In the last few years, especially in the blogging world, whole foods and natural living have been all the rage. Fermenting as many foods as possible, grinding your own grain to make your own breads, sprouting grains…the list goes on. I’ve tried many of these things. With so many bloggers talking about this “better way of living,” it’s hard to not want to jump on the bandwagon. It makes you feel like you’re not doing your best if you’re not living to their standards. Shoot, I even got rid of our microwave, because *gasp* it can cause cancer and ruins the taste and texture your foods. I also bought a Bosch mixer, because heck, if you’re gonna grind your own grains and make all of your own bread products, you need that Bosch mixer, right? It’s totally the bee’s knees. Everyone uses them! I made almost everything we ate from scratch. Not eggs, though, because I can’t make those.
Man, I felt like I spent all day long in the kitchen. I mean all.day.long. As a homeschooling mama to 4 kids, my time is valuable to me. I’m not saying that I’m always wise in how I choose to use my time, but I do the best I can. I don’t have time to spend 8692856298630 hours a day in the kitchen. As soon as I made a loaf of bread, it was scarfed down. How can you blame anyone? Fresh bread is awesome, y’all. But, after a while, my allergies went haywire. After allergy testing, I was given a massive list of foods and environmental things that I was allergic to. One of those things was wheat. I don’t have Celiac disease. This is totally different.
I felt like a failure. My allergist told me “no more grinding wheat.” Well, okay then. I decided to just go ahead and sell my Nutrimill grain mill, and stopped making our bread. I held onto my Bosch mixer for a couple more years. Who doesn’t need a huge countertop mixer, anyway? I mean, with 4 kids, I’m always making huge batches of everything, right? No, I never really learned to love my Bosch mixer. There’s not anything wrong with it, it just didn’t work for me. Frankly, I was tired of trying to do it all.
I got over it after a while. I was still pretty adamant about not having a microwave in the house, though. Only heathens use those, am I right? Well, a few months ago I was offered a microwave. I hesitated for a few days, because I guess I wanted to hang onto that last bit of totally healthy eating and being one of “the cool kids,” or moms, as it were (which I have never been, BTW).
Finally I realized…
And that’s okay! You’re not perfect, I especially am not perfect. Not using a microwave to cook foods doesn’t make anyone perfect, and using a microwave doesn’t make you an awful person. I mean, I used to kind of make a big deal about not using the microwave. I felt superior because I was spending so much time on making food. Whoopdeedo! We aren’t living in the pioneer days. We have technology to make life easier for us. If you make almost everything from scratch, that’s great! Most days, though, I don’t feel like spending a bunch of time at the stove making lunch. Sometimes I want to just throw something in the microwave to heat it up so we can eat faster. I do still make most of our suppers from scratch, though. Except for macaroni…I use Velvet cheese for that, because let’s be real, Velveeta cheese is the best for macaroni!
Please don’t misunderstand this post. It’s not meant to attack those who are living a more healthy lifestyle and enjoy fermenting foods and all of that. I love eating fermented foods and fresh bread and all of that, I just don’t like the fuss of making it all myself right now. And sometimes, I’m just too tired or lazy to care. Of course I care about my family’s health and wellbeing, but I care about my sanity, too, and trying to do it all drove me nuts. This is about my journey realizing that I don’t have to do it all, and it’s totally okay if you want to use a microwave! I’m all about making things easier, yo.
I have started making my own body products in my ongoing journey into essential oils, so that’s totally rad, right?
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