Welcome!

I've recently embarked on a new journey.  A food journey.  I love food, but for most of my life I was loving the wrong food.  Processed junk food was the staple of my diet since I was a kid.  As a result, even when I was at my fittest, I never felt that healthy.  After I had Kiddo, I had put on a good 40 pounds.  I dieted and exercised and lost those 40 pounds.  I still don't have my body back and my diet was still not the best.  

Last fall, I stumbled on the 100 Days of Real Food blog http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/  I was inspired to "clean up" my family's eating.  Since then, I started taking baby steps into cleaning up our diets.  We switched a lot of foods we loved to organic versions (like instead of Cheese Its, we get Annie's cheese crackers). Kiddo (unknowingly) switched from eating regular chicken nuggets and french fries to vegetarian versions.  Then, in March, I signed up for The Fresh 20.  Its a meal planning service with multiple menu options for different dietary needs including Vegetarian and Gluten free.  Since March, I have been primarily vegetarian.  What does that mean? Well, eating out as a vegetarian sometimes leaves me with a gross house salad as my only option for food.  Now in those cases, I'll opt for a not so vegetarian, yet still healthy-ish meal.  I show at a lot of horse shows and there is hardly any option for anything not deep fried much less vegetarian at those so one weekend a month a BLT wrap was my lunch.

Not long after discovering The Fresh 20, I found the documentary Forks Over Knives. I fell asleep before it was over, but I have found that it is on Netflix as well and I'm definitely planning on finishing it as soon as I get some free time!  Everyone should definitely check out this documentary!!  I loved the first half and can't wait to finish it!! 

Where did the blog name come from? 

I'm a country girl at heart.  Our house is in a neighborhood in a fairly rural part of Maryland.  I basically grew up on a farm though.  When I was 12, I started riding lessons.  Since then, I spent every weekend at the farm doing anything they needed help with.  At 17, I bought my first horse, that I still own, and then spend every day at the barn as soon as I was out of school and had to be dragged home for dinner and homework. I'm actually still at the same barn, every day, and taking Kiddo along for the crazy beautiful ride of farm life.
The Crunchy Granola part is just a combo of 2 terms my bosses call those people that are just a bit out there with their "I need to be in touch with nature" beliefs.