The fun of trying to keep our fun -dye free- in summer

How's your summer going folks!? So far we've been pretty busy! I have to say the challenge of trying to keep our foods healthy and with out dyes has been a bit exhausting this week. (Oh yeah it's only Tuesday btw--lol)
I never really put much though into how much I have had to change from the past until this week.

First off we went to "The Highland Games" this weekend. For those who don't know it's a kind of festival with bands, Scottish folk dancers, bag pipers, sporting events (soccer, rugby, telephone tossing-or as the Scot's call it Caber tossing) A fun time!
Of course you have to eat, after  paying to get in your going to stay at this for some time, and my in laws have a booth there every year for our clan so it's always a full to half day event.
So we head off to the Scottish "Food Court", you know the line of food vendors. Some are homemade, some a things like funnel cakes from a bag of pre-mixed dough.
So we go and with long lines, and hot weather as you can guess it does not make me want to hold things up asking "what is in your food" to the booths.
I try to make the best choice I can (honestly packing our own food would have probably been the best answer but I hate to be the stick in the mud of the fun of a festival).
So you then get to witness a bit of a debate between my husband and myself because he is hot, crabby, hungry, and just wants to feed the kids what they want (can't be that bad right?)
On the other hand there is me, also hot, hungry, crabby, and not wanting to give in per-say because I work hard all week to keep junk out of our bodies. Plus I know it can be that bad as Will having food dye will = melt down crazy child and I just don't need that. Will was wanting a corn dog, but not knowing what's in it I just do NOT want to chance it.
So after some looking I find there is a Scottish Cattle (farm raised no hormones etc) booth. Yeah!! However it's white bread bun, and hfcs Ketchup--boo!!! We did give on fresh made lemonade as it was sooooo stinking hot that day.

Next up was my daughter's B-day!

Exciting, and daunting. I knew I was not going to have time to make her cake, so what do I do? Thinking I could get something good at Whole Foods, that will be good right!?
I got mini cup cakes, but did I read the Ingredient list!? No *doh!*
Now there wasn't any food dye so that was a plus but seriously I should have sucked it up and made it because the stuff in it was better, but not clean eating that was for sure. I read an article on cakes on 100 days of real food by The Food Babe today, and for those wanting some ideas on better cakes I'd read this!  We were able to find a good Popsicle alternative though!! Frozen chocolate dipped bananas!! I bought them pre-made but seriously I need to do these myself because I am sure the kids would love to make them, they are about as healthy as a Popsicle might get in my opinion, and the kids love them!

So the last hump for this weeks is Vacation Bible Camp, or as I call it: Attack of snack time. Ugh!

I have to admit I didn't really think much about it, then Will asked me about snacks when we were leaving. He recalled last year they had things that would have food color.
Gotta hand it to the little guy, because he is totally thinking about these things even better than I am at times. We grabbed an alternative snack and I talked to the ladies in charge when we got there. Luckily we were good for the first day and I was pretty excited to see the first day snack was veggies, so no worries there. Today was a different story though, they were having Gram crackers, frosting (blue or white) with Swedish fish (it's an under sea theme) He just had the Gram crackers and they un-knowingly let him have white frosting (because white frosting doesn't have food dye in it right? WRONG!) Yes our old friend Yellow 5 and Red 40 are in white frosting-oh joy.
I know the ladies running it have no idea (why would white frosting have food dye in it anyways?), I could tell when I got him he was a little more "ramped up" than normal and that's taking into account that he was in a camp setting. So I asked him about it and looked it up and yep there it was, all pre-made frosting (unless it's chocolate) has dye in it.
So we'll just bring a snack the remainder of the week (I do know tomorrow is mandarin oranges with blue jello so we could do the oranges....not that I love fruit soaked in sugar juice)

So what is the point of my rambles? It's darn hard to keep food dye's out of your life. There is this circle of thought and emotion I go through when I stop to think about it:
It makes me frustrated with the FDA and food companies that we can't have choices with safe food colors. Then it also make me frustrated that I need to make the time to do it myself, and not rely on the fast (and yeah I'll say it Lazy) way of dealing with food.
I hate some days having to be "THAT" parent with food issues, yet at the same time I am glad we are not just eating everything blindly. I don't expect people to make special provisions for us, yet sometimes I wish the world would wake up and care more. Then I get mad that I should have to be this diligent because as I find out more and more do we really know what is in our food, meat, milk!? I sometimes think I do and they find out that if I didn't do it myself I have no idea.

What do you think?
I hope to have more meal plans and recipes up soon, just getting back on track and our menu this week has been pretty basic and hardly feels talking about ;)