Top 8 things to cut expenses on so you can spend more on quality groceries

Oct 23, 2009 by

  1. Restaurant meals
  2. Soda
  3. Junky snacks
  4. Cable TV
  5. Movies in the theater
  6. Electronic gadgets and video games
  7. New cars
  8. New clothes

Related post: “Reaching the Promised Land: Home Style or Restaurant” Style? https://www.thehappydinnertable.com/2009/09/28/reaching-the-promised-land-home-style-or-restaurant-style/

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Following the Caveman Part I: The Meat Problem

Jun 26, 2009 by

Royalty free caveman

Though I lost five pounds in my first six days on the Caveman Diet, I don’t think the unintentional weight loss resulted from cutting out the bad stuff alone. I think it was equally due to not eating enough good stuff.  I felt better than usual, but leaner and hungrier.

I recently discovered the Caveman Diet, aka the Paleolithic Diet, or the Stone Age Diet, or the hunter-gatherer diet.  The more I’ve looked into it, the more convinced I’ve become that it’s the optimal way of eating for humans, for life, the way our bodies were designed to be nourished.  The anti-fad diet, it’s the original human diet, as the name indicates. It also appears to be the solution to…

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Hunger: To Fear or Not to Fear?

Dec 19, 2008 by

Children must eat or they will die.  Does that fact scare you or give you a sense of power?

When it comes to eating, in many American families, the children are successfully controlling the fearful parents, who are in turn unsuccessfully trying to control the children.

I heard last week yet another mom complain, “Little Caiden has eaten nothing but tater tots and pickle loaf for the past week.” Another mom sees what I feed my kids and tells me, “My kids would never eat that. How do you get them to eat that?”

All I wonder is: who is furnishing the tater tots and pickle loaf or whatever else that enables a child to refuse perfectly good Real Food and live?  And why?

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The Perils of Monday Meatloaf: A Recipe for Disaster

Dec 15, 2008 by

Janet makes meatloaf every Monday. Every Tuesday it’s spaghetti. And so on and so forth. Ad nauseum. It’s no wonder she doesn’t enjoy grocery shopping, making dinner, or eating it, either, truth be told. It’s just a job. Just think how her children feel.

“The wise mother does not say, ‘I always give my children so and so,’” wrote educational reformer Charlotte Mason. “They should not have anything ‘always’; every meal should have some little surprise.”

Too little variety in the diet week after week makes for a child who is “inadequately nourished, simply because he is tired of it,” according to Mason. 

One study indicates that at least to some degree, food is only good for you if you enjoy it. (https://www.thehappydinnertable.com/2008/12/06/it-doesnt-matter-if-she-likes-brocoli-as-long-as-she-eats-it-or-does-it/).

Enjoyment of…

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