Winner! And Some Real Food...

The winner of the Hazelaid gift certificate is comment number 19...

Brenna @consciousearthveg.blogpot.com  

"I almost forgot to enter! Jeepers! Well these necklaces intrigue me to no end! I am curious about the hazelwood as I have eczema, but my favourite one is the Milk and Honey Amber necklace. I also have neck pain, so I would be interested to see if that would help! Thanks for the opportunity!"

Congratulations Brenna! I'll be contacting you soon with all the details!

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Whilst doing a bit of blog hopping, I came across a fantastic blog called 100 Days of Real Food in which a family of four spent 100 days eating real, unprocessed food. Daunting, but doable. AND, they did it on a budget. They allowed themselved $125 a week for groceries, which is the average dollar amount that a family of four would receive if they were on government support (food stamps.) Since my family is trying to cut out the crap and live on a budget as well, this blog is veratible treasure trove of tips and recipes for busy families (the whole wheat banana pancakes were fantatic by the way!)

High on inspiration, hubby and I went ' a harvesting in an effort to make some of our own unprocessed goodness. Well....let me rephrase that.....I had a massive headache so my hubby spent 45 minutes in the 110 degree heat picking tomatoes!Though we lost several pounds of tomatoes to blossom end rot, there were still enough good ones to make one pot of sauce. Everything that went in to the sauce, with the exception of the herbs, was grown in our backyard. How's that for real food!

Though not quite enough to break out the pressure canner, we did freeze three quarts of sauce and left two in the fridge for dinner in the coming week. I have three goregous eggplants out back, waiting to be picked and made into eggplant parmesan...a whole foods version of course. Cooking and eating real food is certainly a challenge but the health and environmental benefits are so worth it. Have you converted any of your recipes to a whole foods version? Any favorite tips or tricks?