Why another food blog?

In my efforts to feed our large family of eight, I have three main struggles.

1. The first is our one-income military-pay budget. I allow myself a food budget of 9-9.5% of our monthly take home pay. With that money I buy all of our groceries, dog food, and cleaning supplies. We eat out as a family maybe twice a year. Subway is as "fast food" as we get, and that's a very rare treat.
2. My second challenge is providing healthy, balanced food with enough variety that we don't get bored. There's not much worse than a boring, predictable food repertoire. It's easy to fall into the trap of repeating the same quick meals for lack of time and ideas, but I try my best to avoid that pitfall. Quality fuel (nutrition) results in quality performance (health).
3. The last struggle I have in providing food for my family is rooted in my upbringing. I come from a family of really good cooks and grew up in a community of nearly equally good cooks. From the beginning I stood little chance of avoiding becoming a food snob. I want fresh, quick, delicious food, not sodium and preservative laden packaged crap food products.

I'm emptying our house of all the really good stuff that makes everything taste so greatthe dreaded "white stuff"... white sugar, white flour, white rice, corn syrup. Being the perennial tightwad that I am, that means we'll be using it up and replacing it with the healthier brown stuff as we go, rather than totally purging. We have a nearly vegetarian diet, eating a little chicken, turkey, or fish once or twice a week. And I'm a big believer in using herbs rather than synthetic chemicals to heal our bodies; athough synthetic chemicals certainly have their place and are sometimes the best option.

My prayer is that some of what we're doing might serve to encourage someone else out there to produce healthier bodies and happy tummies for their family.