Wanting somewhere to start?  Try the top 10 tips for making changes that make a difference (without tooooo much work).

Monday Mission Checklist

(What is a Monday Mission?)

1. Handwashing and Antibacterial Soap : Wash hands well and rid the house of triclosan.
2. Reduce Food Waste:  Salvage bread heels and leftover cooked veggies.
3. Reduce Energy Waste: Using your dishwasher wisely.
4. Meal Planning:  Level up in your meal plan organization.
5. Safe(er) Plastics:  Avoid BPA in drinking containers.
6. Traditional Bone Broths:  How to make the most delicious, frugal, nutritious chicken stock in the world.
7. The next 15 weeks are a series of Super Food challenges.  See this page for details.
8. Legume Recommend Beans:  A challenge to include beans/legumes in your meal plan once a week, with how-to prepare and recipes.
9. Making Yogurt:  Easy how-to steps to make homemade yogurt, plus alternative baby steps for those who aren’t ready to take the plunge to homemade.
10. Eat More Eggs:  A simple challenge to include more of this super food in your week.
11. Can the Cans:  Commit to never allowing canned vegetables in your cupboards.
12. No Nukes for Cruciferous Vegetables:  Try steaming your vegetables instead of using the microwave.
13.  Mind the Microwave in May and its origins
14. Be Aware of the Dirty Dozen Produce Items:  Memorize the list of 12 top pesticide-laden fruits and veggies.
15. Plastics, Part two:  Rethink Plastic Food Storage
16. Fats, Part one:  Search Out Trans Fats (and a look at monounsaturated fats)
17. Fats, Part two:  Increase your Omega-3 Fats (salmon, flax)
18. Whole Grains:  Find a New Oat Recipe
19. Eating Orange (veggies) and Revisiting Meal Planning
20. Learn About Complete Proteins:  You can reduce meat consumption (budget help) if you know how to pair non-meal proteins for best nutrition.
21. Plastics, Part Three:  Reduce Your Consumption of Plastic Bags
22. Use up ALL your Spinach: Ideas to make sure you don’t waste spinach when you buy a fresh bag or box.
23. Try Something New:  Learn about Pomegranates, Green Tea, Cranberry Juice and Artichokes.
24. Condiment Awareness:  Take a small step (or two or three!) to making more healthy condiment choices.
25. Analyzing Aluminum Foil:  Some tips to help you Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle this non-renewable resource.
26. Analyzing Aluminum Cookware and Bakeware:  What are you cooking on?  Ideas to avoid aluminum pots, pans, and cookie sheets.
27. Conserve Energy with your Stovetop/Oven:  10 tips to cutting your energy and budget waste while cooking and baking.
28. Switch your Baking Powder to Aluminum-Free:  You can buy it for just a teensy bit more than conventional baking powder or make your own.
29. No More Bleach in the Kitchen:  It’s overkill and killing the environment.  My easy, natural kitchen cleaning solutions.
30. Make Your Salads Count:  Bring more to your mouth than just lettuce, including healthy fats.
31. Release Your Fear of Fats:  Time to put your thinking caps on and learn a little about how necessary fat is to your body.  This will challenge your “low-fat” mentality.
32. Switch to Butter:  The real thing is where it’s at.  Read my journey about what I put on my toast and consider yours.
33. Consider Full Fat Dairy:  My family’s been eating dairy with all the healthy fats included since Christmas.  See what happened to us!
34. Pare Down the Polys:  To balance your omega-3s and omega-6s, you’ve got to take some steps to cut back on polyunsaturated fats such as soybean and corn oil.
35. Read up on Canola Oil:  There is a lot of conflicting research on Canola, but it’s no longer a staple in my kitchen.  Part two:  Find a Healthy Fat Recipe at the Healthy Fats Carnival.
36. Try Coconut Oil or Ghee:  Time to try a new healthy fat.  Learn about a few that I’ve tried in the past year.
37. Beef Tallow and Lard:  Animal fats got a bad rap last century.  Let’s give them a chance for a comeback.
38. Figure out the Fats Vocabulary:  How does the pressing of oils affect their nutrition, how to decipher all the labels on your packages.
39. Soak Your Oatmeal:  Increase the nutrition of a frugal breakfast and make it more digestible.
40. Repurpose Kitchen Containers:  Part of Decreasing Disposables in December, this first challenge saves money and resources while keeping your home organized.
41. Decrease Holiday Disposables:  From wrapping paper to cards to big parties, December creates terrible waste.  Some ideas to cut it down.
42. Switch to the Real Thing or Reuse:  7 Choices to decrease disposables on the table, from serving parties with real plates to using cloth napkins.
