Grazing works great for us: my daily priorities are allowed outside the kitchen, the kids become adept at food prep and cleanup, and everyone has enough energy to get through the day. However, it only works if we have a variety of everyone's favorites on hand. When there aren't healthy favorites around, even if there's a ton of food in the house, the default favorite becomes SUGAR.
I want to remedy this, but I don't want to be in the habit of calling all the nutritional shots. So, it's important for me to train my family to make healthy choices as they graze of their own accord. I need to do the legwork of coming up with a base inventory that is specific to my family's needs.
To get an idea of what a well-maintained Gaskin pantry should look like, I asked them, "It would make you sad if you opened the cabinets/refrigerator and WHAT things weren't there?"
Andy's list looked like this:
Coffee
Half and Half
Sugar
So I realized I needed to rephrase the question and restate my purpose. While I'm all for keeping coffee in the house, this isn't a "nice to have" list. This is a "what healthy foods do you like so much, and would keep you so satisfied, that they would keep you from reaching for the sugar?" kind of list.
I had each of them imagine we had absolutely NO food in the house, and had to restock the shelves with up to twelve things, under the condition that those items had to be something they really, really, REALLY liked, AND would sustain and optimitze their health if they had to eat it every day.
Oooooooh.
So here are the Gaskin Family's Favorite Nutritionally Dense Foods for Happy and Healthy Grazing:
Andy:
baby spinach
cheese
peanut butter
fruit spread
bananas
cashews
rice
eggs
bread
cereal
milk
Amy:
any in-season fruits and veggies
shallots
guacamole
fresh salsa
lentils/beans
greek yogurt
hummus
oatmeal
dried cranberries
sharp cheeses
nuts/seeds
olives
Ronnie:
fruit (especially blueberries, mangoes, pears)
vegetables to dip: bell peppers, cucumbers, baby carrots, broccoli, etc.
hummus
nuts
yogurt
bread
cheese
Cheerios
milk
Alexa:
refried beans
flatbread
hummus
peanut butter
milk
baby carrots
black olives
fruit (apples, bananas, strawberries)
rice
eggs
pickles
Penny:
cake
cranberries
fruit loops
soda
pink milk
yogurt
peanut butter
jelly
ice cream
star wars gummies
and no smoking
Hey, remind me to teach Penny about nutrition.
