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!

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. 

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**

Simple Living

I was complaining to Tom the other day about who-knows-what, and somehow he mentioned this thing he has heard about called "simple living". He said I should check it out. I want to... and perhaps I will after this post, but I need to "judge it" before I check it out.

In a nutshell, I am pretty sure that is how I lived growing up. We didn't have a lot of extra stuff. I had one doll, just enough clothes... probably 3 or 4 pairs of pants. Our house didn't have crap all over - there weren't things (I'm not going to attempt to spell cha-ch-keys) all over, it was simple. Don't get me wrong - I had a great childhood, filled with love, fun, an awesome house, and an imagination, just not a lot of stuff. Jump forward 20 or 30 years and now I have A LOT OF STUFFF! It looks like I run a daycare center with all the toys my kids have (I'm still looking for the one that keeps them happy and quiet). I don't have 1 of anything... I have 10 (man, I can hear my mothers voice in my head!). Because of that, I feel completely out of control, I feel like I don't appreciate anything I have, my kids don't appreciate anything they have, and my house is in constant chaos.

I read an article once where a mom said she felt like she was always doing dishes. So, the whole family went to a paint your own pottery place and personalized one cup, one plate and one bowl. Then, they put the rest away (for company, I guess). That is all they used. Okay... cool concept, but first, I couldn't afford that (well, maybe I could if I sold all the CRAP I have here first), and it seems like a lot of work. Oh, she did this so they reused their stuff, and washed them right away (or something like that).

I want to scale back... I think. I wonder if the reason I hoard stuff is because I didn't have a lot, and want my kids to never feel like they couldn't "trade stickers" because they only had 50 while their friends had 5000. Oh, and the one doll I had used to be my sisters (she is 8 years older than I am, and was done w/dolls by the time I was starting)... she, Nancy, came with a name (hated it) and my sister had cut her hair, so she looked like a boy. I want them to have their own things... and lots of them. Sorry, perhaps that was better suited for a therapy session and not a blog :)

I do need to mention though, that I try not to buy more than one of things so they actually DO have to share. I don't want to have 3 strollers for their dolls, or multiples of other prized toys. I think it is important to share.

Anyway - so, what do I do now? I am thinking that I am just going to stop shopping. But, what about all the stuff I have. I truly don't think my kids value their things because there are so many there isn't one... or two or even 10 things that are special to them.

Getting back to the more work part now... if, let's say, I got rid of (or put away) a bunch of my kids clothes, or towels, or whatever else, then wouldn't I be constantly doing laundry? If I scaled back to only a few pairs of shoes, would I really have the perfect pair for that one outfit? Would my kids hate me because we couldn't (or didn't) "keep up with the Jones's"?

Any suggestions? I am truly scared to research "simple living"... not sure why... perhaps I don't want a lecture or to hear how horrible I am for have too much. Hmmm... therapy again.

Going Slovak

My mom is the Greenest person I know.

As “being green” has become more trendy, my family and I have started to make some changes… okay, I have made some changes, and my family is slowly following. I have been unplugging the tv at night, switched to cleaning products that are “green”, try to use rags instead of paper towels, use totes at the grocery store instead of paper or plastic. My husband just sort of rolls his eyes at me and (for the most part) goes along with it. He is quick to show me that unplugging the tv just saves pennies a month and isn’t thrilled that I am paying three times as much for “green cleaning products” that don’t clean as well.

One day after deciding to reward myself for doing a "green job" cleaning the kitchen by buying a $4.00 organic coffee from the coffee shop 5 miles away that I drove my kids to in our mini-van it struck me… this is ridiculous! I am such a creature of habit, and so spoiled that I take things for granted. My parents didn’t.

My mom doesn’t wear Birkenstocks, eat granola, and I don’t think she would be caught hugging a tree but she is “green”. As a child she used to annoy the snot out of my sister and I “saving”. She would carefully remove wrapping paper from a package so she could reuse it (and reuse the tape too), sit in a dimly lit room to “save electricity”, run all her errands all at once to “save gas”, reuse plastic bags, make her own cleaning solutions, she would never dream of BUYING water… trust me, the list goes on and on and on! At the time I would of told you that we “lived like poor people” and, in reality I am not sure if we really were or not.

We didn’t have excess of anything. We didn’t have lots of clothes, or toys, or food that was thrown away. We didn’t eat pre-packaged or prepared food, we had a garden. We played outside a lot. We played with dirt, and went on walks, and climbed trees, we didn’t drive to a park.

My goodness! My mom was one of the first environmentalists and I didn’t even know it. We used to tease that the things my mom did were “Slovak”. My grandparents were immigrants and saved to support their families back Slovakia. When my mom, for instance, would re-use wrapping paper we would call it “Slovak wrapping paper”, or if we wore clothes that were thrown away or given to us it was from the “Slovak store”.

So, today I have decided to “go Slovak!” I am going to make my own coffee, plan my errands and use less, just like my mom did (and still does). While being “green” seemed like something I would have to research (we never bought books growing up), going Slovak I think comes pretty natural to me, and probably most of us. Hmmm… I think I better call my mom and thank her for taking such good care of our planet.