FAQs

These are the top 5 questions I get asked. Chances are if you have a question for me you will find it answered here! If not, please email me at mywholefoodfamilyblog AT gmail DOT com.


1. How do you get your husband and kids on board with healthy eating?

When I first started to change the way I ate I didn't really change anything for the rest of the family. I just made a few simple switches for myself and it evolved from there. As I am the one planning the meals and cooking for the family, I can make sure that we only have the good stuff available. I know all too well that if there is junk food in the pantry I will eat it! It did help that my kids were very little and don't really know any different.

I don't tell my husband what he can and can't eat, and I don't regulate what my kids eat at a birthday party for example. They are free to choose what they like, although we do talk beforehand about the types of foods that might be on offer and how certain foods can taste good but make your body feel not so good. My 6 year old has a pretty good understanding of this now and will choose not to eat brightly coloured lollies and icing etc as he knows they give him a tummy ache.

2. Why are so many of the recipes on your site unhealthy?

When I started this blog in 2008 it was all about baking and yep, there was a LOT of sugar being consumed! You can see as time goes on that the types of foods I blogged changed and this was the natural progression as our way of eating changed.

There are 3 reasons why I don't remove the old recipes. Firstly, this is my personal blog and I love being able to look back on what we were doing back then, how little the kids were and what our lives were like. Second, when I need inspiration for what to cook I can flick back through the archives and choose something to make again in a healthier way. Third, it reminds me of just how far we have come! Changing to a wholefoods diet is a process that takes years and if you try to do it all overnight it's pretty well guaranteed to fail. We've come a long way these past few years and that's pretty awesome.

3. What does a typical day of food look like in your family?

Our weekday meals are pretty simple. We save the complicated or time-consuming things for the weekend.

Breakfast - generally smoothies or eggs (or both) for the kids. The smoothies we make are really a meal in a glass and are packed with extra goodness from berries, pumpkin seeds, avocado or coconut oil (check out my favourite green smoothie). My husband has weetbix with fruit nearly every day without fail. My favourite breakfast is 2 eggs poached in broth with a handful of leftover veggies thrown in. Not to everyone's taste but I love it!

Lunch - I always do a big enough batch of dinner that my husband can take leftovers to work and if there's any left I get some too. If I didn't had eggs for breakfast then eggs are my go-to lunch.

Dinner - you can find our dinners on my weekly Menu Plan Monday posts. You will see I am a big fan of slow cooking and big-batch meals and we always plan for one DIY meal per week, usually on a Friday as no leftovers are required for work the next day.

Dessert - we don't tend to have dessert very often but because I bake so much there are always muffins, brownies, fudge etc in the freezer. The kids have those sorts of treats for afternoon tea usually rather than dessert.

4. What do your kids eat for lunch?

My 2 big boys at school have quite different lunchboxes.

Mr 6's typical lunchbox will always have some sort of protein (often sausage, meatballs or a chicken drumstick leftover from dinner or even just a boiled egg), 2 serves of veggies (tomato, cucumber and red capsicum are favourites at the moment), some fruit (kiwi fruit, strawberries or apple at the moment) and something baked like a homemade muffin or muesli bar.

Mr 5 is my difficult eater. He has some sensory issues around food in particular and a very limited range of foods are acceptable to him. He loves fruit normally but it always comes home from school because he doesn't like it sitting there so long. So he always has a sandwich (peanut butter or cheese) on homemade spelt and seed bread, something baked (usually with hidden veggies) and a little tub of natural yoghurt with a drizzle of honey and some berries stirred through. I try not to give him exactly the same thing every day and will always change something up, even if its just cutting his sandwich into triangles instead of squares. There's huge room for improvement here but at this stage it's more important to get some food into him so he has energy to learn and play at school.

5. What do you have in your pantry?

We are lucky enough to have a walk in pantry at our new house but it's always surprising to people that it's not absolutely crammed with stuff. I do buy bulk pantry items like 12.5kg bags of spelt flour and 3kg bags of almonds but they all get stored in the chest freezer in the shed and small amounts transferred to glass storage jars in the pantry as we need them.

My must-have pantry items are: wholemeal spelt flour, pink salt, coconut oil, coconut cream, shredded coconut, tomato passata, brown rice, basmati rice, coconut sugar, vanilla beans, dried herbs and spices, yeast, rice malt syrup, raw honey, natural sultanas, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, linseeds, raw almonds, natural peanut butter and rice milk.