When we first got married I got most of my recipes off of the website www.cookinglight.com. I liked it because the recipes were rated by people who had tried them, thus steering me away from recipes that were guaranteed to be a flop, and because the majority of the recipes were healthy. Because I tend to like, ahem, unhealthy things, I figured this was a way for me to avoid them now so I wouldn't have to remove them from my diet later. Well that darn website went and teamed up with several magazine publications to become www.myrecipes.com. One of said publications is Southern Living. I have since spiraled into a deep, mirey pit of southern comfort food. I can't get enough! Do you realize how much butter, cream and other yummy things they use in their food? No to mention that there is no snobbery in their cooking.
I live in a smallish town with limited grocery choices. Organic vegetables are slim and some of the more exotic things are completely unreachable. Southern cooking is not ashamed to take a short cut, use canned soup or broth, or frozen vegetables. For someone living on a pretty strict budget its encouraging to see ingredients that I recognize, am familiar with cooking and are actually cheap. Well, you know...other than the cream.
A few days ago I went to the library to pay the ginormous late fees I had accumlated sometime last year inbetween having a baby/getting post-partum depression/moving. I also got Remy a library card which was fun because so far he has demonstrated a love of books. That excites me because I have always loved reading and as much fun as it is to see how much like Nic he is, its nice to see a little of me in him too. We'll see how long that love of books lasts however.
But I digress. I got 3 cookbooks and one book on eating healthy. The book on eating healthy is called "Fat families, Thin families" and one of the cookbooks is also on eating healthy, called "Deceptively Delicious". The premise of Deceptively Delicious is using puree's of veggies (cauliflower, broccoli, squash ect.) in your kids food to make sure they are eating healthy and getting their daily nutrients. I had heard of this book from a couple different people (incidentally Jerry Sienfelds billionaire wife wrote it, how weird is that!?) and I'm not going to lie, I mocked them behind their backs. But since Remy has started eating solids I have at least attempted to feed him somewhat healthy food including things that neither Nic or I eat, thinking there is no good reason Remy needs to have our bad habits, right? So I thought maybe there would be a few good ideas/recipes that I could feed Remy in the spirit of not giving him childhood diabetes.
The other two cookbooks I got were; "The Deen Family Cookbook" (another Paula Deen cookbook) and "Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen" which is by Trisha Yearwood.
The first evening after making my trek to the library I pluckily opened "Deceptively Delicious". First of all you are supposed to spend one night a week steaming and pureeing veggies. If I pureed veggies in my spectacularily loud blender after Remy went to bed he would wake up screaming bloody murder. NOT WORTH IT. While Remy is awake during the day there is never a large enough block of time that he is content for me to do all of that work. Not to mention that the plethora of pictures of recipes in the book looked disgusting. Having said that I would definitely recommend the book to someone looking for more creative ways to serve veggies. I just don't see it working for us at this point.
I flipped through the "Fat families, Thin families" book and felt kind of ill. The lady seemed obsessed with looking at food simply as fuel and that everyone should be skinny. Look, if you are obese I definitely think there are some issues that need to be addressed. However, not everyone is (or wants to be) a size 2. Frankly, I enjoy food way too much to ever look at it as just fuel. I feel bad for that poor, anorexic looking lady! She is missing out on so much because she refuses to look beyond a limited range of food.
After setting those two books down I flipped through the two southern cooking cookbooks I had, although neither were full of recipes that I would eat (please see above picky eating preferences) there were waaay more nummy looking recipes. I think I just have to accept the fact that I will always pick the loaded baked potato casserole
over the corn and avocado salad
(although it does look yummy, darn picky palate!!).Does this mean people will regard me as backwards or provincial in my food tastes? Does this mean that sometimes my one year old will have Goldfish (and not the whole wheat kind) bread with butter and vanilla yogurt for lunch (not like I fed that to Remy for lunch today or anything...)? Does this mean that someday I will probably be 2o pounds overweight? Probably. But at least my tummy will be full and happy. Life is too short to spend it agonizing over every calorie or nutritional aspect of a food instead of just enjoying all of the wonderful tastes God has provided for us. Don't get me wrong, I know its dangerous for some people to eat a certain way or certain things. But me; I'm thankful for choices, delicious food and a country with grocery stores with fresh food and so many options!!
So if you ever need a little comfort food or something creamy, stop by around supper time we always have plenty!
1 comment:
I want creamy food that involves cheese and potatoes. Make some for me. I demand it. I'm pregnant so you must comply.
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