Fighting off temptation

Boy I need to be more consistent with my blogging. Time really zooms by when you are trying to cook dinner every night. Some nights double or more dinner. A few nights back my husband made pizza from scratch for him and the kids. It was good and I realized the next day as I ate the remaining leftovers that maybe I should not focus solely on cooking for health and economic reasons but also take advantage of the menu planning capabilities. I am a bit of a perfectionist, and a little obsessive at times. This applies very much to when I shop (which takes quite a while), and when I eat. I seem to have convinced myself that if we are going to make dinner at home that we have to make it super healthy, as cheap as possible, and dynamic (a.k.a. complicated). What can I say other than it should be perfect. My problem is not that I hold all others to ridiculous standards, (which has been a problem and occasionally tries to rear it's ugly head) but I hold myself to ridiculous standards (which unfortunately when I got married started to encompass my husband too). Sorry honey!! So when I fail to make everything come together perfectly I get overwhelmed (since I have control over everything right?). What complicates this further is an inability to focus because I have pretty severe ADD. It makes me who I am right? (Or should I be a totally focused and brilliant speed addict) So if I am never truly totally focused that means I screw up a lot and can't be perfect which leads me to feeling like I have failed. That is where I was a few nights ago. I cooked a ridiculous amount of food until very wee hours of the morning (4am-ish), I used lots of vegetables, did it all from scratch, put it in nice freezer packaging, labeled it, and stowed it away in the deep freeze (except what we are going to eat this week, which is in the fridge). Then found myself sad as I forced myself to eat it and stare at the healthy food I cooked in the fridge. Did I say cooked? I meant totally slaved over!! Sacrificed sleep for! A couple days later as I sat in the doctor’s office explaining how I felt (Exhausted!!). I mentioned that I had been up all night the night before with a crying sick feverish baby, but somehow left out the part where I stayed up the night before that cooking for the end times (at least you would think!). She checked us for the flu, nope. Said I was probably starting to come down with something. The whole time I was counting the 4 hours of sleep I had in the past 48 hours. Resenting the healthy food that sat awaiting me at home. Being secretly mad at my husband for getting sick at such a bad time. Mad at myself for having this brilliant idea to cook for the week. It was a little of a dark hour. The next day as I ate the left over pizza my husband made (not on the meal plan I might add); I thought how great it was that my husband cooked yummy food (instead of the healthy food I made). All of a sudden I realized the potential of cooking at home. Also the support of friends helped with encouraging me along the journey after a rough start. I had an epiphany that it does not have to all be super healthy and complicated all the time. I realized we can have pizza once a week and that will be fine, not to mention something to get excited about. I love cheese, pasta, pizza, bread, cream, butter, pretty much itallian or french style food. I realized it is okay to eat that too. As long as we are also eating healthy on some days. I know it is basic but I have had an inconsistent food journey. It went from being single eating out occasionally (not much) and eating non-meals most the time, aka snacks (smoothie, popcorn, fresh fruit, nuts, a yogurt, microwave meal, advacado, cheese slices, sandwiches, an egg, a tortilla with butter, piece of toast) to being married and learning to adapt to eating dinners together. I was vegetarian for the first part of the marriage so we ate out and at home some. The meals we made I don't remember fully, but no meat. (I need to try to get back to eating less meat). We ate lots of canned and frozen prepared food I know. The home made meals were hit or miss (experimenting). Then when I got pregnant and became a complete carnivore again we started eating out a lot, we bought packaged meals, and cooked occasionally. Grilled, husband cooked most of the meat meals (which was most). Even though we cooked it has never been consistent enough to have any particular staples or food we made often. Our most common foods were grilled, or baked fish and baked chicken. Neither of which I particularly love. I eat them because they are healthy sources of protein. I have realized I don't enjoy eating at home because I don't allow myself to eat food I enjoy the most! So my new goal will be to make several meals I really enjoy despite the fats, proteins, carbs, vitamins, and sodium they may or may not contain. Pizzas, pastas, cheesy yummy goodness. Now I can get excited about making and eating that! Of course after I had this revelation today I told my husband maybe we should start having desert after dinner. To which he laughed and said "didn't you just tell me we need to make less complicated meals!"….. Oh yeah... then I said "Well desert would give me something to look forward to after I eat the meals I force myself to eat". At least my inconsistency can provide him a good laugh every once in a while.


I used to always take healthy food for my work lunch because I knew I couldn't eat anything else and I would force myself to eat it. I almost always did. It was a way to keep myself eating well, but I now realize I can’t do that all the time with all our meals. God blessed us in this country with the availability of milk, and honey. In moderation this is a good thing! And if used properly can create some mighty tasty food!

Pizza… pizza…. how I enjoy thee, and will perfect the making of thee.

I almost forgot the point. We passed several favorite place to dine as we drove around tonight running errands. Luckily we decided we had to eat dinner before going out. It surprised me how much those places did not tempt me since I had a great and filling dinner (and was not the slightest bit hungry)! The trick to fighting the temptation to eat out is to not leave the house hungry or unprepared. Always have a yummy snack handy. Now to actually stick to that!