Mission Statement

My name is Amanda, and I have recently made several life-changing decisions all within the same week. I married my best friend, left my home in Ohio and made the fifteen-hour trek to a little town in northwestern Iowa. I began my new job working at a college, and have become accustomed to sharing my living space with eighty other men.

Let me explain. My husband accepted a job as a Resident Director of said college, which means he works and lives within a male dorm on campus. Which also means I live within a male dorm on campus that contains eighty different, eccentric but enormously welcoming young men that are enjoying their first tastes of independence.

The town we currently reside in is quaint, by which I mean is itsy-witsy-bitsy. To sum it up, college students comprise the majority of this city's population. And the college only enrolls 1,200 students. The banks close at 3 p.m. and neighbors ostracize each other for mowing their lawns on Sunday. If you don't work at the college, and you don't work within the twenty-or-so businesses located "downtown," you're probably a farmer. And being surrounded by a farming community is beneficial to me as I begin to explore the path towards pseudo-veganism.

But before I can tell you that, I should probably tell you this:

My husband was diagnosed with an auto-immune disease just a few months before we were supposed to get married. After the traditional pharmaceuticals used to treat his condition failed to improve his health, his family and I began to look elsewhere. It was only after we sought the counseling of a nutritionist were we made aware that changing his diet could drastically improve his health. And it did.

And so began the memorizing of dietary restrictions, the religious readings of food labels and the coming to grips with the realization that the food our society is offering us just isn't what our bodies need. And I'm not referring to how fast food or junk food is nutritionally deficient - nearly every item in the grocery store (sans the produce section) is as nutritionally beneficial to you as sucking on a dirty gym sock. And I'm excluding the dairy and meat section purposefully - what our government has allowed to happen to the meat industry would make you gag on your gym sock.

And so the purpose of my blog is made apparent. After beginning this journey to better nutrition (and it's probable life-long accompaniment) I thought it would be beneficial to chronicle my thoughts, share the new things I've learned and help to pass along helpful tips to make others more aware of how each of us should take responsibility for what we put into our bodies.

Also, I'm a pretty crafty lady that is anxiously awaiting an invitation to Pinterest. You can be sure that once I'm invited to that sucker, I'll be updating with DIY crafts and projects inspired by the various photos I pin. I'm a real lover of restoring furniture and re-purposing old items in new, inventive and useful projects.

So this is my mission. I'll try my best to keep you informed on ways to recycle, reuse and restore old items while simultaneously sharing any knowledge I discover about nutrition and why it's become so important for individuals to self-sufficiently keep themselves nourished, instead of relying on "organic" labels to do the work for us.

In a nutshell, I hope to help you piense verde, or "think green."