Spring Cleaning Carnival - Get the Food Additives OUT!

Now What Do I Do?
Head over to Kitchen Stewardship to read My Story: How I Became Concerned With What We Ate, and What's the Big Deal regarding food additives. Your head may be reeling like mine with all this information, and you may be left thinking "so what DO I eat?"

Katie said it best when she said "There’s a lot of controversy out there about what is healthy and what is not." She further tells us to "Do your best. Pray that God takes your best effort and makes it whole, that He provides good health for your family both because of AND in spite of what you may end up doing in the kitchen."

Every person is different. Every family is different. Every situation is different. Although she was referring to parenting, mother of eight Danielle Bean has said simply "do what works best for your family." YOU know your family best. Further, in the case of food additives, similar to sugar and gluten and many other things, there are many different levels of sensitivities. What may make one person violently ill may have no effect at all on another.

Finally, I'm a big proponent of Everything In Moderation. This, friends, is why you'll pry bacon out of my cold, dead hands! Lack of availability in my rural location coupled with high prices in general mean that nitrate-free bacon is out of my budget. I eat regular bacon occasionally and in small amounts, and I enjoy it very much.

These posts on MSG have some steps that are can be applied to avoiding all these additives, and you can prioritize your homemade foods using this basic changes post.

Possible baby steps are:
* check labels - just become more aware.
* replace one food item each week with an additive-free item.
* replace processed snack foods with whole foods (like a piece of fruit or some vegetables, etc.), or check out Katie's new eBook Healthy Snacks to Go. (I can assure you that the larabar knockoffs are DELICIOUS. Our first batch lasted only a couple of hours, so the next one we try will be a double batch right out of the gate!)
* eat out less.
* Katie recommends if we choose one thing, that we work on our omega 3 vs. 6 balance.

To Make Strides, try:
* make more of your food from scratch, and make homemade when it counts by prioritizing your "from scratch" items based on what your family eats the most of so your hard work makes the most impact. Ratchet up the flavor of your homemade items with herbs, lemon or lime juice, and other healthy choices.
* plan ahead: meal planning is a must!
* you've heard about "shopping the perimeter" of your grocery store - stick to meats, produce (fresh or frozen), dairy, etc. that is typically found around the edges of most grocery stores. An exception to this would be the baking aisle, I suppose, and your store might be like my sister-in-law's where the frozen foods are in the middle. :>)

Ready for a Leap of Faith?
Really, it's up to you as to how much or little you do. You can try to avoid all food additives if you're willing to invest the time and money to make things from scratch, not to mention the careful shopping for ingredients. If you or a member of your family might be sensitive to additives, it may very well be worth it to try.

Also, now that you're armed with this abundance of information, try just observing what effects you experience after eating certain foods. Perhaps you notice that even though caffeine withdrawal gives you a headache, you still get a headache after drinking a soda pop with high fructose corn syrup and artificial colors. Maybe your little one is more prone to meltdowns a couple of hours after eating rainbow colored fish crackers. If you're absent-minded like me, try to take a few minutes at the end of the day to jot down any additive-laden foods that were consumed and any ill-effects you may have observed. You might be surprised!

In closing, these are important additives to avoid, but really any weird ingredient that you can't pronounce makes a "food" into a "product". Best practice is to make everything from scratch, but for normal, realistic people that just can't happen. The baby steps and making strides are ways to (a) choose the safer processed foods when you just need something fast and (b) prioritize your homemade items in general.

But Wait! There's More!
EDIT - Giveaway is now closed. Congratulations to Emily and Joanna!

We are also having a giveaway in conjunction with getting the food additives out! The Feingold Association of the US has generously donated their CD What are all those funny things in food...and should I eat them?" by Jane Hersey. They generously sent an extra copy for my research regarding this topic, and I'm going to give that one away, too! Furthermore, I'm going to share the additional information that FAUS sent, including back issues of their newsletter Pure Facts. Lots of great info if you're just getting started on this journey! You can enter the giveaway by:
* linking up your post here (see below),
* commenting here on your experience with food additives,
* subscribe to my blog via following, a reader, or use the box at the top left to get posts via e-mail, leave another comment to let me know,
* share this post via social media (twitter, facebook, blog, etc.) and leave another comment to let me know.
That's up to four entries! Make sure I have a way to contact you if you win, either via your blogger profile, your blog, an e-mail address (you can leave it in the cryptic form youremail at domain dot com if you prefer). The giveaway will end Tuesday, May 3 at 10PM central time. Please have a US or Canadian mailing address.

Next week's hostess is Kelly the Kitchen Kop who will be covering CAFOs, which are "concentrated animal feeding operations" or "confined animal feeding operations". I'm actually hoping to have my Hubs weigh in on this topic, as a big part of our farming operation is our cattle feedlots. You can see all the carnival topics past and present here.

