Have You Had Your Fruit Today?

I had an unusual thought the other day as I was staring at our diminishing fruit bowl...I wonder how much fruit our family of six should actually be consuming on a weekly basis. I wonder how much fruit I should actually be purchasing each week to have on hand for our family of six. Hmmmm.

So a quick check with an on-line food pyramid shows a recommended 2 to 4 servings of fruit per day. Based on one active teen boy (4 servings), an exercising husband (3 servings), two adult women who are fairly active (2 and 3 servings), a teen girl who seems to live on air (so let's call her 2 servings) plus an 8-year-old (another 2 servings), we should be eating 16 servings of fruit per day. That would be 112 servings per week! With that in mind, I am pretty sure we are not eating enough fruit. Reports from cardiologists and oncologists even recommend 5 servings of fruit per day. And they should know!

With this startling information, I'm going to take a stab at guessing how much fruit we have been consuming based on my casual, oh-that-looks-like-enough approach at the grocery store.

A couple bunches of bananas, sometimes actually only one - 12 servings
A bag of apples - 8 servings
A bag of oranges - 6 servings
Maybe a couple of grapefruit - 2
Pre-packaged Dole-type fruit cups for lunches - 6 servings
A couple of frozen containers of 100% juice - 12 servings
A berry dessert if we're lucky - 8 servings
Dried fruit for granola - 8 servings or so

If my mental math is correct, that's about 62 servings...only about half of what we need. Yikes! So now what?

If we each ate a banana, apple, and orange or 100% juice per day per week, that would be 126 servings and more like the recommended daily requirement. Throw in a fruit dessert and perhaps dried fruit with breakfast cereal, we might actually exceed the minimum amounts and approach more healthy levels. Is it doable? It certainly looks like it on paper. If you're filling up with whole, unprocessed foods that are hopefully taking up stomach space and cravings for those other things that aren't so good for us but still call out our names, we've got to be pursuing a more healthy food intake.

But I'm not sure if I'm ready for the data: the grocery list this coming weekend would have to have a staggering 42 bananas, 42 apples, and 42 oranges. Well perhaps some of those could be minused by the fruit cups sent in lunches and dried fruit with breakfast cereal. But still...that's a whopping lot of fruit! The scary thought is that I haven't even thought about the veggie aspect yet...there are more recommended servings per day there than for fruit.

What do you think? Is it worth your health and the eating habits of your children you are responsible for to make such an effort? Is it overkill? Does it really matter what you eat? And how much would that add to the grocery bill? It sure looks like I've opened up a can of worms for myself to deal with. In the meantime, tell me your thoughts. I really would love to find out how others ensure their families truly are getting a balanced diet.

I Sure Do Miss Blogging...

I really do. I have missed blogging, twittering, catching up on my favorite blogs, and in general, being part of like-minded individuals who find a certain release in journaling on-line.

So...what has been going on since June of 2010 when my poor blog seemed to drop off the face of the earth? Well...too much, as each individual item would be worthy of its own post. And in reflection, I should have somehow carved out the time to chronicle each event. I think I would have benefited from it.

I tend to be one of those who feel that if they can't get it all caught up, then don't start anything. Perfectionism at its worst, I know. Sometimes the 'just do it now' mantra should become mine to live by. I just need to pick up where life is now and march forward.

It is interesting to look back and realize that my farm blog Abernathy Creek Farm started to deteriorate about June, this blog started running downhill in July, my 365 Project did not get updated after August, and Twitter fell out somewhere around September. Sigh. I did find more time to connect with my 'face' friends on Facebook which has been wonderful though.

I've decided less lofty goals would benefit me perhaps. Maybe start with posting monthly...sad, I know, or bringing myself to publish a post without **gasp** a perfectly edited photo. Doing a 52 week Photo Project instead of beating myself up for not capturing and uploading a photo every single day. Going back to Tweet Deck to incorporate Twitter and Facebook simultaneously because I do so miss the camaraderie of the contacts I made on Twitter...wonderful people who share similar passions as mine.

So here goes. I'm off to upload Tweet Deck to my netbook. Perhaps I'll see you on Twitter soon!

