It all started with some bad news...
To everyone new to this store, welcome! I'm so glad you're here!
My name is Barb. I also answer to Basia, mama and mushroom lady (lol). I'm 40. During college years I studied psychology and physical therapy. I worked as a medical assistant right up until my husband and I started a family and I became a stay at home mom. That was roughly 12 years ago.
About 4 years into that job title our family's life changed drastically - my husband was diagnosed with Type II diabetes. Although it didn't feel that way at the time, looking back, it was the best worst news we ever received. It turned us in a direction we never expected to explore. It opened our eyes to the negative impact of our lifestyle choices, it brought us closer together, and (most importantly) made us aware of the incredible power food has on our bodies.
We began our journey by eliminating all of the processed foods from our diet, especially refined sugars. We stopped drinking our calories and began to drink more water. We replaced our old food choices with whole, real foods and mainly shopped for ingredients, or foods with ingredients we'd normally cook with at home. We incorporated fasting into our daily regimen. In three month's period we reversed my husband's diabetes. Three months. No medication.
We didn't stop there, however. We kept educating ourselves, continuing to make improvements and expanding our backyard garden. During this process many other things became apparent and important to us. We became more mindful about our plastic use footprint, food waste, composting and sustainable living. We began swapping all of our personal care and household cleaning products for non-toxic options. We also utilized home remedies and stay-healthy routines in order to minimize the use of over the counter and prescription medication.
It was during that time in which my enthusiasm for homemade goodies and my husband's mushroom growing hobby, flourished. And here we are now: fifteen raised beds deep into backyard gardening, running a suburban mushroom growing operation, always playing with new recipes and making something from scratch, feeling blessed for the bad news we got in 2014.
