense. It just is. And we accept that because there's 11 of us that we're feeding, right? 10 of us.
Speaker: So, but because we're eating more nutrient dense food and we're filling up on proteins and fats and lots of vegetables, the kids are less hungry. So that does mean we're spending less on grocery bills. We definitely don't spend money on snacks and carbohydrates. And if you look at prices in the grocery store, compare how much lettuce you can buy for the price of a box of cereal, right?
Speaker: Yeah. So then growing and raising our own food does save money in the long run. Although my husband one time tried to calculate what the cost of us raising chickens for eggs was. My husband did the same thing the other day. And after we got our first 10 eggs, he's like, our eggs are now down to $150 an egg.
Speaker: You guys better enjoy these. With each egg, they're going to get cheaper and cheaper. Oh, yeah. I know that we can go down to, say, Walmart and buy a dozen eggs for $0 .99 or whatever, but I have also seen how those eggs are produced. Can't eat that kind of egg anymore.
Speaker: Oh, yes. And a side note about that, if you've ever cracked a cheap egg and a organic homegrown egg next to each other, because we've done a lot of that lately, as we're still filling in the gaps with the store -bought ones, there is a noticeable difference. The membrane inside the egg is considerably thicker with the organic ones. The yolk is brighter and more orange. There is no comparison, and they taste so much better. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, so we're going to move on to sharing some of our specific favorite meals because we know that, you know, talking in ideas is great and all, but people want to know exactly what we're feeding our kids, right? So a few of our favorite main dishes are, one of them is burrito bowls. So my kids love just getting a bowl and piling it full of delicious things that they might put on a burrito. So this can include any of the following.
Speaker: Uh, meat, usually we do some sort of slow cooked meat. Um, we love beef. I just shared, I think on Instagram, a, a barbacoa beef recipe that we've been eating like nonstop. It's delicious. Um, with some brown rice, lots of veggies, you can get them to just pick and choose whatever they want. Put all that out. Um,
Speaker: And then, you know, sour cream and cheese and all the fun stuff. Another fun meal that we use very often is any type of fun themed salad. So when I say salad, my kids are like, uh, but when I say Greek salad, they know that they're going to get feta cheese and olives and all these fun things. Italian salad or taco salad or Caesar salad. So we always have, I always have to give some sort of a theme or a name to it so that they know what they're getting.
Speaker: And then they get excited about that theme. And then you can, the nice thing about these things is you can spread all the different ingredients out and they just pick and choose what they want. Usually I have some sort of requirement, like you have to have a protein and you have to have a vegetable, but other than that, you can add whatever you want.
Speaker: We are big fans of all breakfast foods, even for meals, so all kinds of egg dishes, smoothies. There's lots of healthy muffin recipes that we use, often ones that don't have any wheat in them, like oat -based, etc. Oatmeal my kids will eat all day long. And then, of course, when the weather gets cold, we love all kinds of soups and stews.
Speaker: Yeah. So there you go. Those are our favorite main dishes. You know what's weird is we're talking like our diets are that different, but those are exactly some of our favorite main dishes too. Really? Yeah. Yeah. No, we love that. We don't call it burrito bowls. We just call it Mexican. And I'm like, for supper we're having a Mexican and everybody loves to pick and choose. And I usually make myself like a big taco salad and yeah.
Speaker: Salads are some of my favorite main dishes, too. I have a daily salad for lunch still. I think I'm going to your strong here with a lunch salad, four to five times a week. Stir -fry. Ooh, my kids love it. And shrimp is a special treat that they really love, seafood, any kind of seafood. And then, I tell you what, my husband
Speaker: for, I don't know, we combined like his birthday and my birthday and our anniversary and all these different celebration dates together. And we bought a smoker and it's a great big humongous humongous thing. And we are eating and loving all the smoked meats. Here's another little cheap tip for you. Beef brisket is one of the cheapest meats you can buy. Sometimes you can even get it cheaper than a hamburger.
Speaker: And you know, it's tough if you try to cook it in your oven and beef brisket, but you stick that baby in the smoker overnight or for 12 hours during the day, oh my goodness, there's no better eating in the whole wide world. That sounds delicious. My neighbor has a smoker. And so whenever the weather is nice, we come outside and it always smells like smoked pork in our neighborhood. I'm like, oh, come on. I know. Our neighbors are the same thing. They're like, oh yeah, we smelled you doing ribs the other day. Like, oh, you want to come over for supper?
Speaker: But you know what's cool with this smoker I even bake bread in it like because it's really more accurate than my oven because you can set the Temperature just like a just like an oven and my oven's kind of on the fritz and sometimes it's on temperature and sometimes it's not But yeah, even big bread in there and everything. It's awesome
Speaker: Interesting. I was just thinking we should add a link. We're going to add some links to our favorite cooking resources in the show notes, because I was just thinking my Instant Pot is important, my slow cooker. Yeah, definitely. So maybe we'll have to do a whole other episode about how to cook things the best way too. It'll be fun.
