There is a strategy in my book,
Family Menu Planning: A practical guide to mealtime management, that has helped our family eat healthier in little manageable steps. Chapter Five is full of tips for saving money and eating better. Here’s an excerpt from the book:
“Good, Better, Best Principle: Take a look at what you are currently eating. Maybe look at your go-to breakfast for busy mornings. Figure out how to make it a little more nutritious, a little better. Over time make those small changes. You don't have to throw out the entire contents of your pantry and fridge and start over. Little by little make choices that move you from good to better and then to best….”
Recently I’ve been applying this principle to our salad dressings. Six months ago our refrigerator door was full of your run-of-the-mill soybean oil and MSG laden salad dressings. I knew the MSG had to go but the soybean oil was really starting to bother me, too. After watching
these documentaries about how the soybeans are grown with genetically modified seed and heavily sprayed with pesticides, I didn’t want us ingesting so much of that oil. (Really, canola isn't any better. That’s another subject altogether, isn’t it?) Here are the steps we took over the course of a few months to move our salad dressing consumption from good, to better, to best:
1. We used up all the dressing in the fridge.
2. As we ran out of a particular type of dressing, I looked for an alternative in the natural foods section. I particularly looked for organic varieties or dressings made with olive oil.
3. We narrowed it down to two types of store bought dressing that work best for our family. These are often on sale at my grocery store so I keep an eye out!
4. While we still have the store bought dressings in the fridge as a back up, I’ve been experimenting with making my own salad dressing. The vinaigrette recipes have been ok, although not a favorite with my kids. However, I am able to use up the leftover vinaigrette with this recipe for
Summer Veggie Casserole. The
homemade ranch recipe from Kitchen Stewardship has been a big hit. We’ll never go back to store bought ranch dressing both because it has MSG and because the homemade tastes so good!
So there you have it…the Good, Better, Best Principal put into practice! I look forward to sharing more of our adventures and experiments!
What items in your pantry have you improved or need to be improved?
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