HI! Welcome to Simple Green Moms! I’m Meg and I am a stay at home mom of two pretty incredible and insanely busy kids. This blog is dedicated to talking about and sharing healthy recipes that are simple, budget friendly, and most importantly, made with wholesome ingredients that will keep you and your family happy and healthy.
I’ve always been super passionate about cooking and trying new foods. But until our kids were born, I never gave much thought about how healthy the food I made was. Sure it tasted amazing, and it probably wasn’t awful for us. But I rarely gave any thought to where my meat came from, or if the milk we were drinking was full of antibiotics. I thought “organic” was just expensive food that came from quaint little health food stores. Why bother paying twice the price for an apple? I bought chicken in bulk, hamburger on sale, and rarely read the ingredients listed on the back of packages.
Enter my daughter. Once she was ready to eat table food, everything changed for us. Suddenly food was downright scary. By this time I had watched a few documentaries on Netflix and started reading some wellness blogs. “Organic” started to make more sense, as did eliminating processed foods. We started looking at labels. I was horrified to find that the seemingly innocent sliced peaches my daughter loved contained high fructose corn syrup. There was aspartame in her yogurt. MSG was in everything. And this was all being sold to me as “health food”.
We took the plunge and haven’t looked back since. There was a period of about 6 months where we systematically cleaned out the kitchen and replaced the bad for the good. Processed food didn’t make its way back into our cupboards unless I could recognize and pronounce every ingredient. Milk was organic. Meat was grass fed (and later on locally sourced). I learned to recite the “dirty dozen” in the produce isle. I started meal planning and working within the confines of a monthly grocery budget to off-set my higher priced organic items. Cooking became a challenge, and I loved it. Trying to cram in as much nutrition into my meals became somewhat of a game I played with myself, and one I continue to play today. My very picky daughter declared a few months ago that the roasted kale I made was “the best thing ever…just as good as pizza!” I think that may have been one of the happiest moments of parenthood…right up there with first steps and first words!! Seriously, though, watching your child actually enjoy healthy food and have a conversation with you about it is possibly one of the most rewarding things a mother can experience. The lessons we give our children about health and nutrition will stay with them for life, and all we can hope is that they remember the meals we made them as children.
Now I am not claiming to be any sort of expert on nutrition, and I assure you I am learning new things every day. That’s why I love cooking…there is always something new to be tasted, experienced and incorporated into your food. And believe me, I have tried everything from Paleo to Veganism. Through all my fads, the one thing that has remained a constant is real food, simple ingredients, and thoughtfulness in the way I prepare them. I think cooking for a family presents many challenges, picky eaters, allergies, long commutes, soccer practice…they all add up and every family has its own combination. I think you’ll find that there is a solution to all the meal time dilemmas we face as busy moms, and I hope I can highlight a few for you on this blog. Enjoy the recipes, and let me know what you think!
Here’s to good eating!
-Meg
