Hello Again!  This is so fun to be with you every day this week!!!! Remember, it is my Birthday week and I am going to give away 4- ½ hour coaching calls because it is the last year that my age will start with a 4!!!!!!   I help women simplify areas of their life they are struggling with…..it might be motherhood, saving money, decluttering, cooking from scratch, or homesteading so you can reduce overwhelm. I like to keep everything simple and I love helping others do the same. All you have to do to enter the giveaway is give a rating and review and send me an email at monica@claimingsimplicity.com and I will announce the winners on the August 28th podcast!!!!!!! 



I have mentioned before how being off of a schedule and living out of a box for a few months has put a major damper on our healthy eating and boy can we tell in so many different areas from gut health, mood and the way we felt to weight gain!  We went from eating most things homemade and from scratch  and always having sourdough and fresh whole foods available with a garden to eating convenience foods from the store  we normally don’t eat! After a few months of my teenagers eating the food they thought they wanted to eat because many of their friends eat that way - like hot pockets and anything they could make quickly in the airfryer -it wasn’t long and they were telling me they are sick of those foods!  Something I never thought I would hear from them!  I mentioned  last week we finally got our kitchen table in our house and the night before we fed our sourdough (which by the way, we hadn’t fed in 3 months) and made 4 sourdough pizza crusts, flat bread, and bagels and they were so delicious!!!!!!  Do you know how many things you can make with just starter, flour and water?  I think we forgot how good real food tastes-I can’t imagine going a lifetime without it!   I have a roast, potatoes and carrots in the crockpot ready for tomorrow along with some sourdough bread and rhubarb crisp and that has been a meal we haven’t had for a while either-yum!  So simple, so healthy, and so good!
 
Something else that is important to eating healthy is only buying foods you can eat before they go bad.  I was just buying groceries here and there without a plan and that not only cost extra money, but many times the food went bad before we got to it.  I heard a statistic that I thought was outrageous that we waste up to 60% of our food!  WHAT??  That is crazy.  I love that our chickens and pigs can use any waste and my worms get some of that as well!
 
Last week, I unpacked my magnetic weekly plan that goes right on the fridge for everyone to see and we won’t have extra food in the fridge this week because I have a plan and will only buy the few ingredients we need.  I plan my meals around what food is on hand as I look into the fridge on Sunday and plan for the week with the food we need to use up which saves on food going to waste and saves money!  It is so much cheaper to make your own yogurt and granola and that is something that is so easy and much tasier!  There are so many items like this you can make yourself that are simple to make, healthier, and will save you money!
Find yourself a good routine with healthy foods-I am back to eating bacon, eggs  in the morning along with my apple cider vinegar since I need to make some more kombucha, and I feel so much better already and am gaining my energy back again.  I also need to add my adrenal cocktails back into my routine because my adrenal glands get depleted very fast and that just helps with my high energy levels, so if you haven’t tried that, let me know and I can send you my recipe!
 
If you want to have more energy and less overwhelm, I suggest you start making some of your food from scratch with trusted ingredients because food affects all areas of your body and you need to be aware of what you are putting in it!  Remember too that simple meals can be healthy meals!
 
Ok, that is all I have today, but I look forward to bei