Deep Thoughts from this Shallow Mind.....

As I'm sitting here at my table working on my quilt and enjoying my fireplace my mind is very busy. My mind is constantly going, sometimes with a song on full loop, sometimes with a certain phrase, sometimes talking to God, sometimes talking to myself....well I could go on and on. But right now, my mind is sweeping back to my ancestors. As some of you may know from reading my blogs, I'm a throwback to another age. I live on a homestead, grow as much of my food as I can, raise rabbits and chickens for meat, enjoy fresh rich milk from my goats and pretty much try to live as naturally as I can. I love my life!

Today I've been thinking alot about how my ancestors ate. Years and years ago my great, great, great grandma didn't have a supermarket to go to. There was no such thing as fiber bars, 100 calorie packs, and such. White flour was for Christmas and nothing else, and the same for white sugar. A couple times a year if that. The rest of the time, they ate whole cornmeal (not this degerminated crapola we have today) whole wheat that they probably ground themselves or else took their sack of wheat to the mill and had it stone ground, maple sugar and fresh meat and vegetables that they raised. Then times got "better"! People could afford to buy white flour! Glory be what a miracle! They could afford white sugar, not just for Christmas, but all the year round. Then not only could they afford to buy those things, but grocery stores began carrying white bread and already baked and cookies, cakes, and pies! Then the powers that be figured out that if they could just make it to where that stuff would last longer, they could bake more volume and make more money. Enter the preservatives. I currently have a container of heavy cream in my ice box because we are making homemade ice cream and I didn't have enough milk to seperate for my own cream. I was reading the ingredients list, thinking well it's probably just cream right?...........WRONG. Heavy cream, skim milk, mono and diglycerides, polysorbate80 and carrageenan. What??? I'm pretty certain that those last few ingredients do NOT come out of my goat? What is that stuff and why is it in there? Have you ever read the ingriedents list on a packet of instant hot cocoa? Good grief, but I digress.

As times got "better" people stopped making so much of their food themselves. It was far easier to purchase it and wow, look how fancy we are having store bought white bread at every meal! I firmly believe that our lives might have gotten easier with these new innovations, but they for sure didn't get healthier or better. I'm not saying that we all should go back to beating our laundry against a rock in the creek (because face it, the clothes that are made today wouldn't stand up to it) but I am saying that we need to get back to a more natural way of eating. For me, I'd much rather get my fiber from some oatmeal, fresh veggies, or fruit, rather than something wrapped in cellophane paper! :)

ok, I'll step down off my soapbox now!

Till next time....I'm unTHICKINandsoTHINNIN