Feeding the masses

Of all the questions that I get regarding our large family, the ones that I get asked the most are about laundry and food.

I honestly don't know what our grocery bill isI don't really want to know, I don't have a budget, I just pay as I go. I do know that we spend over $50 a week on fresh fruit and $30 a week on milk. Other items that I am constantly buying are cheese, veggies, tortillas, yogurt, butter, oatmeal, bagged cereal, and pretzels. For snack each day they can choose fruit or yogurt so we go through a lot of those foods.

I make most of our meals from scratch for a couple of reasons. First, the cost. Prepackaged cost is more expensive and we go through a lot of food. Second, the nutrition. There is a lot of preservatives in prepackaged foods. I don't buy white bread, processed meats, packaged cookies or chips. We recently changed over to whole wheat pasta but I still find that I need to work on the white flour and sugar consumption. I've never claimed to be perfect like that isn't obvious but I'm always working on improving.

When I cook, I look for recipes that freeze well and make multiple batches. One for dinner and three for the freezer. It is such a relief to take out a container of homemade soup in the morning and throw it in the crock pot for that evening. Before I had my last baby, I cooked like a mad woman crazy and had 90 main dishes in the freezer before giving birth. I was very depressed when we used the last one.

We usually stick with chicken and hamburger (lowest fat that we can afford), whole wheat pasta or bean dishes. Every now and again I will make a dish that is a dud shut up Char about the wagon wheel pasta dish. ahem... so I just toss that recipe and move on.

Nutrition is such a funny thing. I hear lots of different things that we are supposed to be doing and try to incorporate it into our meals. I just wish there was an instruction manual on how to best feed my family. I just feel like I am blundering along, but getting better as I go on. I just want my kids to be healthy and not struggle with their weight. I have to try and figure it out as I go along and there is a lot of guilt involved when I discover that something I've been doing is not healthy for my family.

Because this is my life, I forget that the amount of food that my family consumes is not the norm. My parents have seen me cook and are astounded at the quantity of products that we use.

Here is an example-


Breakfast on the weekend:

30 eggs


12 homemade yummy cinnamon rolls zip it, I know that they are not nutritious


3/4 watermelon


1 gallon orange juice


1/2 ham

And that was just one meal. I may sit down and have a good cry when all my boys are teenagers!