About six months ago (hold up, let’s not date myself) mid 2008, numerous family members found themselves in the hospital. For an otherwise ridiculously healthy family this was a wakeup call to me. This wakeup call not-so-literally said: ‘um… hello… you are not in college anymore and maybe you can’t live off pizza and beer forever and your kidneys will turn against you and you will be wrinkly and gross with muffin tops in the hospital and you will have no one to blame but yourself’ Ouch… okay more like a wake-up slap in the face. So I began to read,.. and read, and read some more. Through which I discovered that all of the comfort foods I had loved so dearly were actually the enemy…. That quite possibly everything I ate was bad for me (the KFC bowl? Say it ain’t so!).
I resolved to eat healthier which meant all of the insta-processed food which fed me in under 5 minutes was tossed out of the pantry. I also realized that I had never really learned to cook (not for lack of trying on my mother’s part) and that when turning to a more natural, plant based diet, you have no choice but to learn to find varieties of combinations of food and flavors. So I am woefully juvenile in my culinary skills (again, sorry mom) but am learning. I am not vegetarian nor am I vegan (bless those of you with the willpower) but make many of my meals to suit such diets. If you stumble across this page and think to yourself (um.. hello… who doesn’t know how to zest a lemon), be patient, because various cookbooks, the gadget aisle at crate & barrel, Wikipedia, and of course calls to my mother are getting me past the SUPER obvious, slowly but surely. I realize I’m not the best writer (holy run on sentence paragraph… this I know) but as a creative outlet I think I may just get used to this. As a good friend of mine said once, the blog is the diary of 2008, right? Right.
Other fun facts about me:
- I am working on my graduate degree full time while working full time (seriously, a ball of fun, aren’t I?)
- I am too poor to claim fashion (her?, in the hoodie?, you say) but nothing is more fabulous than a new pair of shoes that may or may not make you tower over everyone you know, fall down a flight of stairs, and/or walk home barefoot because of massive blisters. Risks included: shoes are a-ma-zing….. and no, crocs, I’m not talking about you.
- I love a good happy hour. The antithesis of healthy, eating you say? Hypocritesville, population 1? I know, I know, but I don’t work with my friends and it’s the only time I can really see them and relax. Plus hilarity usually ensues.
- I love politics, especially when I am discussing it with my family (who is seriously wonderful, in case I don’t mention that enough).. .i will try to not be all crazy and ranting (which occasionally happens when combined with the previous bullet point), and feel free to tell me if I’ve gone overboard and made you want to throw the constitution at me… or duct tape my mouth shut.
- I don’t have cable, mostly because I’m busy and trying to ‘stick it to the man’ but as of Feb. 2009 I will probably be forced to reevaluate the ghettoness of the situation.
- I despise beets.
- My go-to about me facts: my hands shake all of the time (a non life-threatening tremor that runs in the family), and I am an incessant morning person.
- As slow as I’ve been with the ‘meet your food’ transition, the transition to physical fitness has been practically nonexistent. I have begun yoga, which I LOVE, but am by no means an expert (something about being all stretchy and bendy, while having the last ten minutes of class be nap-time is excellent). Someday, maybe, possibly I will come full circle and learn how to turn on a treadmill or elliptical machine. That’s a nice thought, isn’t it?
Disclaimer: This may be a ‘phase’ but I hope not. I have pretty much changed my outlook on food. However I still …sometimes.. get the totinos pizza rolls while at the grocery store … sometimes… they are in 90 packs.
