Rambling about food

I want to talk about food. I love good food. I like making yummy, flavorful food. I have one friend who, when she cooks, is all about the technique, another who is all about a beautiful presentation, but I am about flavor combinations. Cilantro with lime, fresh basil, Hungarian smoked paprika, fresh ginger and fresh garlic. I have never bought garlic in a jar, and I don't even own a garlic press - I used to and hated it, I just mince it by hand. I have no fewer than 7 different kinds of vinegar in my pantry, 4 kinds of mustard, Thai curry paste, sriracha sauce, different oils... you get my drift.

My mom is a good cook, but doesn't use a lot of spices and hardly any salt. She is a meat and potatoes type of cook. Growing up, I never had fresh ginger, couscous, or artichoke hearts. This was too exotic, I guess. I've come a long way from my roots. I will admit, I do not cook with onions. I hate those nasty little things, no matter how they are prepared. I can't tell you how many times I've heard, "but you can hardly taste them..." to which I ask, "Then why do you add them?" And the answer is always, "Because they add so much flavor." Bingo - a flavor I abhor.

So, in my passion for new dishes and combinations, I get several cooking magazines. Actually, I only have a subscription to one, and Derek brings the other three home from work for me. Bon Appetit, is my least favorite. Their recipes are impractical for my small family. Eating Well is a good one but pushes organic more than I like. Honestly, I just don't believe we can mass produce organic crops. Those fields are just benefiting from the over spray on the field next to them. I don't believe something is organic unless I pulled it out of my own garden. I really like Rachel Ray's magazine. As a TV personality she's a little much at times, but boy oh boy, some of her recipes are our favorites. And she uses familiar ingredients and a short cooking/prep time, because really, do any of us have more than 30 minutes to pull dinner together? My new favorite magazine is Cooking Light. The recipes they have fall in line with the way I cook, similar to Rachel Ray.

Last month Cooking Light started this campaign to encourage better eating for the next 12 months by having monthly goals. So January's was to eat more fruits and veggies, and February's is to get moving. I am not concerned with my work out routine, but when they pointed out that the food pyramid suggests adults have 9 servings of fruit and veggies a day, I knew there was no way we were hitting that. So all month I very consciously added more into out diets, and it's been good. But January is a terrible time to buy anything fresh, so that's been hard. We've done a lot of spinach salads with blue cheese, craisins and nuts; or I've just sliced fresh kiwi up (only 33 cents each!), or I discovered Trader Joe's frozen mango - yum. I definitely need to remind myself to take the extra time to add a side dish, because so often I just want to get the main course on the table and call it good, but I think it's worth it.

Since I'm ignoring the February goal, because I'm already at the gym plenty (he-llo! I work there) I decided to focus on another bad habit - drinking pop (or soda for you west coasters). I don't drink a lot, and I certainly don't have a problem with caffeine... actually I do - it keeps me up even if I have one at lunch, which is why I try not to drink it - but I really do love Caffeine Free Diet Pepsi. Yum. But really, it's just a batch of chemicals - yuck. And I look at that brown liquid going into my body and I know it's not going to come out the same color, so where does all that go? Right into my kidneys. And, since Chase is still nursing - what am I giving to him? Here son, have a little aspartame... yuck. So I've really been trying to not have pop. I do OK, but every day around 2:00 I find myself creating reasons why I need to go to Quick Trip. =) Normally during the week I can convince myself I don't need one, and the threat of having to get the kids and and out of the car for a lousy pop is usually enough to deter me. The weekends I relax about it and have one if the opportunity presents itself, but I really don't want to drink it very often. At least that's what I tell myself every day around 2.

So, I'm trying to be healthier, and am trying to drag my family with me - whether they like it or not. Some of my flavor adventures in cooking are not to the boys liking... which I understand, but for the most part they do really well. My goal is to always have something with dinner that they (and by they I mean Bryce) will eat, even if it's only biscuits or fruit. (We love the Pillsbury frozen biscuits - so easy, and so good.) That way they are still eating "the same" dinner as the rest of us, even if it's followed up by a PB&J sandwich. Someday they'll appreciate my fabulous cooking skills - then they'll just wish I could bake, too.