Speaker: Okay, so I'm gonna share some of our favorite snacks, kid -friendly snacks. So, side note about snacks, and this goes along with saving money as well. I really feel like, you know, people are always complaining about how expensive it is to eat healthy, but I will tell you that you can really eat very cheaply, you know, healthy food very cheaply, but you can't also buy a bunch of packaged stuff, right? It's like you have to choose one or the other, right? So when we're eating healthy, it would totally stay within budget, but if my kids talk me into buying processed junk,
Speaker: then it totally jacks up the food bill, right? And I'm sure, alternatively, if we were only buying the package stuff, it would probably be okay too, but it's kind of like when you fence straddle, it's gonna cost you. But if you can just go, like you said, those perimeter aisles and go with the whole foods that you're making from scratch, it's considerably cheaper than buying those quote unquote snack foods.
Speaker: So my kids have pretty unlimited access to fruits and vegetables. We just, we try to buy what's in season. Um, and, uh, I usually try to get them to eat it with an addition of some sort of nut butter or hummus because you know, an apple doesn't really fill them or keep them full. But if they eat it with almond butter or something that totally does, um, including dried fruit, my kids love dried fruit, protein balls, we make all the time. So those are, I mean, there's a million different names for them, but basically, um,
Speaker: you know, like a nut butter, maybe some sort of sweetener, maybe some nuts in it, maybe some grains, et cetera. And that's just something that will keep them full for a long time. Fat bombs, Audrey and I have talked about a lot. Those are delicious. Google them if you don't know what they are. They're super good.
Speaker: Trail mix and then leftovers. Leftovers are great snacks too. I think that we do ourselves a disservice when we only call processed food snacks because then if you get hungry between meals, you think you have to go eat a cookie or a chip or something like that. But any food in your refrigerator can be a snack. In fact, it's better to make it be, you know, more whole foods so you're not craving more of the sweet and salty junk that's out there.
Speaker: Those are some of our favorite snacks too. Um, like I said, we do have fewer snacks since we have switched to a higher fat diet. We do have, um, between every meal, my kids used to ask for a snack, but they don't, they don't anymore. Oftentimes we'll go all day and nobody will have asked for a snack. But when they do want to snack, they love avocados, Kipper snacks. Do your kids like Kipper snacks? No, I don't think we've ever had them. It's smoked, smoked herring in a can like tuna. Oh, they love it. Yeah.
Speaker: Dried seaweed is one they really love. They pretend like, you know, it tastes just like sushi and they love that, so it's right. And it's super cheap just to buy the dried roasted seaweed.
Speaker: They love it. Nuts, some fruit, fat bombs, cheese. They love mozzarella. We make a lot of mozzarella from our cow milk. Nuts, one of their favorite snacks is veggie straws, and there's a little bit of veggies in them. So sometimes for a special treat, I'll let them have veggie straws. And then if we take the apples from our trees and dry a lot of them in the dehydrator, and they love those for a snack in the winter too.
Speaker: That's one thing I've been wanting to buy for a long time as a dehydrator. I'm going to pick your brain on that. Okay.
Speaker: Okay, and then finally, we just want to mention a little bit about how we fill in those nutritional gaps because we can talk all day long about the ideal diet for your family and your kids, and then you get a three -year -old that will eat nothing but veggie straws for three weeks, right? And they just refuse everything else. So we've mentioned, I know in multiple episodes, green smoothies are probably my favorite way to fill in gaps because they look at them like a milkshake, they think it's a treat, because it's sweet, naturally sweetened with fruit, and then
Speaker: You can put so much stuff in there. In addition to vegetables and a little bit of fruit for the sweetness, I'll add coconut water sometimes, almond milk, hemp seeds, flax seed, nuts,
Speaker: a ton of vegetables. I mean, just any number of things can be thrown in there to supplement your kids' immune system and nutritional gaps without them even knowing it's fantastic. I also like to sprinkle some probiotic on top of that because it's really easy to get in their system without them complaining about taking a pill or whatever.
Speaker: Um, also putting veggies in casseroles or other meals that they can't tell, like I said, in soups. Um, and then a really good multivitamin. You can go listen to episode 87 where we're talking about, um, lots of, uh, vitamins and ways of, of staying healthy. But then the last note is just eating what's in season. I really feel like the earth produces things that we need for it at specific times of year. And as you eat things more in season, we're just used to going to the grocery store and buying whatever we want, but there's really a lot of benefit to that eating in season.
Speaker: Oh yeah, those are always that we do fill in the gaps too. We do nutrient -dense drinks for sure. And green smoothies are great. We also do a lot of probiotic drinks. So like beet, kavass, and kombucha, and the hot drinks that I shared on Instagram with raw, start with raw cow's milk, and kefir. And then for a special treat sometimes, I don't know, this isn't really filling in the gaps. This is back to snacks. My boys like zevia, which is kind of like a sparkling water that's sweetened with stevia.
Speaker: Um, it does have some minerals in it, but anyway, we also do vitamins and supplements. Definitely. Um, we feel there's been a lot of research that shows a lot of the minerals, even if you're eating a lot of vegetables, a lot of the minerals from planet earth have washed out to the sea just through the process of.
