food fights

daily battle to put healthy food on the table

my love of food and cooking didn't develop until my first (biological) son was a few months old. at that point, i had been raising my step-son for a little over two years and letting my husband do almost all of the cooking. i had been an only child who was never made to cook, or do anything else around the house either. i did, however, grow up seeing my mother and both grandmothers cook lots of homemade meals! thank goodness for that because i think it helped once i finally started to try and cook things on my own.

so i would watch cooking shows while i nursed my son and i just had to try some of the things that i was learning! once i made my first successful homemade meal, i was hooked! i spent the next four years learning family recipes, collecting cookbooks, and keeping up with weekly meal planning.

fast-forward to another pregnancy, and all of that went out the window! i did keep up with making homemade biscuits and cornbread, because i craved them so much, until i got diagnosed with gestational diabetes :(    all love of food absolutely stopped there. it became way too much to keep up with my special diet and the rest of life, in general. now my baby is approaching five months old and i still can't quite get back into a good routine of planning and following through with a meal schedule that is healthy or homemade.

my goal would be for my cooking habits to closely mimic those of rachael ray or the pioneer woman, but the reality for now is that the meals at my house look more like semi-homemade from sandra lee, on my best days, and something you might even find in honey boo boo's house, on my worst days!

i have to admit that i've resorted to hot pockets and bowls of cereal on some days, but that everything in me is screaming for life to go back to the way it was when i served at least 2 nice meals a day. don't get me wrong, i am never above fast food and junk food, all in moderation. i actually really enjoy it in it's place! but i'm holding on to the silver lining that must be around this dark cloud of life interruptions that have come with pregnancy and new motherhood (again) for me. i just can't pretend to be doing well with this until i am again.

 i did manage to make a completely homemade, however not completely healthy, strawberry dessert for Mother's Day :)  so for now i'm gonna have to give myself another "C". that's pretty much the average between all my "F's" and the few "A's" i'm able to pull off.