Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Guilt

I have a lot of "guilt" associated with food, especially when it comes to my kids.  In general I feel like it is my job, as a mom, to instill healthy eating habits in my children and make sure they get all the nutrition they can now.  When they *leave the nest* they can do whatever they want.  But, I can bet that when they are on the therapist couch or in the doctors office they won't be saying "my dad....", it's always "my mom....".  My husbands job, when it comes to food is to get the drinks ready for dinner.  Wait, I take that back, he grills (and, by they way is an awesome griller!).  I pick the menus, I come up with the latest "rule" about food in our house (like only fruit or veggies in between meals), I do the research, I do the grocery shopping, and I am the one that falls short, most times.  Really, I try, but I am just lazy.

In a perfect world I would make (most) things from scratch, we would eat lots of fruits and veggies, we would never take a trip through the drive through, my kids would love all my meals, there would be wonderful dinner conversation (with no fighting, arguing or "I don't like this"), and I am pretty sure I would be a size 8.  But, I don't live in a perfect world!  We do our best with fruits and veggies, we don't eat many prepackaged foods...  you get the point.  And I feel guilty for every short cut I take!

Saturday, October 2, 2010

I'm not a good cook

My kids will tell you I'm a great cook... they're wrong.  I can read.  That's my *secret*.  I am constantly amazed by tv shows, like Iron Chef, that give people an ingredient, or several and they make these amazing things.  If you were to give me a dozen ingredients... or even 1 I would be searching for a cookbook to tell me what to do with it.  I have a large slab of beef in my fridge now, I think it's a chuck roast, that I got at the grocery store when they had a special... buy the meat and get carrots, potatoes, and celery for free.  FREE?  That's one of my favorite words!  So, now this meat is sitting there while I scour through cookbooks trying to find out what the heck to do with it.  From what I have gathered, being that it is under 3 lbs, it doesn't look good.  All the recipes I have found include a crock pot and about 4 lbs of meat.  See... now I'm stumped.

I love reading cookbooks - although they always make me very hungry, so I have to read them on a full stomach.  It makes me feel like an artist (or an inspiring one) where I am given a color by numbers painting that will be hanging at the Louvre.  It will proudly have my name on it and I get all the credit.  Only I know that I'm actually not talented enough to create a masterpiece by myself - everyone else is fooled.

To take my cooking to the "next level", I invested in a subscription to Food and Wine Magazine.  I felt this would inspire me, challenge me, make me feel like I am more than an average cook.  A few months ago I found a recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Moon Pies, I had to try it!  It said that it would take 3 hours to make.  I figured I know my way around the kitchen, I am sure I can do it in an hour.... 3 1/2 hours later while I was making my own marshmallow to put inside the cookies that had WAY too many ingredients and steps, I realized I was in over my head!  I love to look at the pictures, and read the articles of far away places and gourmet food that I will never taste (or probably never see), but I'm not sure that any of those people are stay-at-home mom's.  And, I can't imagine my kids eating "Pork Chops with Barberry Compote".

So, I'll be content with my trips to the library to scour over cookbooks, time on the internet looking over what seems to be a gazillion recipes and enjoying my Pampered Chef cookbooks.  (By the way, I love how the Pampered Chef cookbooks have a picture of EACH recipe - this way I know what it is supposed to look like when I am done.)


I plan on blogging my upcoming recipes, successes, failures, dilemmas, struggles and hopefully you'll share your feedback on how YOU make it work. 

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Cooking 'n stuff

My goodness it's been a L-O-N-G time since I have blogged!

It's so surprise that I enjoy cooking. I actually look forward to being able to make dinner each night (cleaning... not so much!). Recently we visited our friends Pr. Jim and Lesa and I noticed that Lesa had a list of a months worth of dinners on her fridge. For each day there was a main dish and a side. I loved that idea! I have so many recipes, but find that I make the same few things over and over and over again. This gave me a great opportunity to try new recipes.

Each week Sunday is "leftover" night (another Brilliant idea from Lesa) and other than that there are 3 or 4 new recipes for us to try. We are just starting our 3rd week and I'm loving it! Don't get me wrong, the initial setup took me almost a morning of finding new recipes and making grocery lists. I went shopping once for the months worth of meat and pantry items and each week I pick up fresh produce, milk, bread, eggs, that sort of thing. It also seems to have cut down on my grocery expenses; I have a lot less opportunity to impulse buy when I am only going to the produce and dairy sections.

I am also *trying* to eat less processed food and lessen our intake of High Fructose Corn Syrup. We don't eat a lot of boxed things... mostly pasta (which is too much of a pain to make fresh and doesn't contain any HFCS, as far as I know). I just found a recipe on Allrecipes.com for homemade granola bars which I am looking forward to trying. I'm not a nazi about HFCS, but would really like to cut down.

Check out Lesa's food blog - there are tons of great recipes as well as some amazing pictures! edesiasnotebook.blogspot.com

I would love to hear some suggestions on how YOU are moving away from artificial ingredients and HFCS and eating more *whole foods*

**I have a goal to have 1,000 blog followers I would LOVE some help! Please share my blog with others... I will be blogging at least twice a week**