AUTHOR: Linn Woodard TITLE: Mindful Meals DATE: 6/05/2008 07:15:00 PM ----- BODY:

I've been thinking so much lately about food. Okay, so we all think about food. But I've been so mindful of what's in our food (the second ingredient in our poppyseed dressing is high fructose corn syrup!) Even though I always had to read ingredient lists for Greg's chicken allergy and Tyler's nut allergy, I was mostly scanning for chicken and nut products, not noticing the corn syrup, white flour, weird "ose" ending words, and all that. Let me just say that now I am noticing. I actually had to throw our poppyseed dressing away because I just couldn't shake the image of Tyler downing lettuce covered in (basically) corn syrup. Yuck!

I'm amazed that I've never really thought before about what goes into our mouths, have you? Of course you have, I'm a little late on the bandwagon. But better late than never, right?

We're planning on trying out our local CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture: a weekly local organic produce basket from local farms) and when I get a chance I'm going to go through our pantry (which needs a good cleaning anyway) and look into what's in our food. Not sure yet if I'll be doing any donating of food for a clean sweep of the pantry. It'll depend on my mood, I guess.

All this coming from a girl who had a TV dinner as her last meal. (It was just sitting there in our freezer waiting for me to have a night alone! I promise!) But I'm headed in the right direction, and that counts for something, doesn't it?

--------