Get me out of the kitchen

Cooking dinner for my family on the weeknights is NOT my favorite activity. I never know what to make. I always feel like I recycle the same recipes week after week and nobody likes my food. How did this happen to me? There was a time when I loved making dinner. I was once a big foodie.

Then finally I had a very important breakthrough. I went away with my two awesome sisters for the weekend and I shared my lack of enthusiasm in the kitchen with them. Since they are both really good cooks they gave me so many great recipes and ideas. When I got back home I had a new energy and I was ready to try to love cooking dinner again. Somehow when I tried to implement their ideas I still dreaded cooking. What was I doing wrong?

My breakthrough occurred when I realized I had control over this situation. I was making it much more complicated than it had to be. I decided that I would find some delicious raw food recipes that my family and I would simply love and pair them with their meat dishes. I looked for recipes that were simple and full of flavor. I went old school and got some blank index cards and wrote the recipes on the card. If they were too long to write I skipped over them. It made making dinner a pure pleasure again. Somehow writing the recipes down caused me to get excited about food again.

I also realized my sisters loved cooking because they found a way to make simple and delicious recipes. They recited their recipes with so much enthusiasm,they loved food and they loved to cook and it showed. I needed to create that same feeling for myself, and I finally did.

Instead of trying to make two dinners I started to make one dinner that always included raw vegetables plus a cooked dish. Sometimes I ate the cooked dish and sometimes I only ate the raw one.

I also realized that I like to chop fruits and vegetables and make beautiful salads, but I don't like cooking on the stove. I have always been this way even when I was on a primarily cooked diet. I'm glad that making dinner is no longer the huge stress that it once was. It has made my nights so much more enjoyable.

Please don't pass the steak

Photo taken by EssjayNZ

There was a time in my life that I loved red meat, I craved it and really enjoyed eating it. My husband knew how to cook it really well, and we enjoyed it a few times a week. Then, when I heard that the FDA approved cloned meat in January of last year I lost my appetite for it.

Even though it was not going to be in our stores for years, I still couldn't bring myself to eat it. I knew I had to stop eating it now, before it hit the stores.

My husband thought it was silly of me to stop eating it, especially because I enjoyed it so much. I knew it didn't make much sense, but I knew I wanted to stop eating it anyway. Let's face it most of us have at least one food that we will not eat, unless of course you are Anthony Bourdain.

Amazingly, it was very easy for me to stop eating red meat. After a few weeks of not eating it I didn't like the smell of it anymore. It was very strange there was a time when I loved that smell, now it just doesn't appeal to me anymore.

I have not eaten it since and I don't miss it. But this was just the start of a series of many drastic changes in my diet. More on that in a future post.