I read a lot of books.  It’s not unusual for my hubby to find me passed out in bed (empty wine glass next to me like a loyal soldier) with a book still open in my lap.  Some of my guilty pleasures have been “Nature’s Nether Regions”, “Safe Haven”, “Does the Soul Survive?”, “Everyone Poops” or once for some international flavor,  the Scottish tale of romance “A Wee Bit Lower, Lassy”.

Reading is my escape; it’s my happy place (if I don’t have the opportunity for a nap). As a busy mom I spend more than a few afternoons sitting in my car waiting to pick up one of my kids from some place or another and I always have a book with me.  If you were to peek into my passenger side window right now (along with getting a faceful of mace, you creeper) you’d see my copy of Lilly Cadoch’s Busy Mom’s Cheat Sheet: Raising Happy Healthy Kids.

Obviously the title is an eye-catcher, but you can’t always judge a book by its cover. Take “Still Stripping After 25 Years” which is a book about a woman’s lifelong love of quilting (I shit you not, look it up). Well, faithful readers let me tell you that Lilly Cadoch’s book definitely delivers the goods.

“Cheat Sheets” have gotten a bad reputation over the years, or so my 11^th grade English Literature teacher would have us believe, but I’m a huge fan.  I don’t always need all the fanfare and the romance and the flowers and the gifts, sometimes I want to just get down to the dirty and the gritty.  The Busy Mom’s Cheat Sheet: Raising Happy Healthy Kids is an easy to follow and understand handbook to help energize parents in their ongoing quest to raise healthier kids.  The book is broken down into three vital life categories: Body, Mind and Spirit. I couldn’t agree more with advice like “This trifecta makes up our entire being and if any of them get out of balance, it can throw everything out of whack…When we have a healthy body, we can more clearly tackle our mind and spiritual needs.”

My kids are pretty open-minded when it comes to trying new foods, but they aren’t afraid to tell me when one of my experiments taste like a cardboard box left out in the rain.  So when one of my daughters loved the recipe for the cheesy veggie omelet I grabbed on to that one and held tight.  I also used a few of her snack ideas for my kids’ backpacks and I myself practically live on the zucchini spaghetti pasta dish.  And by the way, feel free to skip to page 127 for an awesome take on Tofu.

Not only does this book offer real-life mommy advice, it helps you make smarter food choices for your family and to provide your children with valuable life-long skills. Here are just a few great ideas that resonated with me…

• Teaching your kids how to read food and ingredient labels in order to make healthier choices
• 18 tips for foods to avoid
• Ways to get more exercise into your child’s schedule
• Tactics on how to get your kids to sleep (without the battle)
• Teaching empathy
• The power of gratitude
• 45 bonus recipes that are quick, easy, delicious and kid-friendly

Seem simple?  Of course

Do we always do it? Of course not

Having kids literally jump started my holistic journey into eating and living cleaner because I wanted to set a good example and teach my kids to live a healthy lifestyle.  My girls are 9 & 12, I love the idea of them being more involved with the grocery shopping and our ingredient choices, they are after all, my target audience (sorry, hubby).  I enjoy sharing my sense of spirituality with my family and every night before bed we talk about “Grateful Universe” and the large and small things in our life we are thankful for.  I think in a lot of ways Lily Cadoch and I may have been separated at birth (or at the very least are kindred spirits) because every page I read from her book makes me want to shout out “Yes, that’s what I do” or “Thank goodness I’m not the only one who feels that way.”

This book is a fantastic guide to help any parent trying to raise healthier kids and needing real world practical guidance.  I like to think that when we know better, we do better. So any book that can give a fresh and positive perspective to eating smart, getting my kids a better night’s sleep, improving their sense of self and dipping their toes into the benefits of spirituality, that’s a little bit of “cheating” we can all benefit from.

I was sent a copy of this book for free to review; however, no other compensation was received and the opinions I expressed were entirely my own.

The post The Most Valuable Cheat Sheet You Never Knew About – Unsponsored Review appeared first on Living Clean and Dirty.

Feeding my dogs a BARF diet was one of those moments.

Now before you call Animal Control, BARF stands for Biologically Appropriate Raw Food. It’s basically feeding dogs a diet made from real, whole foods instead of processed kibble. The first time I heard about it, I thought it sounded a little crazy too.

A few years ago I hired a holistic pet chef (for those of you who need a translation, that’s a woman I hired to come to my house and teach me how to feed my dogs a species-appropriate diet using real, human-grade food instead of commercial dog food). She explained the ingredients, the portions and how to build balanced meals, and by the time she left I was hooked.

So I have a very close friend from childhood. She’s the Statler to my Waldorf for you Muppet fans. Friends NEVER embarrass friends, so I’m not going to mention her by name. She came to me in confidence with questions about dog food and I promised I wouldn’t use her name.

So Allison and I get together a few days a week, and when we can’t, we’ll usually spend an hour on the phone. It usually goes something like this: I tell her about some new eco-friendly experiment I’m trying, and she puts me on speakerphone so I can listen to her crushing Styrofoam containers and aluminum cans into the garbage while every light and television in her house is on.

She’s got a soft spot for my husband, and I’m pretty sure she’s his secret steak connection.