Truly Not Enough Hours in the Day

I could just post this title and then sign off. Many of you would understand. It seems lately that I just can't even find the time to sign on lately. Homeschool has started along with charter school classes. It's high school varsity football season with its booster club responsibilities and playing injuries. There are an additional three to four hours of work I now do for the care of the ten horses next door at the training barn. It's truly a case of dropping into bed exhausted.

It seems that in order for me to take the time to get on here, I had to have a two-hour window while our son had a Lisfranc fracture surgery due to a football injury during the first game of the season and the luck of having wi-fi at the hospital.

So...I haven't forgotten my little blog here. I promise to be back as random as ever. I didn't think I would miss my time here as much as I have. Perhaps giving myself another week to help rehab my 16yo who will not be able to bear weight on his foot for six-plus weeks, and perhaps another week to see what's left in the garden to eat/take care of if the rains dissipate for the fall, and perhaps yet another week for whatever life throws at us, and then I'll be back to posting with gusto.

Until then, enjoy whatever free time you have to be online. You never know when life will throw you a few good curves.

Morning Chores

Want to get a taste of what it's like raising livestock and the morning chores that go with it, or at least what one's daughters do when they're home? Check out my post from this morning at AbernathyCreekFarm.blogspot.com. Obviously, I'm missing my girls who take care of it all for us normally. But they'll be back soon...then it'll be back to easy street for me.

Loose Ends and Unfinished Business

Sometimes there is just no way to get off the roller coaster of life. There are no eject or pause buttons available to us. And when that happens, what happens to the projects that get started or suddenly arise out of necessity? They become loose ends and unfinished business.

So in case you wonder what keeps me up at night worrying, here's my current list...

I need to order fall and winter garden seeds; research food stuffs I can grow through the winter.

Want to incorporate working my way through my 15-minutes-a-day plan to purge and clean every drawer and shelf in the house; so desperately needed but just can't seem to surface to the top of the priority list.

Deep clean the barn and pitch old and broken items; yes, the girls could do this, but it just might not be as thorough as is needed.

Pick date for a garage sale. We're finally getting to the point we can sell off anything that relates anyone younger than eight.

Consolidate and purge my goat resource notebook; the loose and duplicate papers are driving me mad.

Sort through three years of digital photos and create hard copy photo albums with them through Shutterfly; perish the thought, but if they were lost due to an inability to restore them from backups, it would be a true disaster. This should get some priority I guess.

Along the same line, organize the keepsake and memorabilia and unfinished baby books of our four children. This was supposed to be done for my oldest once she turned eighteen. Now she's twenty.

Finish homeschool school planning for our eight-year-old and thirteen-year-old; this really needs to get wrapped up!

Make notes about this summer's garden so that I don't duplicate the same mistakes year after year.

Work outside including substantial weeding and mulching, researching how to prune our fruit trees, how to boost the performance of our blueberry bushes, how to improve our pastures, and in general just time to get things done.

My mother needs new flooring in her house; since my dad passed away several years ago, those type projects have fallen with our family to help orchestrate and supervise. As she would like the job done before fall starts, it is looming overhead as well.

I could list improving or monetizing my blogs...to validate the time I do spend online.

Create an on-the-fly menu plan and grocery list so that on panic weeks, I can just grab the list and send it with DH and or one of the older kids to save my sanity.

Get to some of the kid-friendly projects we collected supplies for in early spring just for the reason of doing them during 'down time' in the summer; the concept of 'down time' just makes me laugh right about now.

Our sixteen-year-old son will be needing college-level recruiting cover letters and resumes along with videos to promote his passion...football...this coming fall. Need to educate myself on how to promote athletic prospects I guess.

Of mounting importance would be helping our eight-year-old figure out what she would like to take to our county fair for 4H Clover Buds so that we can get them tagged and ready to exhibit; fair is only a few weeks away, so this is going to become VERY important REAL soon.

We have two horses; I grew up obsessed with horses; do I ride these said horses? So obviously that is another to-do item that is important to me...to take advantage of what we have now...you never know when life circumstances change and an opportunity of a lifetime might be lost forever.

Now if I sat here much longer while listening to two of my daughters help record a scripture song CD for our church, I'm sure I could add to this list. But by now I've probably lost your interest, and you might be wondering, "Lady, get your act together!" So I will leave this topic...get back to the business of life...and continue to chip away at this list albeit slower than I would prefer.