the more things change the more they stay the same?
I’m a good cook. Actually I’m a very good cook. I like food and I like to fix it – it’s really quite simple. Mother was always fond of telling people she taught me everything I knew. I was always quite fond of not correcting her. Basically I was raised on a catch-as-catch-can schedule of processed and fast foods.
The saving grace to that is I don’t really care for processed foods. So … as soon as I could, I learned to do things to make Campbells Chicken Noodle Soup or Rice A Roni taste a bit better. I also found you can do nearly anything with an egg. Great stuff that. Soon I learned so long as you could read, you could follow a recipe and have at least a 90% success rate. Experience brought that up to about a 99%.
Fast forward to adulthood in Kansas. Family dinners always happened at my house. Big birthday celebrations and Christmas dinners and even just-because dinners were always at Stephanie’s. Whenever – rare cases that they were – we were invited somewhere, there was usually a list of things to bring. I was once asked for jars of homemade bread and butter pickles to be gifted for Christmas.
Fast forward to life in Maryland. Ahhhh the land of convenience. The land of restaurants. Here there were (are) dozens of places that fix food as good as I — often even better. Indulgence. OVER indulgence.
oops.
The very thing that kept the weight off of me over the years — my disdain for processed foods — came back to bite me. An overabundance of rather tasty convenience and restaurant foods combined with a successful end to smoking (over 5 years now) and a bit more sedentary lifestyle conspired to put the weight on – FAST.
So … full circle. I am back to cooking nearly every meal. It makes sense from a Parkinson’s standpoint as it takes a delicate juggle of protein to maximize the medications. It makes sense from my personal belief that many of today’s health woes are laid at the feet of additives and preservatives and growth hormones. It makes sense from a weight standpoint as I can control the caloric content and still keep the flavor without extra salt and additives. It also makes sense from a financial standpoint.
It just makes sense.
*****
The photo above is from our trip to Geneva, Ohio this summer. As much as I love to cook and Jon loves my cooking, sometimes it’s nice to go out someplace lovely for the unusual food and atmosphere. However, I’m quite careful to limit it now to twice a month.
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