43. Cleaning Tips to Decrease Disposables:  Throwing away lots of paper towel?  You can stop now.  Also see my posts on microfiber cloths and Skoy cloths.
44. How do you Meal Plan? Some tips for finding meal planning inspiration and keeping organized.
45. Level Up Your Yogurt Profile: Take the next step toward making homemade yogurt (mission no. 8), including my newest tips for success.
46. Green Resolutions:  A comprehensive list of green cleaning substitutions and a challenge to pick one…and change it.
47. Healthy Upgrades:  Real Food Recipe Renditions:  Learn how to make your favorite recipes without the processed convenience food ingredients.
48. Healthy Upgrades: Make it from Scratch: A challenge to make one boxed thing from scratch.
49. Eat Fewer Grains:  In the midst of such research controversy on the health benefits or dangers of grains, let’s try to eat one grain-less meal each day this week, just to raise our consciousness of how many grains we consume.
50. Soak Your Grains:  To increase digestibility, some  research suggests proper preparation of grains is to soak them.
51. Bake Homemade Bread or Grind Your Own Wheat: If you want the healthiest bread, you might want to try it at home.  Even healthier?  Freshly ground flour (even though I don’t do this yet!).
52. Make a Sourdough Starter: Research shows that sourdough is the healthiest way to prepare grains.  Capture your own yeast for free!
53. Sprout Something:  Sprouting increases nutrients in seeds and legumes.  All you need is a colander.
54. Get the Antibacterial Soap Out: Part of the Spring Cleaning: Get the Junk Out! Carnival, here is a challenge to rid your home of antibacterial soaps and bleach.
55. Learn About Celiac Disease and Gluten Intolerance:  Often under- and mis-diagnosed, allergies and sensitivities to wheat deserve a little attention.
56. Clean out the Plastics Cupboard: Four different levels of commitment for getting rid of some of your plastic food storage containers.
57. Use Less Refined Sugar:  Simple ways to cut down and cut out on an unnecessary (but delicious) calorie.
58. Seek Out and Avoid Parabens: A cancer-causing preservative in beauty products, parabens are no good.  Find natural alternatives.
59. Find Those MSGs:  There are over 20 names MSG can hide under.  Do you know what’s in your pantry?
60. Where Does Your Meat Come From?: Do some research and learn about various farming methods and sources.
61. Take an Organic Step: Either buy something new organic or move toward organic gardening.
62. Organize Something:  From your email inbox to paper clutter, your menu planning and your recipes, everyone can organize something better.
63. Know What you Spend, Spend What you Earn: 15 ways to reduce your food spending and cut the budget, while finding money elsewhere to put toward food.
64. Upgrade Your Eggs: Take a step in the right direction on the spectrum of white store eggs to pastured, organic, local eggs.
65. Examine Your Milk Source: Where does your milk come from? Where should it come from?
66. Buy Local Produce: Get to know your Farmer’s Market!
67. Revisiting Super Foods: Eat ‘em!
68. Increase Your Grains Consciousness: Become more aware of how different preparations of grains affect your system.
69. Natural Sunscreen Review: The breakdown on 28 natural sunblocks: how safe are the ingredients, and how did they really work? Our family really tried out all 28…
70. Chew Your Food: Research shows that chewing food is vital for digestion. How many times should you chew each bite?
71. Try Some Squash: An important fall/winter vegetable, and so many ways to get it in! (Even if your husband won’t eat it…)
72. Keep It Simple: What needs to be taken “back to basics” in your life?
73. Fight Germs Naturally: Resources included for cold care and other natural illness remedies.
74. Watch for Gluten: A short primer on how to find gluten in ingredients lists, for your curious information or your family’s health. It’s difficult to avoid!
75. Green and Natural Body Products – Pick One: The complete list from head to toe of options for keeping your skin and hair as non-toxic as possible.
76. Green and Natural Household Cleaners – Pick One: The complete list from floor to ceiling of all the ways to keep your home non-toxic, including laundry soap options, homemade cleaners, and my favorite dishwasher detergent.
77. A Look Back: Readers’ Favorites!
78. Make Stock or Upgrade Your System: Tips to improve the health benefits of your homemade meat stocks.
79. Clean Up Your Holiday Celebrations: Keep a little “green” in December – the eco-friendly way.
