After 71 years I am finally putting some things together, and I must say, I am not pleased.
I have fought with food for most of my life. Actually that is not true; food and I are way too friendly – it is the weight that I have been fighting with. The fight started in the mid-fifties, (the decade, not my age). I won’t go into that battle here.
I have finally decided that everything that we have been told (and probably continue to be told) about what is good for us is wrong. That also is not the topic right now.
I have come to believe that the food I eat should pretty much look like it did when it came out of the ground or the animal and that the ground and the animal should be treated with respect. Again, not the topic of this blog.
What is the topic, you may ask. This may have been obvious to the rest of the world, but if that is the way you are going to eat, you need to cook it. That means that cooking needs to be part of every day – maybe even every meal! What a bummer! No running through the kitchen and grabbing a pre-packaged lunch or driving through the drive through. Like I said, what a bummer!
And this comes from someone who knows how to cook and generally enjoys cooking. It isn’t the act of cooking; it is the planning of what to eat so that I have that food in the house, it is allowing the time before I need to eat to fix what I am going to eat, it is figuring out how to share the kitchen with others. Kitchens are PERSONAL; sharing them is hard! Again, not the topic of this blog.
The biggest of those potholes is the time. In today’s world deciding that you are ready to eat and getting some food can often occur really close together. But a sweet potato takes an hour to cook! Some things even need to be watched while they cook! So much for multi-tasking! And then there is defrosting and slow cookers. Neither happens fast. All this is to say eating real food requires a time commitment. And what is most people’s number one complaint – not enough time.
Priorities seem to be the nub of the issue. Am I willing to make healthy food a priority? Is it more important than playing with my grandsons, than checking Facebook (she admits with a red face), than staying up late and sleeping late, or whatever? If I can get the priority level up there, I can make the cooking happen.
I am always surprised at how hard it is to get to acceptance. I think I might be getting there. I am, however, kicking and screaming along the way. It is a good thing I found out about this AFTER I decided I wanted to eat this way; it might have been a deal breaker.
And how many other areas of my life does this apply to – something is important, I want to be committed to it, and I struggle making the time to do it. Things like exercise, prayer, self care, uncluttering, keeping in touch with friends and family. This isn’t an isolated problem.
One battle at a time – now it is food’s turn. Off to the kitchen to take something out of the freezer.
[coffee]
I feel your pain. And at this phase of my life, cooking for just me is a real challenge. More so than a family of 4.