Eating Real & Being Natural

I am not a back-to-basics, old-fashioned kind of gal. Just because I am an advocate for home cooking, and even cooking from scratch, does not mean I don't wear make-up and don't shave my legs. I am just your average everyday sort of woman that has found out the hard way that cooking with whole food ingredients from my home kitchen is good for me - bottom line. I am not going to stop buying white sugar, but I will, also, buy brown rice syrup and agave. I don't buy whole wheat pasta, simply because I don't like it, and I do not feel the need to make my own; but I will buy the best I can get at my local market.
I am trying hard to educate myself, so if I know a certain company is using GMO's I will not buy it. However, not all produce I buy is organic; but, it is probably locally grown.
I have developed a relationship with the food I buy; a closeness to the ingredients as a whole natural product and this is what I appreciate about what I'm doing. And I cook; this is what changed me.
When I first started eating only whole foods, I still had a few items in my cupboards that I would not buy again. I did not throw out this stuff, rather, used it - as I was on a very tight budget - and never bought it again. It was stuff like pasta sauce and packaged stuffing, some frozen vegetables, a cake mix, all of which I never bought again. Don't waste. There is somebody that can use it, if you choose not to use what you have. Just make it a point to buy the ingredients, as a whole and not a mix or a sauce. Cooking is so much easier than people think. Pasta sauce is so easy to make. If it's the middle of winter, buy a can of tomatoes - only tomatoes - and you make the sauce. Bake a cake from scratch, it is seriously not that hard, you will love what you are capable of. And just be yourself, this is not a whole person make-over, although, you will see results because you will get nourishment where it was missing - body and soul. Don't let yourself go just because your kitchen has gone all natural...