80. Watch Your White Flour: 3 reasons to eat less, 3 reasons you might still want to include white flour in your diet.
81. Pack Reusable Containers for Restaurant Leftovers: A simple, painless step to reduce your waste.
82. You Can Make Homemade Yogurt!: Back to Basics Challenge #1, my favorite real food technique ever.
83. Learn to Use Dry Beans: Back to Basics Challenge #2, important to save money, resources, and pump up nutrition!
84. Refocus on Healthy Fats: Back to Basics Challenge #3, A great review of the Fat Full Fall series from 2009 with the most important healthy fats highlighted.
85. Mind the Microwave: Back to Basics Challenge #4,  The very first series at KS explored pros and cons of microwave use. This challenge is simply to pay attention to your own usage of the appliance.
86. Try Organ Meats: I saved this mission for nearly 2 years into KS…organ meats are scary sounding, but I promise, they don’t have to be!
87. Switch Your Salt If your salt is white, even if it’s sea salt, you need to check out this mission to find the difference!
88. Do Something Big! In my quest to go grain-free for Lent, I won’t drag everyone along, but here are some great grain-free resources if you’re interested.
89. Get Moving: I don’t talk much about exercise here at KS, but it’s an important piece of the healthy lifestyle puzzle.
90. Spend Time with Your Family:
91. Build your Apothecary:  Buying a few simple items can make your home a natural pharmacy, in a way. (guest post)
92. Make a Frugal Meals List:  Sometimes keeping a food budget isn’t all about what you buy, but what you make. Your challenge is to make one frugal meal a week.
93. Where Are Your Summer Veggies Coming From?: Will you get a CSA? Plant a garden? Now is the time to plan!
94. Know Your Food: If you can, meet a farmer and ask him/her some questions about how your food is raised. If you aren’t able to talk to a farmer, try to find a new small business to frequent.
95. Review Week, Focus on Grains: Do you need to use more whole grains? Start soaking? Skip grains altogether? Take a step that is good for your family this week.
96. Let’s Get Prepared: A challenge to look at how prepared your family is for emergencies. Then, take the first step: Store some water.
97. Are you Prepared to Evacuate?: Learn to make a 72-hour “Bug Out Bag” for short term evacuation and survival.
98. Understand the Difference Between Sunscreens and Sunblocks: Mineral sunblocks are the safest for your body – find out why and which brands work best.
99. Get Natural Outdoors: Natural solutions for common outdoor summer problems like sunburn, bugs, and scrapes.
100. A No-Sugar Day: A challenge to kick off the Sweet, Sweet Summer series by avoiding sweets for a day…or more.
101. Take Shorter Showers: A simple, water-saving mission.
102. Save a Flush!: Save water in your toilet and green clean it.
103. Shred Your Own Cheese: It might not save a ton of money, but avoiding weird additives is worth it.
104. Get Variety and Nourishment in your Breakfasts: Prep the night before.
105. Are you Ready for Breakfasts?: Getting back in the swing by planning breakfasts better, trying to pump up the nutrition and change up for variety.
106. Stock Your Natural Remedies Medicine Cabinet: Make a list and purchase a few simple oils and items to have on hand to be ready if the sick bugs knock on your door.
107. Make a Bug-Out Bag: A list of 20 steps, one per week, to help you make a 72-hour emergency kit in case you have to evacuate your home quickly.
108. The Water that Gets You Clean: You might filter your drinking water, but what about the chemicals your skin sits in during a bath or shower?
109. Grab Those Bones: Call dibs on the turkey carcass, make stock…and then commit to using some sort of bone broth in your meal plan at least once a week .
110. Give Eco-Friendly Gifts: Give gifts to the earth as well as your friends and family.
111. Sharpen Your Knives: Sharpen or steel your knives.
112. Reduce, Reuse, Celebrate: Celebrate the season by giving a gift to the earth.
113. Back to Basics–Traditional Foods Resolutions: Go back to basics and renew your commitment to regularly making traditional foods and including them in your menu plans.
114. Parabens Bite the Dust: Get rid of your junky personal products, once and for all.
115. Ferment Something: Start a new fermented food this week.
116. Do Something New With Stock: Do something new with stock this month.
117. Embrace the Fat But Not the Muffin Top: Eat more fat.
118. Seek and Destroy Artificial Sweeteners: Learn to identify artificial sweeteners – or teach someone else to root them out.
119. Wean Off the Sweeteners: Cut back on the amount of sweetener you add to your life.
