healthy food Archives - the whole food diary

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thewholefooddiary

Making sustainable + conscious choices feel doable in real life!
Start small • Go step by step • Make it fun!
📍West Sussex 🇬🇧
Kezianeusch@gmail.com

HOW TO BUILD A MINIMAL, ECO + BUDGET FRIENDLY WARD

HOW TO BUILD A MINIMAL, ECO + BUDGET FRIENDLY WARDROBE FOR PREGNANCY! 👖
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The full chat on how I’ve approached this with my tips from mindset to actual shops is on the blog at thewholefooddiary.com/maternitywear but in short my tips are:

* Shift your mindset on clothing and voice to yourself the true cost of a new wardrobe
* Find other ways to celebrate this season besides new clothes
* Shop your own closet first!
* don’t be afraid to outfit repeat!
* Bring variety to core staples with accessories, shoes or even lipstick before adding new clothing!
* Borrow or rent first, then shop used
* buy minimally!
* Choose multitasking staples when need to buy
* Pass things on when you’re done!

Everyone’s needs are different depending on how your body changes and what your life looks like, but there are things we can all do if we’re pregnant to minimise the way we pull on the often very destructive fashion industry! Side note: did you know the fashion industry is the second largest consumer of the world’s water supply?!

More on the blog at thewholefooddiary.com

FORAGED PESTO PASTA 🌿 . There’s a thrill for

FORAGED PESTO PASTA 🌿
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There’s a thrill for me in foraging that makes a meal taste so much better. 😋 (Not that this one needs to taste better - we all love it!) But free food, packed full of nutrition, with no food miles and going spare, grown with just sunlight and rain, no irrigation or extra water... just wild. It makes me so happy. Using something that’s already there and waiting.
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Until 2 years ago I only saw nettles as a weed. 🌿 They stung me, they were messy... but then we started picking and cooking them and we LOVE them! A quick blanch/blend and the sting is gone and they have a delish sweet and nutty taste. We think they’re best blended into pesto to bring a wild element to dinner.
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The full recipe is on the blog with a video of the process just search “nettles” on thewholefooddiary.com/blog #foraging #foragedfood

Someone asked me recently: If I live in a small to

Someone asked me recently: If I live in a small town with no bulk shops - how can I reduce waste around food?

There are so many potential answers to that but when it comes to food I think the problem is more largely the waste of the food itself above the packaging - and that’s an area where we’re ALL largely able to be powerful! Did you know the FAO estimates 1/3 of all food produced globally is lost or goes to waste?! And when food goes into landfill it doesn’t decompose like in compost.
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So GOOD NEWS 🎉 : not wasting food has great ramifications in so many ways no matter how your food is grown or packaged or how you buy it!

The place I start with food waste is in how food comes into our home with some simple steps every time we shop. And bonus: simply saving waste is a MASSIVE way we save a LOT on our grocery bill too!

My food waste saving steps before I shop:
1️⃣ Look over what we have! (Do we even need to shop?! What do we actually need?)
2️⃣ Write a meal plan for the week after checking which meals we need food for, so I only buy what we need and only shop once (saving fuel and time)
3️⃣ Make sure the plan includes anything we have that needs eating, and also has 1-2 open meals for leftovers.
4️⃣ See if the meal plan is balanced budget wise and accounts for any specific ingredients I’ll need to buy. (Like if we buy a jar or salsa or fresh herbs does the plan use it all?)
5️⃣ Write a list from the plan adding only what we need, that we don’t have already!
6️⃣ Shop FROM THE LIST, with the meal plan in hand too in case I see a sale/deal I can incorporate to save money.
7️⃣ Stick the plan on the fridge and cook / eat by it!

I promise, just tweaking the shopping process saves so much waste and money!

Noooo idea why everyone keeps telling me I must “be so close.” 🤷🏻‍♀️🍉
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We actually still have ~50 days to go 😆 and we’re spending this one decompressing from 4 glorious days unplugged and sans kids this weekend. ⬆️
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It’s been 6 years since we had 3 nights away together and we soaked up every precious minute. There’s a roundup on the blog of where we went 📍 and what we did 🍽 if you want to read and see!
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OUTFIT • shoes: by @veja 4 years old • Dress: non maternity charity shop find £7 • Scarf: @madewell #gifted years ago (now I’d say no!) • Black organic linen jacket @beaumontorganic non maternity - gift from Jared last year • Earrings @able • Red lip: a heavy metal tested fave from @beautycounter “girls night” shade.💄

HOW TO START A BACKYARD CHICKEN COOP 🐓 . New p

HOW TO START A BACKYARD CHICKEN COOP 🐓
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New post on the blog with some things you’ll need to consider and decide on before starting with chickens! 👩‍💻 thewholefooddiary.com/blog/chickens 👩‍💻
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Did you know during the world wars families in the U.K. and the US were encouraged to keep a few chickens for homegrown nutrition?! You had to give up your 🥚 ration if you had 🐓 but you got a grain ration instead, and they could eat kitchen scraps making them an amazing addition in so many ways! And they still are an amazing addition if you have outdoors space so I think we should get back there! What do you think?
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We’ve had a mixed experience with chickens and some circle of life learning moments 🐍🐣😋 🙈🦅, but for so many reasons it’s something I want to do forever (and ideally move to raising meat birds too one day), and encourage other people to do to wherever they can too. For the most part they’re pretty easy birds to keep, and don’t need a ton of space or work so you can have them where a goat or cow or even kitchen garden would be harder. They provide fertiliser for the garden/soil increasing vital soil health, they can eat scraps (law depending) and provide easy nutrition for not very much money. By keeping them at home you also don’t invest in an industry and way of farming that can have real dark sides I don’t want behind my food!
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Do you have chickens?! Have you thought about it?! Drop any questions below!

Meet our new car! 🚗 In a way I’d rather write

Meet our new car! 🚗 In a way I’d rather write: “We got rid of our car and meet our new bikes”. 😆 But currently our lives need a car so the quest as in many areas was: do the best in the journey and keep going forward. And that’s this ⬆️!
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Our little electric Renualt Zoe (see previous post) couldn’t quite squeeze in 5 humans 😅, and the miles per charge (60 in winter) wasn’t enough to not borrow a petrol car regularly so we wanted to go a step up. You can see all read about why we went electric again on the blog thewholefooddiary.com/blog!

First problem in the car search: Cars that can take 3 rear car seats 💺 are few and far between and OUT of our price range (think only the Tesla Model X or Audi E-Tron 💵 💵💵).

Solution: after running the numbers on leasing and learning it had to be a new car which we didn’t want to do (see blog post) - We went for a second hand MG which even new are probably the most affordable SUV style 5 seater. We get 170 miles on a charge, and we’ll pay about £450-600 for that fuel across the year for about a 10k mile year. This car still can’t truly fit 3 car seats along the back but we discovered a genius contraption that fits three car seats in the back of a smaller car.

They’re made to order in the UK and also seem wildly unaffordable (!) 😆 BUT buying one allowed us get a much cheaper car so we waited and waited for a second hand one. Thanks eBay! It’s not my ideal flame retardant free baby seat situation - we’ll talk more about that, but it’s used, and it doesn’t detach from the car so we won’t leave baby sleeping in it for long amounts of time and it’s always all about balancing all the factors and taking the next best step for each one of us!
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I’m not much of a car person so if you ask me how it drives or anything like that I won’t have a great answer 😆 but try me on any questions you have!

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