Organic Food

We have been trying to make some healthier choices around our house.  One fun resource for us has been a local farmer's market in Birmingham called Pepper Place. There are lots of local vendors who sell fresh veggies, fruit, plants, homemade bread...

Here are some of our purchases from earlier this year.  Most of the time the portions are pretty big so we try to find a friend to meet up and split our shopping trip with.

  I have been looking into better options for the meat we ingest.  I was tickled when at Pepper Place we came across this guy.  Grass fed beef with no hormones or antibiotics in their meat.  We found a couple other families who were willing to go in with us on a cow.  Paid half our money up front, then a few months later, got an email saying our meat was ready.  

We went to Pepper Place and picked up this load of beef...

Thank goodness we have a deep freeze...that's a lot of ground beef

And then we got some different cuts of meat including:

 filet mignon, t-bone steaks, cubed steak, roast

That's just some pretty looking meat right there...

And then "Aunt Celeste" got in touch with me about some chicken she came across that was also hormone/antibiotic free.  You could order it in 40 pound increments so we split our order between three families.  

Because it came in one big box, we made a night of it.  Celeste picked up the chicken, I got the freezer bags, and we got to cutting and separating.

They were humongo, so we cut the fat off and were able to put 3 breasts in one bag.

Here is how it was all packaged.  Kind of nasty looking.  It almost felt like we were doing surgery in my kitchen or something.  Both of us are kind of freaks about chicken germs so we were holding our hands out like we had just scrubbed in for an operation and washed them constantly.

This is a pic of our final product.  

It actually didn't take a long time since we had a little system worked out and

the final result was some healthy meat for our families to eat.

Just for the record...I'm not a 100% organic, granola kinda girl, but as mentioned before, we are trying to make better, more healthier choices for our family.  I know there is a lot of research out there and a few recent news reports stating organic isn't proven to be healthier.  I just can't seem to get on board with that...I mean, ingesting all those hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides in our food...can't be good for us.  I still have a lot more to learn about it all and promise to share what I find out, but for now, this is what we are doing for our family.