120. Avoid Natural Food Dyes and Coloring: Avoid artificial food dyes and colorings in food and personal products.
121. Connect Kids with Real Food: Whether you have kids or can creatively find kids in your life, choose a way to cook with them, talk about food, or just serve real food this week.
122. Eat Fruit for Dessert: A simple challenge: reduce your dependence on sweeteners by serving fruit for dessert.
123. Get Ready for the Sun: Make sure your family is prepared for safe sunshine this season.
124. Give Real Food to Those in Need: Free printable recipes and shopping lists to create donation packages for those in need.
     • Black Eyed Pea Casserole
     • Chicken Rice-a-Roni
     • Mexican Rice with Beans
     • Sausage Spinach Pasta Toss
125. Do You Have a Naturally-Minded Doctor?  Be brave and use friends, the Internet, and the power of a phone call to research options for a natural practitioner that you can feel comfortable with.
126. Can Real Food Help You Lose Weight?  It helped the Kimball Family! Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to determine whether you’re at your ideal/healthy weight…or not.
127. Have Fun Exercising!  You don’t have to do an organized exercise program 30 minutes a day in order to get moving and be healthy. Find a way to exercise that works for you.
128. Travel Without Plastic: When you do lots of packing food and snacks, it’s easy to end up tossing too much plastic into the garbage. Here are some simple tips for traveling without so much waste.
129. Get a Plan for Summer Menu Planning: Make a commitment to “stay on the horse” of meal planning during the hectic summer months.
130. Get Your Probiotics: Find a new way (or recommit to the old) to get healthy probiotics.
131. If a Food Causes You to Hurt, Cut it Out: Choose to accept what you need to do in your diet to be healthy.
132. You Are What You Eat, Eats: Make an upgrade in where you get your animal products: beef, pork, chicken, fish, cheese, milk, butter.
     • Seeking Happy Chickens for the Pot (& the Grill)
     • Do You Have to Go to Alaska to Find Safe, Healthy Fish? (Maybe)
     • Beef: From Field to Freezer, a How-to-Buy-a-Cow Guide
133. Pinpoint Your Convenience Foods: Figure out some quick and easy convenience foods that are not as much of a compromise as $5 pizza.
134. Probiotics at Every Meal: Let’s brainstorm the many different ways one can incorporate healthy probiotics into their daily routine.
135. Experiment with Grains or No Grains: A challenge to do something different in the kitchen, either trying a new grain, a new process with a familiar grain, or a grain-free recipe. Lots of resource links!
136. Choose Safer Cookware: Stop using one piece of potentially unsafe cookware, either temporarily or for good.
137. Examine Your Cutting Board: Examine the safety of your current cutting board and replace it with something safer if necessary
138. Get Safer Toothpaste: Examine and potentially replace your toothpaste. Includes a review of why fluoride is bad for you.
139. Clean Safely, Clean Orderly: Time to look closely at your cleaning products and routines: are you using safe materials, and is your time used wisely?
140. Organize for Efficiency: Do you have areas of your kitchen that have been the same way for way too long, even though it doesn’t make sense? Look at everything with fresh eyes and get your organization on.
141. Clear Those Counters (& Maybe a Cupboard or a Drawer, too): Time to clear your counters, get the things you need close at hand, and make your kitchen an efficient place to work!
142. Organize Your Recipes: Even the perfect recipe organization system needs a look-through and update every so often. Be critical and make it work for you.
143. Get Spicy! (and Organized): Cleaning out and organizing your spice cabinet will help make cooking more efficient and rid yourself of expired products.
144. Don’t Try to “Get Something Done”: Is it your voice that says to the kids, “Not right now, I have to get something done here,” or “I just couldn’t get anything done today!” Measure success by quality time invested in people, not checkmarks on the to-do list.
145. Monday Mission: How Many Baby Steps Have You Taken?: Time to count up your successes and pat yourself on the back!  This Monday Mission was a rendition of the “KS Top 10″ post; all the basics that give the most impact.
146. Monday Mission: Top Ten Advanced Baby Steps (for your consideration):  Once you’ve mastered the basics, you might want to dig a little deeper in the real food world.  There are lots more steps you can take, and people to journey with you.

