The End: 40 Days of Homemade Food

I know I totally slacked on this post, but I'm sure you didn't miss it...until now!

I really don't have anything Earth-changing, spectacular or miraculous to say about our Lenten challenge to eat only at home. While we did basically complete this challenge, we did end up ordering pizza more than I would have liked to and having fast-food (mostly chik-fil-a, which is thought to be the best fast food restaurant) also much more than I would like to. Of course, I journeyed to NY to visit my mother, so I am quite unsure of what Steve did during that time. :)

I will say that this was not as difficult as I thought it might be, which may be partially due to the fact that I cook at home almost every day anyway, but when you know you cannot eat out, you tend to throw things together to eat fairly quick. Even when I was so tired I didn't want to move, I still had to make dinner and I did. I often think about women who were housewives in the '50's or earlier who literally had no choice but to make three meals a day, sometimes with multiple courses, to please their husbands. I wonder how they managed to pull that off while still keeping the house clean and taking care of children and then wash most of their dishes by hand and do a lot of laundry by hand. Ugh, it makes me want to take a nap just thinking about it.

Some how, we all get through each day and still have the will to do it all over again tomorrow. I think making all meals at home really isn't out of anyone's league and is probably a lot more feasible than you think. It doesn't always have to be fancy and doesn't have to make sense. It's food. We need it to survive. We're going to chew it up and digest it anyway so relax a little. There's plenty of room for fancy, put together dinners, but if you do that a couple of times a week, feel free to throw random things together and call it a meal on the other days without any guilt. The point is, you're eating at home, you're eating together as a family and you're eating whole, real foods rather than buying something someone else made that came from who-knows-where.

On that note, here is a recipe for something I made the other day that I found completely tasty.

2 cups cooked brown rice
1 can kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 onion, sliced
2-3 cloves garlic, sliced
1 green onion, sliced
1 can tomato sauce
2 handfuls of mushrooms, chopped
1 handful of spinach (or however much fits in the pan), chopped a bit
Salt
Pepper
Oregano
Basil
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder

1. I sauteed the onion and garlic in coconut oil, added the mushrooms and the green onion (this is because I forgot I had both of those in my fridge and added them last minute).
2. Add beans and tomato sauce, stir and bring to boil. Throw in spinach, reduce heat to low and allow spinach to wilt.
3. What's that? I forgot to season? Yeah, you bet I did! I took the girls outside and when I came back (this had been sitting on low for about 20-30 minutes), I added all the seasonings above. Serve over brown rice.