Well it's spaghetti and meatballs, Naturally.

So today is a chilly, cloudy, late fall day - a great day for sauce! I just perfected my sauce recipe a few weeks ago - and I'm sharing it with you :) Here you go!

For the meatballs:
1 lb ground turkey
1 lb organic turkey sausage (if you can find it... if not, just stick to the turkey!)
1 egg
1 1/2 cups whole wheat bread crumbs
Italian seasonings - I use a dried herb mix, you can use whatever you like. I prefer something with basil, oregano, parsley, garlic, onion, black pepper, thyme, and rosemary.
1 tbsp MSG free Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup natural grated Parmesan cheese

Mix together, form into balls, and bake at 350 for about 15 - 20 minutes

For the sauce:
1 cup minced onion
5 - 6 cloves of garlic, crushed
28 oz. organic crushed tomatoes
12 oz. organic tomato paste
13 oz. organic tomato sauce
2 - 3 tbsp pure cane sugar
Fresh basil - chopped
Fresh oregano - chopped
Fresh thyme - chopped
Fresh rosemary - chopped
3 bay leaves
1/2 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp italian seasonings
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp celery salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
1 1/2 - 2 cups water

In a heavy pot, saute onions and garlic over medium heat until well browned. Stir in crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, tomato sauce, and water. Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Add the meatballs, cover, and simmer for as long as possible, but for the best results at least 4 hours. Serve over whole wheat pasta and top with a little more Parmesan cheese, and enjoy! =)

Please hold, our country seems to be experiencing some technical difficulties

This morning when I was checking my email one of the stories on the main page caught my attention, so I decided to check it out. It was Yahoo!'s article about new computer life span (click the link to read it yourself). They are now projecting that a VAST majority of the new laptop and notebook computers that we buy will last on average a year or so - at the most, three years. Is it just me or is there something wrong with this picture? This is EXACTLY the kind of thing that is causing a huge problem with our country. We pour hundreds and thousands of dollars into electronics and other entertainment items, and it seems (yes, I'm going there) that the manufacturer's are intentionally making them more likely to break down after a short amount of time so that we have to go out a buy a new one in a year. Think with me about the cycle, we throw out an old computer (and honestly, do you REALLY know where that's going?), spend anywhere from $300 - $1500 on a new one, it breaks "somehow" in a year and a half, we throw it away, spend $300 - $1500 on a new one, it breaks in a year and a half... the cycle goes over and over again. Now I'm aware that everything in life is in a constant state of deterioration, but I KNOW that computers can be made to NOT break in a matter of months or a year. This all goes along with what I said about being greener and not creating more waste for our planet. If we want to be able to live a healthy lifestyle, we need to keep the world we live in healthy as well, and the massive amounts of waste that we are producing needlessly is rapidly accelerating the disrepair of this world. Wake up, America, and stop letting yourself be taken advantage of.

The first step of a long journey

So here we are... or, I am anyway. If you read the "About Me" section of this blog, you know why I'm writing this, so I'm hoping you're here to either join or support me in my efforts. This is the merely the first of many steps that need to be taken on this journey. This probably will not be an enlightening or motivational post but we have to start somewhere, and I guess the beginning is best.

As I said before, until just recently I lived a very "American" lifestyle. I love convenience, and I love "good" food - Burgers, Pizza, White bread, and pretty much anything fried. And if I'm being REALLY honest I have to say that I didn't think much (okay, at all) about what was going into my body or what I was contributing to my carbon footprint (I am now convinced that being "green" and being "natural" go hand in hand.) Until recently, that is.

A few months ago I stumbled upon my good friend Dana's blog, cleverly entitled "Clean out your pantry". Intrigued, I asked her what it was all about, and what she told me planted itself in my brain and, although I didn't know it at the time, the roots began to grow deeper. Over the next few months I learned more and more about the new lifestyle she adopted and the benefits of that lifestyle, so I decided to test this idea. I started gradually, switching over certain products just to try them out and see if there was any truth to what she was talking about. It wasn't until a few weeks later when I started getting sick and, instead of taking medicine, I followed Dana's advice and loaded up on garlic, water, protein, and vitamins. I kept up a natural immune strengthening regiment throughout the next few weeks and never got sick, even while I watched everyone around me catch a brutal cold. After that point, I became a true believer in the benefits of a natural lifestyle. In the weeks since then I have done more and more research on living naturally and exactly what that means and, with some guidance from lovely Dana, I have decided to make it my mission to make the change to a natural and organic life. I started searching in the Bible to see what God had to say about the whole thing, and that is where I found Deut. 8:7 - 10 - The verse that you see underneath my blog title. I truly believe that we should live the way God intended us to, consuming that which He provides for us, without adding to that with man man chemicals and hormones.

Luckily I have a wonderful man who supports me in this endeavor and provides me with resources to assist me in this journey. A few days ago he shared with me a blog/website he found, www.pathtofreedom.com, about a modern urban household that is now living naturally and are almost completely self sustained. After some discussion we decided that this was something we wanted to do, so we are now planning to move further out to the country where we can have a little more land to implement our plan. That is the ultimate goal. To build a self sustaining life for ourselves and our family and to help others see the benefits in such a lifestyle. This blog is meant to document that journey - the advances, set backs, and accomplishments. I invite you to follow me, in reality if you're brave enough, or here if you are not ready to take that step. After all, that's what this journey is all about, taking one step at a time...