Internet Inspiration and Motivation on Cooking Real Food

This post got accidentally posted on Saturday while I was trying to edit it, so this is the edited version for anyone that got the first one.

One of the things I love about the Internet is getting inspiration and motivation from what other people are doing.

Lately I've been following Granny's Vital Vitals. She talks about real food and a traditional diet like granny ate.

For those that struggle with cooking she has her Granny Plan, to help them start to cook from scratch and to cook real food. One of the things I benefited from her writing was the idea that granny was a plain cook. We have so many choices now that it can be overwhelming. Some of us feel dinner has to be a gourmet feast every day and that good plain food is boring. She encourages us to focus instead on cooking real food in a healthy way and become very familiar with some basic recipes. These are your go to recipes that you don't have to think too hard about.

The reason this spoke to me is because we are foodies. It all started with Julia Child when I was raising a family. I loved all that but now I'm tired and cooking can be a chore sometimes. Many of us just get tired of cooking after so many years of it. So I struggle to feed myself at times and settle for prepared meals from the grocery deli or junk food even though I know it isn't frugal or healthy.

With all we are hearing about GMO's I really want to know what I'm eating and unless I'm buying and cooking my own food I won't know. So the idea of keeping it simple and having those go to recipes in my back pocket sounds like it would help me resist the easy way out when I'm tired. A lot of my favorite recipes don't appeal now, so I need some lighter and easier ones that fit in my diabetes diet.

Another point she makes, that spoke to me, is not to feel guilty if you can't do it all.  It's impossible for most of to buy all our meat grass fed and all our veggies organic and all our dairy and chickens pastured. So you have to just try and continue to one by one start to change to better choices and don't worry about it when you have to compromise as long as you are making progress in the right direction. Her Granny Plan shows you how to do that. That has freed me up to not have that all or nothing mind set, but to do the best I can and know that I'm working on it. I do have those perfectionist tendencies.

Even though I am a granny she is talking about my grandmother's era, not mine. She was Portuguese and I remember how we all loved it when she made her Portuguese specialties. In my mother's era they used a lot of canned foods. I remember being forced to eat canned spinach and peas yuck. Even though I've been cooking for many years each new season of our life brings new challenges. It's never too late to learn. These may not be your issues, but she has a lot more to say, so check out her blog.

Linda