Sweet Beginnings

            Welcome to my blog!  I have been asked to give advice on several occasions for a number of different things.  One large problem people ask me about is diet.  I do not consider myself to be on any sort of diet, just a smart eater.  I am not a nutritionist, a doctor, a psychologist, a physical trainer, or anything along those lines.  I am a stay-at-home Army wife and mother to four children.  It is not easy to feed your entire family healthy food when you have six different palettes to please.  I manage though and as a result my husband has lost a significant amount of weight and I am in the best shape of my life.  I am going to be learning how to develop a better layout for my blog as I go and will take pictures of my culinary delights (with recipe) within the next few days.

            I love to cook almost as much as I love to eat.  Portions sizes were always as big as my plate could hold and seconds were almost mandatory.  Eventually I woke up one day and had to come to terms with the fact that I am no longer in high school and the joys of eating massive quantities was behind me.  I have looked into diets and had to laugh.  Eat little to no carbs?  Only grapefruit for breakfast?  No cheese?!  I know I am not the only person out there who has felt that way in regard to a diet plan that is “guaranteed” to work.  I would attempt some of them and it was rare that I lasted past the first few days.  As the chef of the house I am not about to fix multiple meals at one time because no one in their right mind would touch some of the “diet” foods I am told to eat.  Paying a company to deliver “healthy” foods sounded like a novel idea until I realized they are all frozen and canned.  If one were to take a step back and realize that prepared foods that have a shelf life of years are highly processed and jammed packed with sodium, they would rethink those diet plans.

            Confession: I cheat, a lot.  Any person on a diet who can tell me that they never cheat is lying to themselves.  Everyone has at least one guilty pleasure they refuse to give up.  Some people love chocolate and sweets while others may love that glass of wine or bottle of beer at the end of a hectic day.  Whatever it is that is so sinfully delightful at a moment of weakness is a little cheat.  If I want to lay back with a glass of wine, I am going to drink a glass of wine (which is only 4 oz by the way).  My kids want cheese and crackers for a snack you can bet your bottom dollar I am going to take my service tax for preparing their snack.  Moderation is the magic word.  If you cannot control yourself enough to consume what you want in moderation then maybe it is better to give it up.  Nothing should have that much control over you, especially food. 

            I think the best way to wrap up this short introduction would be some of the things that are quickly becoming extinct in my house and/or my eating plan.  Chips and soda are not kept in my house unless there is a party going on.  Almost every item in my refrigerator or pantry that is grain is a whole grain.  Cheese would be forbidden if it was not for the dairy obsession my toddlers have. Processed foods are kept at an absolute minimum and I cannot omit them completely since that can of whole grain Chef Boyardee does come in handy in a pinch. 

            This is just a short little teaser that does not even begin cover the broad spectrum of nutrition that I am going to dive into.  Since this is the beginning of my blogging adventures I will write a more “official” entry tomorrow that will touch on that one meal that is often forgotten: breakfast!