January Blues...

Busy mommies have little time for cooking. They need prepackaged, ready made meals and canned items. If you are going to have a baby, you might as well have many canned items ready to go. Can I tell you how many times I have heard this "advice" and how much I want to throw it out the window?

Now that my son is three months old, I can see the logic in their statements, but not the wisdom. How can I bring myself to eat prepackaged items when I would never feed them to my own family? How can a can of chili (ick!) make me really enjoy my lunch and satisfy me? Yes, it will fill my belly and take away the hunger, but no, it will not satisfy my appetite. I want food. Real, nutritious, mouth pleasing, sigh-at-the-end-of-your-meal food. I want to look at that plate and love what I've created, even if it is simple and easy and fast.

I have found the answer to my quest: frozen vegetables and fruits! I recently discovered this when I was looking for a way to make our food budget stretch while adding more fruits and vegetables to it. I, like very other new mommy, want to lose the baby weight, but I, like every other mommy, do not have the budget to spend ridiculous amounts of money on expensive, out of season food.

I love fruits and vegetables. I love them more than cookies, more than most other items. But the price for fresh veggies is incredibly high especially when you live in Oregon and the only local, seasonal item in January is kale. You can only eat so much kale. So I found my grocer's arsenal of frozen vegetables and am in heaven. When I need a lunch that is fast and healthy, I can use some roasted chicken and sautee up some frozen blend of veggies. Boom ~ lunch is done and I have no guilt.

But the fruit issue is another thing, not all fruit is created equal nor is it able to freeze perfectly. I wanted smoothies and fruit for my yogurts that were not doused in corn syrup and sugars, just plain ole natural fruit. I found my answer with the berries. I now use fabulous blue, black and rasp berries at my liking and am quite the happy camper for it. My smoothies taste like summer, my pounds have started to drop and I am feeling much better.

Well, the pounds have only dropped by a few, but its a start right? So far, I am at 236. Thats three pounds! I think its a decent start for January, the month of broken resolutions.

The Joy of Cooking...

I have forgotten how much I enjoy cooking. The smells, the sounds, the harmony of ingredients coming together, I have forgotten how much these things mean to me and what they do to my well being. We are creatures of senses and, for me, cooking maximizes these senses.

During most of my pregnancy, I was tired and overwhelmed. I did not cook, and if I did it was often pastas, sandwiches and easy, stuff that would fill us up while we sat on the couch and watched tv. I kept promising myself, once the baby came, that we would go back to the family table, back to eating healthier and properly and back to moving once more. Well, during that summer, my husband developed a case of heartburn, was put on Prilosec, and he felt so crummy that we completely stopped doing anything we enjoyed. No more walking, no more playing with the dog, no more camping and hiking. Even our gorgeous vegetable garden went neglected and many of our prized tomatoes were left to rot on the ground or vine. The pounds crept up and we crept to the couch, faining illness, tiredness and exhaustion.

The baby came, the baby grew and so have our waistlines. When I was admitted into the hospital, I weighed 257. After Gerhard was born, I dropped twenty pounds and was so happy to see the numbers drop. I weighed myself today and I have gained a few more pounds since then to 239. I am not happy with this number, nor am I happy with the thirsty, still tired feeling I wake up with every morning, the lethargy, the fact that my jeans are three-quarters stretch material and one quarter actual denim. I long for my clothes, my beautiful, functional clothes that fit me so well last winter that now lie in a suitcase waiting for my waist to reemerge.

I said before that I am starting Clean Eating on New Years day, but it is now the third and I "kinda" tried yesterday. I hate the word trying. Trying is a half ass attempt at really doing something, either you do it or you don't. You can do it and fail, but at least you tried with all the fiber of your being. Trying is like sticking your toe in the water to see if it is warm, you try it out so you don't have to commit to really doing it. This blog is my commitment, my reality check. You people know my real weight (something I don't even tell my mother) and you will know my successes and my failures for the next year.

Here I sit with my bowl of oatmeal, laced with cinnamon, vanilla and chopped dates, a cup of unsweetened chamomile tea and two hardboiled egg whites to choke down. I hate egg whites, but I gather that if I am to make my body start losing some of this weight, I need to make some sacrifices and do what is best for my body. I also plan on swimming this morning. Here we go!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all!

As today is January 1st and I have resolved to start eating well once more, today was a complete throwaway. It is Rose Bowl Day and seeing as our team, University of Oregon, played and lost in it, we ate to our hearts content. Brats, buns, beer, chips, dips and brownies and ice cream, we had it all and it was good. Did it satisfy my soul? No, but it did kill the snack cravings!

I need to share that I have a love affair with eggs. Is there anything more satisfying, more ingenious, more versatile then the incredible, edible egg? Yes, that is cheesy, but I was making a chocolate cream pie for my father in law the other night and I kept thinking, how can milk, cream, chocolate and yolks really become this rich, silken substance. Is there anything more satisfying than custard?

Today is a new day, and although I have ruined it with football food, I know that tomorrow is a new start for my eating habits. Because I am a chef I cannot just start eating Lean Cuisines and low fat items: I want foods that are natural, healthy and wholesome.

Tomorrow will be a fresh start: no football, no brats, no junk. Goodnight.