Day 2

Day 2 is off to a slow start. Stayed up too late watching ridiculous reality television. Breakfast included a packet of low-sugar instant oatmeal and a slice of whole grain bread with homemade raspberry jam.
The oatmeal did contain some suspect preservatives, but I can't just throw it all out. The jam was made yesterday using freshly picked raspberries from my neighbor's garden.
Since moving to Northern VA, my neighbors have truly been my support group. Our whole street is lined with families of small children. It's all quite new and refreshing. In CA, we hardly knew any of our neighbors. Everyone just kept to themselves. But now, we have neighbors who share their garden's bounty, trade babysitting and enjoy communal dinners! I love it!
My next door neighbor, Amy, has been the biggest influence. She makes everything from scratch. And I mean, EVERYTHING! Homemade mayo, dressings, soy milk, salsa...I could go on. Everything she buys is organic and comes from local farms. We are fortunate here in NOVA to have a plethora of organic farms nearby. At first, I was stunned by the prices. For example, a dozen organic eggs is about $4, compared to $2.29 at the grocery store. But when you weigh the benefits of eating local, organic, free-range chickens to the questionable eggs from god-knows where at the grocery store - organic wins. I recently cracked open an organic egg to see if there was a difference. I found the shell to be tough and hard to crack, compared to the fragile shell of a non-organic egg. The size of the egg varied too. The organic egg was slightly larger, meaning you could eat less when scrambling eggs for breakfast. I'm going to hunt around for cheaper organic eggs - there's tons of farms to choose from around here.
Lunch was simple - turkey and cheese sandwiches on whole wheat bread. But, I noticed my fat-free mayo has high fructose corn syrup - ugh! It's gotta go. Snack: Greek Yogurt with cashews and honey. Dinner was better: grilled wild salmon, fresh steamed broccoli and black beans. Very simple and very tasty. I treated myself to 1 Fat-free Fig Newton today. I'm hoping to get a little more creative tomorrow - I have tons of garden fresh tomatoes that need to be eaten. Hmmm...what to make?