Easily Excitable

The past few weeks, I’ve been reading a book about how wrecked our mitochondria are and, as a result, how poor our metabolic function is. 

What a soft, gentle opening for your Saturday reading. 

I apologize, and I promise the rest of this writing will be predominantly positive. 

One of the premises of this book, though, is that we’ve got to start eating better. I can get behind that. 

One of the author’s ideas is that a large percentage of working on your diet is, quite simply, cutting out ultra processed foods. 

Check…for the most part. 

Sure, I like to splurge every once in a while, but during the week, Trey and I do pretty well with abstaining from processed foods. 

And by that, I mean that I have adopted a strict NO FUN rule in our home Monday-Friday. 

Guardrails, folks: they’re important.

At any rate, feeling pretty good on our ‘fewer ultra processed principle,’ I decided I really needed to crank up the ‘no fun + much health’ kick a notch. 

How do we get healthier here? What is the next order of business on the totem pole? 

My conclusion? Organic food. 

Here’s a little backstory on that “O” word. 

I was raised by a school teacher and an old-school (he’s gonna LOVE that) farmer. 

Growing up, the Meadows family creed was such: “A house where home cooked, convenience, and chaos meet.” 

(That motto only won because “Our kids belong in a circus” isn’t socially acceptable. Sorry, Momma and Daddy.)

That home cooked, convenient, and chaotic environment didn’t have the space or the cash flow for the hoity-toity nature of organic food. 

I remember fistfighting my siblings on aisle six at the Piggly Wiggly over which value sized, store brand bag of cereal we’d be getting that week. 

Coco Dino Bites? 

That’s a situation that would make organic gather its skirts and run for the hills.

I grew up sitting at the table as a family, enjoying plates of Le’Seur peas and chicken tetrazzini.

Delicacies. But, not organic.

And as I got older, I started helping grow our food. You know I love to garden. But what we grow? We like our tomatoes with a little sprinkling of glyphosate. 

A little Roundup never hurt nobody, right? Right?!

To my dad, organic is the epitome of silliness.

That belief was one he passed on to his middle child.

He says that ‘organic’ is an expensive ruse; after all, there are just some things you can’t grow organic. (Case in point? Peaches and tomatoes.)

Growing up in this way, you can imagine his face when I told him that, after reading this book, I’m starting to actually buy organic vegetables. 

He just about laughs me out of the house every time I mention it. 

I’m trying to avoid herbicides and pesticides, though, Dad: let me live! 

So, Trey and I are giving organic vegetables a shot. 

I have done seemingless endless searches online to find an option that won’t lose us our cottage and all financial freedom we have. 

Sustainably-raised, organic meat will be next on the docket, but we aren’t there yet. 

I figure the best plan of attack for cleaning up your mitochondria (WHO EVEN AM I?!) is doing the Dave Ramsey style of snowballing your organics. 

This comes from his debt snowball, which is closely related to organic food because, expensive as it is, you are apt to NEED the debt snowball if you don’t do it the right way. 

So I stumbled across this vegetable delivery service called Misfits Market. 

And that, after all the prelude, is what this writing is about. 

We’ve gotten three deliveries so far (with another coming next Wednesday), and I have some thoughts (surprise, right??).

The whole premise of Misfits Market? 

Ugly vegetables. Seriously. (Now, Daddy would argue that the ONLY kind of vegetables you can grow organically is ugly ones.)

Misfits Market is an online service that sells and delivers organic vegetables that are too ugly or mis-sized for the grocery store. 

It cuts down on waste, and it’s a good way to get the organic veggies while also funding our wild, singlewide trailer lifestyle. 

I was hesitant to subscribe to this service, but after three shipments, I can tell you that, for right now, this is a winner. 

So, naturally, I had to write about it. 

Now, here’s what I like about this service:

1. It’s not overly expensive. 

Is it more expensive than in-store organic? 

I’m not sure. But it does keep us from a lot of impulse buys we might make in Kroger. 

2. There is a lot of variety. 

Our beloved Dr. Oja, our fairy godmother of functional medicine, tries to aim to eat something in the ballpark of 30-40 different types of vegetables a week. 

WHAT THE BROCCOLI. 

Now, this gets kind of hard at the Kroger. 

It’s easy to get overwhelmed, and either 

1. buy obscure plants you won’t eat, or 
2. buy the same peppers, carrots, and potatoes you’ve been eating on a weekly rotation for the past 8 years. 

It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there.

But, there is something about being able to see individual types of veggies on Misfits Market that somehow makes it all a little easier to buy a more diverse range that you will actually use. 

What’s more, those vegetables come in a wide array of colors, as another Oja-ism is to “eat the rainbow.”

