Well, I guess it is safe to say that I have been a terrible blogger for about the last 6 months. Which is a shame because I really enjoy blogging. I like the outlet it provides me for writing about my daily life. No matter how boring and mundane it may seem.

But, even with the best of intentions, my daily responsibilities seems to make it impossible for me to find a few quiet moments to write. So, I have decided to stop feeling guilty or feeling like I have to write something daily. I will write when the mood strikes and the time is available. After all, the whole reason I do this is to de stress, not to add stress.

My Weekend in Pictures

So, I am really tired tonight. I have had an ongoing bout of insomnia for the last few nights. No doubt caused by the book I was reading for book club, "Sophie's Choice". An excellent read, but really depressing and graphic. It was hard not to lay in bed after reading and not have images of unspeakable atrocities in my brain. Tonight I am just going to post a few pictures of the kids at their weekend sporting events. My next book is a Chelsea Handler book, deserved in my opinion.

The Difficulty of Eating All Local Food and Other Rants

First of all, I have not written in a few days because I was not feeling good. I had a little bit of a virus that had me pretty run down Wednesday and Thursday. Friday was my 16th wedding anniversary and yesterday was all soccer, all day! So now, I find a few minutes to blog on a quiet Sunday morning before my family wakes up and we can have another soccer/volleyball day.

My husband and I went to the grocery store on Friday, fulling intending to stay on course with our local challenge. We went to our co-op to shop. What we found was that it is almost impossible to stay completely local while having a balanced and healthy diet. We just couldn't find everything that we needed available locally. So, we made a decision, if a product we need is local, we buy it. But, if we need something that does not have a local choice, we have no choice. I guess trade started centuries ago for a reason. A great example of why this was an issue, fruit. We found that the only local choice we had was apples. Don't get me wrong, they are great, but can I really give my 3 children several servings of apples everyday?

Yesterday 2 of my kids had soccer games, they were scheduled in such a way that our whole day was consumed by soccer. Today we have 1 soccer game to attend and 2 volleyball games. Again, scheduled so that the games will take up our whole day. I love watching the kids play their games, but sometimes it can be a bit much.

I am going to go a bit off course this morning. I almost never talk about politics or religion on my blog. I have strong opinions about both, but keep them to myself or rant with friends who agree with me. But, I have to say that I am really troubled by the direction this country is going in regards to absolute intolerance of Islam. Yesterday was a day of remembrance, sadness and what should have been a day of solidarity as Americans, regardless of political affiliation and religion. Instead, the news has been saturated with talk of Quran burnings and demonstrations in New York about a Islam center that is not even being built on the WTC site. What happen to living in a country that was built because people were escaping religious persecution? Are we really becoming what our ancestors were escaping? I really hope that is not the case.

Now, please no mean comments or invitations for debate about what I wrote. This is my blog, my thoughts and opinions and my right to say what I feel about a topic that I think is becoming dangerous.

Happy Sunday and to those who will be relaxing at home and not at games, have a beer for me:)

September 7th, 2010

I forgot to take pictures of tonight's "local" dinner. So you will have to imagine what it looked like.

Vegetable Soup - all the vegetables came from OUR garden! I added a can of kidney beans, some elbow macaroni and Parmesan cheese. Obviously, the pasta and beans were purchased before we started our challenge.

Challah Bread - homemade, by my husband. Refer to last night's picture

Fruit Crisp - fruit purchased before the challenge started, but I believe the fruit came from local orchards. The butter was local. The oatmeal, sugar and flour were not local, but purchased before challenge began.

As of tonight, we are out of sugar (except for about 1/4 cup). I ran out of brown sugar last week, and know that the flour will run out before the end of the month. I am also out of canola oil. I am going to need to find substitutions for these ingredients that I can find locally. PLEASE, if anyone has recommendations, I need them ASAP!!

The refrigerator is looking kind of empty, I plan on going to our local Co-op before the end of the week. Coincidentally, our co-op is sponsoring this challenge in the month of September, I had no idea that they were going to be starting this the same day we decided to start. The upside to this is that they will have the food labeled as local! Score!

Tonight's Meal and Updates

My husband made dinner tonight. I had to work, so he took responsibility for that chore. Our dinner was the following:

Vegetarian Chili over Rice

Chicken Breast

Water or Milk

The chili was frozen from a previous meal and the chicken was local. The rice came from our stockpile in the pantry.

Eric also made 2 loaves of Challah bread while I was at work. Challah makes the BEST french toast!!

Tomorrow will be spent at home, finally! I worked this weekend, which is fine. I like my job and the extra money is always nice. Especially, when the school year begins and the expenses are so high. My plans for tomorrow include making zucchini bread, vegetable soup out of leftover vegetables in the refrigerator and peach/plum crisp.

Now, time to finish watching the The Real Housewives of New Jersey Reunion while drinking my nightly cup of tea. Then, time for bed to read my latest book, "Sophie's Choice".

Dinner 9/5/10

Pictures and links to the recipes from tonight's dinner. Let me start by saying that the carrot soup was fantastic!! The website where I found the recipe is below. I want to also mention that I would not have found that recipe if not for the blog that I follow Rockin Granola, you can find that blog in the list of blogs I follow.

Zucchini Bread - http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/zucchini-bread-recipe/index.html

Carrot Tomato Soup - http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2010/08/our-carrot-tomato-soup.html

We used zucchini, tomatoes, garlic, carrots and herbs from our own garden for both the bread and the soup. The soup was WONDERFUL beyond belief!! I skipped the celery because we didn't have any, so I just added some extra carrots.

Updates

September 1st my family started the local food challenge. My doing this challenge, we commit to eating foods that are produced within a 300 mile radius. We all agree that we should probably lower that a bit, probably 100 miles, but at least we are starting somewhere. So far we have been successful, it is only the 5th though. Vegetables have come from our garden, meats from a local farmers market (or frozen from our freezer from a previous grocery run). Our dairy is always local, in fact that has never been an issue for us. Everything else, I read the label to verify where produced. We did all try to come up with one thing that we can't give up. Here is what we have come up with.

Eric- has not told me, but he bought Vodka on Friday, so I guess that is

it.

Me- Coffee

Alec- peanut butter

Hannah- Annie's Mac and Cheese

Maeghan- yogurt that we get at Trader Joes

Tonight's dinner is going to be Cream of Tomato Soup and Zucchini bread, mostly from our garden.

The rest of week proved to bring excitement into the house. The kids started school. I now have 2 kids in middle school. They just keep getting older, the sad thing is that the older they get, the older I get. With the start of school, we see the start of band (more instruments to practice), sports and after school activities. I will also be starting a class on Wednesday and I increased my hours at work. So much to do, so little time! Here are some pictures of the first day of school.