Share Your Wealth of Knowledge
Now it's your turn. I have covered a TON of ground here, and there is lots more left plus, as I said, each of these topics could turn into a post on their own. So, what do you have to say about food additives? You can link up research or information on any food additive, personal story of avoidance, ramblings about processed food. ANY RECIPE that helps you avoid packaged food with additives by making your own. Please link up your posts below. Thanks for joining us! (If you subscribe in a reader or via e-mail, click through to enter posts in the linky and/or leave a comment.)



PS - I have managed to mostly give up my one-root-beer-a-day habit with a baby step switch to ginger ale. Anybody have any good suggestions for a soda pop substitute? We're experimenting with a can of juice concentrate plus a liter of club soda with some good results, but this is not exactly frugal and pretty high in sugar. I'd love some suggestions! [and I'll freely admit that water kefir is probably a bit over my head for now...] Thanks!

How To Wash a Toddler's Hands

(PS - I updated my Enormous Toddler Bib/Napkin post to show a pic of the bib in action!)

Little hands can get every bit as dirty - or dirtier! - than big hands. Every time I think that Goose is mostly out of the sucking and chewing on fingers phase, I find her hand in her mouth. I think she might have some molars moving, as she's been chomping a lot lately.

So, I've been trying to pay a bit more attention to keeping her hands clean. Here's how we do it.

We have a stepstool that we keep in the bathroom. She uses it to get on the potty, and to wash her hands.








Our soap of choice is Johnson's Buddies soap. If you read MoneySavingMom.com, you know that there are often printable coupons to get the soap for free. Can't beat that! I like how the soap foams up quickly as it has a fabric covering, and it smells GREAT. Best of all, it doesn't contain triclosan. (Click through below to Katie's post to read much, much more about it.)









Since Goose still doesn't quite have the hang of lathering her own hands, I help her. I start by working up a lather with the bar myself, then I put it in her hands and wrap my hands around hers as shown in the picture. While I admit we probably don't wash for the full 30 seconds, I try to work up a good lather and then spend almost as much time rinsing and rubbing her hands under the water.

As I mentioned earlier, I am participating in Spring Cleaning: Get the Junk OUT! at Kitchen Stewardship. Go read Katie's post on Get the Antibacterials Out (and bleach), and read what other bloggers are doing on the subject.

Spring Cleaning: Get the Junk OUT!

OK, guys, along with my 40 bags in 40 days, I've been collaborating behind the scenes with some amazing bloggers on something new! (Actually, I feel like I'm just riding on coat-tails here, but I'll go with it...) In Katie's words:
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Get out your calendars, and mark down the dates for a 10-week rotating carnival called Spring Cleaning: Get the Junk Out!

We’re going to spring clean here at Kitchen Stewardship in a unique way. Instead of focusing on your physical space, we’ll look at a myriad of issues that you may want to get out of your diets, cleaning cupboards, bad habit collections or mental baggage. Each week, a different blog will host a theme that fits their mission and a linky for YOU to link up any pertinent posts.

Related posts for the linky might include a tips post, a recipe, a personal story of getting that issue “out”, or even questions you have about the issue.

Here’s the list of hostesses and weekly themes so you can plan to participate. There will be giveaways for each week. New and old posts welcome!

1. 3/23 Katie @ Kitchen Stewardship: antibacterial soap/bleach


2. 3/30 Amy @ Simply Sugar and Gluten Free: gluten


3. 4/6 Beth @ Fake Plastic Fish: plastic food containers


4. 4/13 Donielle @ Naturally Knocked Up: refined sugar


5. 4/20 Micaela @ Mindful Momma: parabens


6. 4/27 Lenetta @ Nettacow: food additives


7. 5/4 Kelly the Kitchen Kop: CAFOs


8. 5/11 Laura @ Heavenly Homemakers: pesticides


9. 5/18 Mandi @ Organizing Your Way: clutter


10. 5/25 Claire @ Saving Money Plan: debt

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Back to Lenetta: Yeah, that's the kind of people I somehow ended up rubbing elbows with! I'll admit that I haven't had a very public mission regarding food additives, but it's something that I've really been looking at lately, and am anxious to do more research on and share with you. (Really, I haven't had much of a mission beyond crafting and unsuccessfully trying to get the toddler to nap, but I'm running with it!)

I've mentioned before that Hubs got me a Nutrimill for Christmas, and I'm pleased to tell you that today I ground some wheat and used the flour to make pretzels and they were AWESOME! And I felt really good about making them, too. Since I've been reading Kitchen Stewardship, I've been paying more attention to things - labels, ingredients, chemicals, habits. Katie is big on starting with baby steps, which is good because I don't think I could handle much more than that.

I hope you'll join us as we get the junk out!

