AM I "CRUNCHY"?

Am I “Crunchy”?

There was a time not so many years ago actually that I ate junk food. Serious junk food. Greasy, salty, in your face, throw it back with a Coke junk food…and sometimes that was just the morning time! What did it matter? It was so convenient and of course cheap, right? Not really, but anyway. And it was yummy and sure,  I felt like I’d dipped my face in a vat a fat afterwards and that my insides were crying out, but whatever! And I’ve always been thin and exercised and it never made me gain weight so it’s okay I guess! Okay…so not true.

There was also a time not so many years ago that I used “regular” household cleaners on everything we own. You know…the kind that smell like a mountain breeze, the kind that foam up and turn a color so you’ll know when it’s ready to rinse and the kind that make your nostrils feel just a little prickly when you’re spraying it all around you? Yeah, there’s a reason for that.

There is a word out there.  I’ll use it…CRUNCHY. You’ve heard it, right? I mean, if you eat organically, you’re crunchy. If you breastfeed your child for more than a year, you’re crunchy. If you eat cheese from any other mammal other than a cow (i.e. goat) you’re definitely crunchy…in fact, if you eat it then you probably raise them too. If you raise them, you’re crunchy. If you consider having a baby anywhere but a hospital, you’re crunchy. If you use essential oils or homeopathic means, you’re crunchy. If you make your own crunchy granola, then you are both “crunchy” and “granola”! The list goes on and on.

I began eating much healthier, no sodas or fast food, etc several years ago. I think I just came to a point in my life where I realized that what I was eating didn’t like me as much as I thought I liked it and further more, it was just down-right, plain old, junk! Yes, I said it and I’m sorry if that offends you, but it is…it’s junk!!! Have you ever noticed that most items you buy have over 25 or 30 ingredients? Some of them (just admit it) you can’t even pronounce, let alone have an idea what it actually is. This is just it. Why eat something that you have no idea what is actually is? Is it a chemical? Is it a food? Is it a drug? Is it all of the above? There’s a reason that prior to the late 40s and early 50s, people died mostly of old age and those things associated with it…their bodies weren’t full of the crud ours is. Times really were different.

When I found out I was pregnant in 2012 my priorities with food and everything went up a few levels and I was way more strict with how whole and real I was eating. I researched, I read, I tried, I baked, I cooked and you know what I found? “Odd” ingredients I’d never thought to use before like coconut oil, millet and flax, duck eggs, etc were actually amazing!! Seriously! Not only to cook with, but they were extreme on a nutritious level. Coconut oil alone has so many health benefits that I don’t have time to start listing them. I was really missing out for years. Truly missing out on some delicious, nutritious, whole and REAL foods! We started buying from our farmer’s market the items we weren’t growing at the time and especially buying local and organic meats. Grass-fed bison (Melrose Farm in Gladys), chickens from Wild Roots Farm, etc. We know where are meat comes from now and who is raising it and how. We know they are not pumped full of medications, antibiotics, steroids and given crud food. We are eating real meat, real veggies right from the unsprayed ground and so on. We feel good about this. I’m not standing on a foodie soapbox right now my friends, I just want you to know that we have come a long way in the foods we eat and I want you to know why. We keep bees and so we have delicious, raw honey at our disposal. We have a garden of veggies and herbs and started planting fruit trees too. Let me interject here and say that we don’t even have an acre of land and our land is completely sloped in every direction. We don’t actually have a “yard”, but my husband used what we have and decided to “sow and not mow” and now our ugly, sloped non-yard is a huge garden and urban farmstead where we have bees and ducks too. We aren’t in the country…we are just outside of city limits and a Walmart is currently being built behind us….hooray! Not!

You can do this too!!! If you don’t already and decide to truly care about what you eat and not just eat for convenience sake then you can do it too and will be rewarded with a healthier body and a healthier future and a healthier outlook! BTW, we keep ducks now because not only are their eggs far richer then chicken eggs and have more protein, but my daughter and I both have reactions to chicken eggs and so we decided to keep what we eat!

On to cleaners. Okay, you know how I mentioned the whole way too many ingredients thing on food items? Yeah…same thing with cleaners. If you haven’t ever looked the back of your Scrubbing Bubbles cleaner, don’t bother because I’m about to list the craziness. Let’s use the basic All Purpose Cleaner as an example. And btw, you can find this info on www.whatsinsidescjohnson.com  so I’m not making this up to sound extreme. They list it for all to see. Okay, ingredients…here we go: n-Alkyl Dimethyl Benzyl Ammonium Chlorides and n-Alkyl Dimethyl Ethylbenzyl Ammonium Chlorides, Butoxypropanol, Alkyl Polyglycoside, Polyethylene Oxide, Ethoxylated Alcohol, Tetrasodium EDTA, Sodium Hydroxide, Fragrance, Liquitint® Blue HP Dye, Liquitint® Red ST Dye

I think the funniest of these are the dyes at the end because on their website they say that it “Provides a pleasing color.” Really? Two artificial, chemical and actually toxic dyes are included just for a “pleasing color”? Wow. Alright, well if you want to know more about these chemicals you can do the research, but I can tell you right now to buckle in before you do because what you will find is terrifyingly toxic and poisonous. And yet, we not only breathe them in freely when using them, but we spray them on our surfaces that our toothbrush sits on before we brush our teeth or we lay our food on for chopping up and then eating or you spray your child’s highchair with it, etc. You see what I’m saying here?

Enter essential oils. I changed everything about cleaning when I became pregnant. I didn’t ever want to breathe in that nastiness again, nor did I want our child breathing it or touching if possible. I started looking into essentials oils (which is a whole different novel I’ll have to write soon) and I found two very basic, very effective, very potent and very wonderful oils to clean with: Tea Tree and Peppermint. There are many others too like Rosemary and Lemon, etc, but I chose tea tree and peppermint for their bacteria cleaning power and smell. Although I’d already read amazing things on their potency with cleaning I had to be sure and test for myself. I let an item in the house form a bit of mold...not much, but enough that I could try killing it with my cleaner. I mixed (in a spray bottle) ¼ full of white vinegar (also all natural and great for cleaning), the rest with water, 30 drops of tea tree and 30 drops of peppermint (I use a large spray bottle). I sprayed it on the mold and let it sit. Came back a bit later…gone, dead, forgotten! Seriously! I hadn’t even wiped it down yet! Clearly this worked! What about my mirrors and windows? I used to use a window cleaner that “didn’t leave streaks”! Well friends, I’m happy to say that I have used this same cleaner on our stainless steel appliances, windows, mirrors, counters, baby items and I use it as a floor cleaner too and I will never ever, ever go back to anything else as long as I can get my hands on essential oils!!! Cheaper, actually and truly natural, smells great, no residue, no stickiness, no toxins or chemicals or poisons and it works AND it doesn’t leave streaks!!

So am I “crunchy”? Well, I make my own cleaner WITH essential oils no less, we keep bees and ducks and have a garden, we shop at our local farmer’s market and eat organically if we can plus some. If I’m crunchy now then I was just soggy before, drowning in grease, salt, chemicals and sugars. If this is what is considered “crunchy” then sign me up. I will gladly and proudly be labeled so if it means living out the changes that we have made!