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Fast Food by Christian Cable, on Flickr

We have been slowly unplugging ourselves from fast food over the past several years. We’ve gone from four drive-thru meals a week down to one, two if there’s an emergency. And the emergencies have been fewer as we become more accustomed to prepping our meals days and hours ahead. Meat not taken out of the freezer used to be an emergency, now it’s an opportunity to stretch my culinary imagination. I find I am craving that unique McDonald’s flavor less, the less frequently I have it. I thought I would experience an “absence makes the heart grow fonder” reaction, but instead it’s been much more like “out of sight, out of mind.” Because we are financially limited and have what passes these days for a large family, we tend to go for the least expensive options: McDonald’s, Taco Bell and very rarely Subway.

But as I’ve learned more and more about where my food comes from, I find fewer and fewer menu items I’m willing to purchase. Burgers? No, CAFO meat. Tacos? No, GMO corn (actually, that applies to every single menu item, but in some places it’s more obvious than others.) Fries? No, bad oil. Deli meat sub? No, nitrates and MSG. Salad? No, flavorless and full of pesticide residue. Soda? Ooh, tempt me why don’tcha? No, GMO corn, chemicals, preservatives and darned addictive to boot.

After (permit me brag just a little) John got the highest Honors Chemistry 2 score in his entire school, took the SAT and the ACT and put away his school stuff for the summer, I took him out for a sundae to celebrate. He knew just what he wanted, but there I stood looking at the menu for what must have seemed like an eternity to the kid behind the counter. I ended up getting nothing, and just popped a Godiva chocolate pearl in my mouth to suck on. I couldn’t find anything to eat at Dairy Queen. How weird is that? I felt like a space alien. I came home and made myself a nice little salad and kicked myself for not having the ingredients ready for a homemade sundae instead.

My problem, however, now lies in my traditions. We have always gone out as a family, to a sit-down-inside fast food meal on our way to church on Saturday nights. We have to leave the house by 3PM, so we just have a light lunch that day and skip the dinner dishes. It gives me a nice rest from the non-stop cooking and dishes routine, gives us a chance to sit down and chat with each other, and a chance for everybody to eat something they enjoy that is forbidden within our own four walls. But I no longer enjoy it. I can taste chlorine in the drinks, I can envision the CAFO, miles of monocropped corn, and see the butterflies dying after landing on the GMO corn silks. We can’t afford more expensive places: fast food already costs about $35-40 for one meal for all of us.

As I see it, we have four choices.

1. Skip the meal out. Eat at home and let the dishes sit until we get back from church at about 9PM. I don’t like the idea of losing my rest day, but…
2. Let the family eat whatever they want out. I’ll eat at home before we go where I am comfortable with my food choices. The spoiled brat in me cries foul at the idea.
3. Fast. Just skip that meal entirely. As you can imagine, the kids and hubby don’t like that idea.
4. Just eat. One meal won’t kill me, and it will prove to the hubby that I’m not the orthorexic (obsessed with eating only healthy types of foods) that he swears I’m becoming.

I’ve borne the consequence of our new foodstyle most joyfully. I’ve cooked, cleaned, prepped, menued, listed, shopped, researched, studied, read, asked, investigated and plan to continue. This one change—not eating out—threatens me most. My mom hates that she is now of retirement age and no one is letting her retire from her cooking duties. “You could always retire from eating, I suppose,” I tell her. As humorous it is when my mom rails against having to cook yet another dinner and clean up after, it is not quite so funny when it’s my own Sabbath rest we’re talking about!

So, be careful, little brain what you learn. Knowledge, once yours, is a bell that can’t be unrung.

This post is part of Real Food Wednesdays, hosted this week by Cheeseslave.