Messing with Feed Burning

I'm going to be doing a bit of dinking around with my feed burning, so if you get this in your reader but then don't get anything for several days, you might need to re-subscribe in your reader of choice. Feel free to contact me if you have problems . . . I certainly don't want to make anything difficult for any readers! I hope to get set up so people can subscribe via e-mail as well if they would prefer. Thanks for understanding!

Unsettled Tummy

I'm a firm believer in "blogging without obligation" so I haven't really felt compelled to write anything this week but thought I'd at least mention that.

The upset tummy is Goose's - not mine. I had intended to start potty training Goose but she thwarted me by coming down with the stomach flu. So far it hasn't been terrible, but I've had to switch her to disposable diapers, do some extra laundry, and she's had a number of baths.

Hubs and I are making tentative plans to attend a cousin's wedding in Wyoming in a few weeks, and I am the sort to not do anything without researching and planning the heck out of it (though it all usually goes out the window at some point) so that is giving me something to look forward to. Though it reminds me that we didn't get the DVD player for the car a while back . . .

I'm working on a very cool (at least I think it is!) gift for my sister-in-law's birthday that was last weekend, so I'll be posting about that as soon as it's done and in the mail.

Remember how I mentioned a while back that I am participating in a Bible study? It's on the Holy Spirit - good stuff. This morning, another participant asked if we'd noticed any difference in our lives. I mentioned that lately, I've been feeling like things are going pretty well. I've not won the lottery or anything, but even the little bumps like cleaning the carpet after a sick toddler hasn't been too bad. And I've tried to remember to be thankful for that - God is good all the time! (edit: He's even good at 1 AM, after yet another change of sheets and two diapers and papa's sweatpants. But I might not quite feel the same when the sun comes up!)

Hope everyone else is having a good week!

Springtime Giveaway Carnaval

The giveaway is now closed and the winner is Sharmista! Thank you to everyone for participating.



Since the spring Bloggy Giveaway is apparently no more, my friend Laura picked up the ball and is RUNNING with it. She is holding a Springtime Giveaway Carnival at her site, and I am very excited to participate in it!

I picked up this book at a thrift store and while nothing it in struck my fancy, perhaps it will for you -



The projects in it include dresses, jumpers, skirts, a pinafore, aprons, accessories, and a few baby ideas plus more. In the interest of full disclosure, you can tell from the photo on the front that this book was published in 1971. But with a bit of creativity, I think many of these projects could be easily updated - and if you think a little girl wouldn't look cute in a pinafore today . . . well, I'm not sure what to tell you! Here is a link to the book on Amazon.com: Sewing without a pattern (Little craft book series)


Further disclosure, this book is used, and as such there is some marring on the cover and someone's little one thought the last few pages weren't quite colorful enough and added their own impressions with crayon. The book is still perfectly useable, though - and in great shape for being so vintage (that's a nice way of saying "kinda old").

If you'd like to be entered in this giveaway, please leave a comment. Make sure I have a way to contact you (either e-mail or via your blog), and please note that I am only able to ship to US addresses. You may notice that I am a very new blogger, so if you decide to take a chance and follow me and/or subscribe to my blog via a reader, please leave another comment(s) telling me so for another chance(s) to win!!

And, finally, because I'm a tiny bit worried that no one will sign up, you can get an extra chance to win if you leave another comment giving me a tip you wish you'd known when you started blogging. It can be anything! I'll draw a winner Friday evening.

And make sure to head over to Heavenly Homemakers for not only this carnival, but tons of information on frugal living, healthy eating, homeschooling, and so much more. Thanks for participating!

Why Nettacow?

One of the things that kept me from starting a blog was determining a name for it. I thought and thought about how to sum up what I wanted to write about in just a few short words. Catholic. Farm. Sewing/Crafting. Homeschool (well, not yet, but hopefully). Cats. None of them seemed just right, and picking one would mean leaving out the others.

Several years ago when I lived in Colorado Springs, I needed a computer user name. I tried various combinations of my unusual first name with my common last name, numbers, etc. and everything was already taken. My frustration mounted as each combination was rejected.

At the time, I was driving a black VW Jetta. My first VW was a Rabbit, and it had been named Thumper. Continuing the trend, a sweet cousin named my Jetta "Angus". In desperation, I combined my nickname of "Netta" with the "cow" from my car and it was accepted.

Not long after that, I had to get new licence plates for Angus. In the midst of my homesickness, it was difficult enough for me to give up my Nebraska plates. Nebraska and Colorado have a football rivalry and it seemed extra wrong that I was becoming a "greenie" (back then, that's what we called people from Colorado because of their green license plates). Having to write a bigger-than-I-was-used-to check for the license was insult to injury. I didn't even look at the plates they handed me and I headed out the door. Once I got home, I took off the plastic wrap to affix the stickers and put them on my car and that's when I noticed what I had been assigned.



Little did I know that only a few short years later, I'd find myself married to a cow farmer and living out my happily ever after.

Do you have a story behind your screen name?