label obsession

i was just tryin' to make some dinner. and then it happened. it never used to matter. i never cared to look. but now, every thing i touch, when i take it out of the cupboard or before it goes in my shopping cart, i have to read the label. what's in it? how many ingredients? can i pronounce the words? a meal i've made before, lots of times actually, turned into an eye opening experience. chicken nuggets, garlic smashed potatoes and tossed salad. seems easy enough, pretty straight forward. let's start with the chicken. i used a recipe for homemade chicken nuggets from lisa over at 100 days of real food. i was out of homemade whole wheat bread crumbs so i grabbed some packaged stuff i had in the fridge. big difference in ingredients in plain breadcrumbs vs. panko. check it out. i really need to re-up my supply of the homemade stuff.

next up was grated cheese. my dad is pretty awesome and surprised me with a big bag of freshly grated parmesan cheese he picked up at the italian market.

i'd much rather have that than this!

yikes!

next is the garlic smashed potatoes. my husbands favorite. i use parmesan cheese, butter, half & half and a boatload of garlic. check out the ingredients in the half & half. the container on the left is a major grocery store brand. on the right is stuff from a local farm. it's called half & half cause its half milk and half cream. what the heck is disodium phosphate?

(it's a anti-caking additive, um, no thanks!)

  

moving on to the salad...we love love love good seasons dressing. but now we like to make our own with oil, vinegar, herbs from my spice cabinet and we leave out the xanthan gum, maltodextrin, guar gum and citric acid.

so there ya have it folks, check your labels. why eat all this nonsense when it's just as easy to eat real foods! thanks for reading.

amy~