“Ellen,” she’d say, “if God didn’t intend for us to eat animals, they wouldn’t taste so good.”

Totally making fun of me.

Oh, I’m no shrinking violet either. I give it right back and threaten to dump her garbage bags onto her front lawn, rescue every recyclable, and speed off into the night before she notices.

Two good buddies doing what good buddies do.

So when I proudly announced, “I’m never buying dog food again. I’m making all of the dogs’ meals from now on. We’re going BARF up in this mutha!” she laughed so hard I thought she was going to drop the phone.

Then she stopped.

“Oh…you’re serious?”

Very.

She thought I’d completely lost my mind. Honestly, I understood why. A few years earlier I probably would have laughed right along with her.

Then one day there were stories all over the news about commercial dog food recalls and ingredient concerns, and my phone rang.

“Okay, El…tell me about your Holy Pet Chef thing.”

At first I thought she was making some kind of Batman joke.

“Holy Pet Chef, Batman!”

Then I realized it was her turn to be serious.

I tried to be supportive. I laughed. A lot.

Point: Ellen.

Once I got that out of my system, I walked her through everything I’d learned. The ingredients I use. The quantities. Where I buy things. I even loaned her the book my pet chef recommended so she could read it herself and decide if it was something she wanted to try.

A few weeks later my Facebook feed started filling up with pictures of her dogs happily eating homemade meals.

I have to admit, that felt pretty good.

One of the things I love most about making my dogs’ food is how little goes to waste. The leafy tops from celery, carrot peelings, apples that have gotten a little too soft for my daughters, bananas that suddenly became “too brown”…instead of ending up in the trash, a lot of it ends up in the dogs’ bowls.

My dogs are basically furry little composters with tails.

Preparing their meals doesn’t take nearly as long as people imagine. Most days it takes me about five minutes to throw everything together, and I love knowing exactly what’s going into their food.

For our dogs, a typical meal might be raw meat, an egg, carrots, celery, leafy greens, fruit and a little plain yogurt. It isn’t fancy. It’s just real food.

Is this the only right way to feed a dog?

Of course not.

Every dog is different, and every family has to decide what’s right for them. If you’re thinking about making major changes to your pet’s diet, talk with your veterinarian or a qualified pet nutrition professional first.

For us, this has been one of the best changes we’ve ever made. The dogs love it, we waste less food, and I know exactly what they’re eating.

Sometimes the ideas people laugh at today become the very ones they’re asking you about tomorrow.

The post Forget Cake, I Say Let them Eat BARF appeared first on Living Clean and Dirty.

“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well” – Virginia Woolf 

“Sex is good, but not as good as fresh sweet corn.” – Dr. Ruth Westheimer (who I’m guessing is speaking of organic corn)

“The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.” – Thomas Edison

“It’s bizarre that the produce manager is more important to my children’s health than the pediatrician.” – Meryl Streep

“I cook with wine.  Sometimes I even add it to the food” –  W.C. Fields

“Food is the fuel that will keep us on the go.  You got to eat right if you want to grow.” – Slim Goodbody

Food has always fascinated me. The more I learned about living a healthier, greener life, the more I realized how little I actually knew about what I was eating.

Around that time I picked up a copy of The Food Babe Way by Vani Hari.

Now let me start by saying opinions are like taints (look it up). Everybody has one, and it’s rare anyone actually wants yours. You can find people on the internet who think Vani Hari is changing the world, and you can find people who think she’s completely wrong. My advice is the same advice I always give: read with an open mind, ask questions, and make your own decisions. If you disagree with me, feel free to email me for a full refund for this free article.

What I appreciated most about the book wasn’t that it gave me all the answers.

It made me ask better questions.

I already considered myself a healthy eater. I bought organic whenever I could. I was paying attention to labels. Or at least I thought I was.

After reading the book, I realized I had been looking for a handful of buzzwords instead of really understanding what was in my food. I started slowing down in the grocery store. I read ingredient lists instead of just the front of the package. I became more curious about where my food came from and how it was made.

Did I agree with every single thing in the book?  Probably not.  But I didn’t have to.

A good book doesn’t always have to convince you. Sometimes it just gets you thinking in a different way, and that’s exactly what this one did for me.

One of my favorite parts was that it didn’t simply tell readers what to avoid. It also offered recipes, substitutions, and practical ideas that made healthier eating feel possible instead of overwhelming. My younger daughter became a huge fan of the homemade ginger dressing recipe because it tasted just like the one from our favorite Japanese restaurant. The difference was I knew exactly what had gone into it because I’d made it myself.

Like I tell my family all the time, getting healthier starts with getting educated. Read labels. Ask questions. Learn where your food comes from. You don’t have to overhaul your entire kitchen overnight. Just make one better choice today than you made yesterday.

Living healthier isn’t about being perfect.  It’s about paying attention.

I’ll leave you with one final quote from someone who was never afraid to put in the work.

“Number one, like yourself. Number two, you have to eat healthy. And number three, you’ve got to squeeze your buns. That’s my formula.” — Richard Simmons.

Words to live by, Richard. Words to live by.

I received a complimentary review copy of this book. No other compensation was provided, and all opinions are my own.

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