Speaker: the aging of the earth and over the couple thousand years that we've been farming in North America. And so we do feel like vitamins and supplements are necessary. And then one thing we do because of this thought that a lot of the minerals have washed out of the soil
Speaker: is we do add sea mineral back onto our garden as part of our gardening process and the fertilization and remineralization of our soil. We spread it on our pasture so that our animals, which are providing us dairy, are getting it and we get it through their milk too. So all those things are the ways that we try to fill in the gap.
Speaker: Ooh, good tips. Okay. So lastly, we just wanted to each mention what we do when life gets crazy. Because again, we're talking perfect scenario, right? Like this is what we do when lives are put together and we've got our menu plan and et cetera.
Speaker: We have chosen ahead of time some favorite healthy go -to meals that take just a few minutes to make and I can feel good about. Okay and so I have these printed out and put a written down and put in our favorite recipe binder and anytime it's like five minutes to dinner and I haven't prepped anything or it's been a crazy day or whatever and I don't want to end up with pizza or whatever junk we would just go bring home
Speaker: We pull out these recipes. Just one simple example is like roasted veggies and sausage. We'll just chop up a bunch of that, put it in the oven. It takes 10 minutes to make, right? We also have a list of a couple of restaurants not far away that aren't terrible options, right? Because let's be honest, we're not going to always eat at home. It would probably be ideal, but sometimes you just really need a treat or you just have zero energy to make anything.
Speaker: Anyway, I think it's really important to have those go -tos in the back of your mind so that you're not just defaulting to whatever garbage is close by. Yeah, those are good options. What I was thinking more about was because some of my kids are on such a strict keto diet, we can't really default to ordering a pizza or eating out or some of the junk that you might normally do because they just can't eat it, so they would starve.
Speaker: So we do have some easier meals and that we go to like that also like that what we call You know that Mexican buffet style of the burrito bowls definitely one of our easy fast meals But one thing I like to do is try to maximize my cooking time So if I'm cooking, you know, three four pounds of ground beef to make one meal I
Speaker: I'll double it and then freeze half of it so that on those times when it is really hard or you've got something going on or it's a busy week or whatever, you've got something already partially made. I did talk about in one of our earlier episodes how I do dedicate one day to be my special cooking day of the week and I do a bunch of extra stuff that day.
Speaker: So when life gets crazy, yeah. I was thinking more about how we eat when we travel. And you know what? Maybe we should do a whole podcast episode on this, because I know you guys just got back from travel. And it seems like that's when everything just breaks down is when you travel.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure. But just a quick note here, what we do when we travel for meals is we just, instead of stopping at a drive -through restaurant, we just stop at a grocery store and pick up, you know, the meat, maybe some lunch meat and some string cheese and wrap it up around, wrap the meat around the cheese and pass it out. And then everybody has some carrots or something because again, these boys on this special strict diet, they just can't do the drive -through.
Speaker: Yeah, and I'm glad that you mentioned the just doubling up on meals. That's kind of hard for big families because I find myself making so much as it is that it's like, oh, this is ridiculous to me to double this. But it's so helpful to have one of those crazy nights and open your freezer and go, oh my gosh, I forgot there was an entire thing of meat in here or casserole or whatever.
Speaker: Um, and yes, we have, we've also collected a list of our favorite kind of, they tend to be like smaller grocery stores that have a lot of the pre -made options or just, um, healthier, uh, food options that are a little bit closer to being done. You know, like maybe, maybe cooked meat you can just grab and throw with something else. So yeah, just a little bit of premeditation can go a long ways and keeping your family healthy without resorting to junk
Speaker: Yeah, you guys, we ran a little long on this episode. I think maybe Bonnie and I should start a whole new podcast about cooking and food because it's like half of our job and the other half is like laundry, right? Laundry podcast and a food podcast. Sounds great. Would you guys listen to that? Probably not the laundry one. I don't think anyone cares. Maybe how to get out of doing laundry podcast. Yeah. Amen. Let's do it.
Speaker: All right, so we are going to add a couple of fun resources in the show notes. Let us know if you guys have any other questions or you want us to go in depth on anything else, but we just want to end with encouragement that if you want to improve your family's diet, you totally can, but also to be gentle and kind with yourself, especially if you're in a survival mode or in a really tough time of life, because it's hard to learn to feed kids healthily, but a little bit of forethought and premeditation goes a long way.
Speaker: Definitely. We shared so many ideas and resources that we're doing. So if you want to start somewhere, just grab one and try it with your kids. And it's definitely a good place to start. Thanks so much for tuning in. Did you know you can help the podcast in several ways? First up, we're on Patreon and there are three different levels to support us there.
Speaker: Just head to patreon .com slash outnumbered. Next step, if you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a written review on iTunes. It helps other parents find the podcast and receive the help you're enjoying. And finally, you can follow us on Instagram at outnumbered the podcast. We're always having fun over there too. As usual, if you have any questions or ideas for future episodes, you can reach us at outnumbered the podcast at gmail .com. Thanks for all your support. We'll talk to you next week.