3. It’s keeping us out of the Kroger. 

Did I mention we can really put some work in when it comes to throwing things we don’t need into our cart? We are notorious for impulse buying. 

What’s more, Kroger runs make our weekends a lot more chaotic, as there is one less thing to consider doing. 

Previously, my favorite Wednesday activity was listening to my podcasts and shopping their sales ad, but now with Misfits Market, there is a new thing to look forward to:

That brown vegetable box sitting on my doorstep!  

Is it waking up before the sunlight with a new PDF Kroger ad with my morning coffee? 

No. But it’ll do. 

P.S: We had to go to Kroger last weekend, and if I told you how much we spent on groceries, it would make you nauseous. 

Here’s a list of the veggies we’ve ordered over the past three weeks:

• Sweet Potatoes
• Baby Carrots
• Baby Bok Choy
• Broccoli Niños
• Cauliflower
• Mystery Bunched Carrots
• Cremini Mushrooms
• Red Potatoes
• Mini Seedless Cucumbers
• Beefsteak Tomatoes
• Bunched Red Radishes
• Small Acorn Squash
• Grape Tomatoes
• Leek
• Hydroponic Butter Lettuce
• Tri-Color Bell Peppers
• Mini Sweet Pepper Medley
• Caesar Salad Kit
• Small Hass Avocados
• Mystery Mushroom Sampler
• Purple Sweet Potatoes
• Purple Garlic
• Lucy Glo Apples,
• Blood Oranges
• Yellow Onions
• Southwest Chopped Salad Kit
• Mixed Baby Potatoes
• Honeynut Squash
• Acorn Squash
• Yellow Potatoes
• Cauliflower
• Avocado Oil
• Bunched Broccoli
• Brussels Sprouts
• Red Cabbage
• Green Cabbage

Look, that’s a lot of food. 

But my husband is known for eating enough for five people. 

Some might be prompted to ask how we cook some of this stuff. 

And here is my unapologetic rule of thumb for most all parts of life, specifically those parts of life that take place in the kitchen: 

Just about anything can be roasted. 

That will work for about 70% of the above list.

At the beginning of the week, I did a big roasted pan of acorn squash, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes, and it may have been my favorite thing I’ve cooked in a while. 

For those other foods, I do something that isn’t took terribly difficult, such as: 

Putting it in a soup

Soup is the most versatile and beloved part of winter. 

In the past few weeks, I’ve made taco soup, tortilla soup, and Italian lentil sausage soup. Let the soup times roll. 

Eating it fresh.

Guacamole, pico de gallo, and ceviche have been doing some rounds at our singlewide here recently. 

Fall = Football = Appetizers

‘Nuff said. 

Plus, I’m all for ‘nomming some raw veggies. 

It’s about that time for some winter-orange skin. Queue the carrots. 

Cooking it on the Stovetop

I riced two cauliflowers a couple of weeks ago for some decent fried rice. I thought it was mediocre (not my best work), but Trey seemed to really enjoy it. 

I also made a tomato sauce with some fresh garlic, assorted mushrooms, tomatoes, and some herbed oil. It smacked. 

I also boiled some potatoes. (that might just be the most boring sentence I’ve ever written, but it’s true. And it happened on the stovetop)

If absolutely nothing else, Misfits Market has been a great conversation piece. 

I told my 10th graders about it, and now, they like to look at my cart online and ask why we buy what we buy. 

I get to tell them all about why they should eat the rainbow, other than their weekly consumption of Skittles. 

This has led to some highly interesting conversations about the differences in color amongst sweet potato varieties and just how this can affect our micronutrient intake. 

They are learning. (And I swear we are talking about English, too!)

On Wednesdays, Trey and I will take all of the vegetables out of the box, lay it out, and take a picture. 

I then stick said-picture on the weekly Powerpoint, and on Thursdays, the kiddos get about five minutes of learning about vegetables. 

Also of note: the children are also highly concerned about Trey’s potato intake. 

We got several varieties of potatoes in one week, and they OF COURSE pointed it out. 

I told them how many potatoes he eats in a day, and they collectively blanched. 

They had much to say about how that probably wasn’t good for him. 

It’s dangerous to throw Takis from a glass house, kiddos (especially when you’re holding a full sugar Mountain Dew in your other hand as you do!). 

So, Misfits Market? For us? 

It’s been a slam dunk. 

Here’s a link that’ll shoot you on over to shopping for ugly veggies. For transparency sake, I will get $10 toward my next order if you use it. 

So, don’t feel pressured. 

If you happen to use it, I promise we will (most likely) use that discount to buy 10 more pounds of potatoes for Trey. 

What can I say? 

They really are the world’s most versatile vegetable.