Food for Thought Posts

Most Monday Missions are connected to a Food for Thought, an information post to prepare your brain for the practical mission.  Here are those posts:

1. Antibacterial Soap
   Supermarkets’ waste of food
2. America’s Food Waste
3. Energy Use in the Kitchen
4. Menu Planning
5. Plastic Safety
   Hand Sanitizers in the Home
   Health Benefits of Super Foods:
6. Chicken Stock/Broth
7. Beans/Legumes
8. Yogurt
9. Eggs
10. Tomatoes
11. Cruciferous Vegetables
12. Garlic and Onions
    Peppers
13. Super Fruits
14. Monounsaturated Fats: Avocado, Peanut Butter and Olive Oil
    Olive Oil Primer
15. Omega-3s:  Salmon and Flax
    How to Use and Store Flax
    How to Buy Safe Salmon
    
16. Oatmeal and Sunflower Seeds
    How to Read a Bread Bag for Whole Grains
17. Orange Veggies
18. walnuts and almonds (and other nuts and seeds)
19. turkey, We Use Too Many Plastic Bags
20. Spinach, the Ultimate Super Food
21. (in Monday Mission post)
22. Cinnamon, Dark Chocolate and Honey
23. Why Analyze Aluminum?
24. Hazards of Aluminum
25. Energy Cost in the Kitchen
26. Analyzing Aluminum in Vaccines
27. Why is Bleach Bad for Me?
28. Easy Salad Making Tips
29. How Fat Works in the Body
30. The Facts (?) on Saturated Fat
31. What’s the Moo on Dairy Fat?
32. Is Polyunsaturated Fat Healthy?
33. Canola Oil, A Unique Omega-3:  Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?
34. Coconut Oil Information on Both Sides
35. Lard and Tallow are Healthy Fats!
36. Baseline Fats:  What Fat to Use for What Purpose
37. Soaking Whole Grains
38. Decreasing Disposables in December
39. How to Reverse Engineer a Recipe for Real Food Quality
40. Eat Fewer Grains…or Just Fix ‘Em?
41. The Nutritional Value of Whole Grains
42. Is Soaking Grains Traditional? (historical and Biblical references to grains)
43. Phytase is higher in freshly ground grain
44. Health Benefits of Sourdough Preparation
45. Health Benefits of Sprouting
46. Why Antibacterial Soap and Triclosan is bad for you (BONUS: from a biologist – The Biology of Antibiotic Resistance)
47. Thoughts on Gluten from a Gluten-Free blogger
48. Fake Plastic Fish’s Take on Why All Plastics Should get out of your Kitchen
49. 5 Reasons Sugar is Bad for you
50. Mindful Momma’s Parabens Background
51. Top 10 Food Additives to Avoid and Why
52. Grassfed Meat: Is it Really Healthier?
53. Pesticides in our Gardens, No Way!
54. Easy Steps to Reducing Clutter in your Home
55. How to Reduce Debt and Stick to  a Budget
56. Egg Labels and Terms: How to Understand them
57. What Kind of Milk Should I Buy? (Milk terms explained)
    The Real Story of Homogenized Milk, Skim Milk, Powdered Milk and Oxidized Cholesterol
    Why I Choose Raw Milk
58. 10 Questions to Ask Your Farmer
59. The List: What to Eat, What to Avoid, How to Compromise
60. Sunshine, Skin Cancer and Sunscreen: The Facts
61. Katie Learns about Gluten
62. Everybody’s Afraid of Something
63. How to Eat Beef Liver (Without Tasting It): You CAN eat liver and beef heart without freaking out! Here’s how.
64. Is Freshly Milled Flour More Nutritious?
65. Is There Such Thing As Healthy Salt? Does salt really raise blood pressure? Not necessarily!
66. Fitting in Fitness: How Exercise Can Enhance Your Love of Food, Family & Frugality

Mind the Microwave in May

• The Challenge
• The Invitation
• Research Notes, part one: Breastmilk
• 10 Tips for Avoiding the Microwave
• Time Management/Fewer Dishes Tips
• 13 Surprising Benefits of a Microwave Free Life
• Research Notes, part two: Radiation Danger

Analyzing Aluminum in August

• The Introduction
• Use less aluminum foil
  Baked Potatoes without Aluminum Foil
• Analyzing Aluminum Cookware and Bakeware
• Food for Thought:  Why Analyze Aluminum? (Research on Dangers)
• Analyzing Aluminum in Antiperspirants:  Hazard or Hoax?
• My Deodorant Story
• Monday Mission:  Switch your Baking Powder to Aluminum-Free
• Vaccine Notes

A Fat Full Fall

• The Introduction
• How Fat is Metabolized by the Body
• Are Saturated Fats Healthy or Evil?
• Tips for the Switch to Real Butter
• Butter vs. Margarine vs. “Healthy” Spreads
• My Family’s Journey to Full Fat Dairy
• Powdered Milk and Oxidized Cholesterol
• Polyunsaturated Fats – Are they Healthy?
• Evils of industrial fats – soybean and corn oil
• 6 Ways to Reduce your Omega-6 Intake
• Canola Oil: Friend or Foe?
• Fats you Don’t Always Hear About: Coconut Oil, Ghee
  • Health Benefits of Coconut Oil
  • Coconut Oil FAQs and How to Use
  • How to Make Ghee