Food For Thought

Several weeks ago, my internet friend, Kate, asked if I'd be interested in sharing my kitchen adventures on a new site that she and a couple of other ladies have created. Without much thought, I said yes. And so it goes, I appeared here over the course of the past week.

Before my family had to fully disclose what they ate on a daily basis, I thought that we ate pretty healthy. I know there's always room for improvement but before this week of self-evaluation, I would have told you that we darn near met the daily requirements of all the food groups. Now I know better. Almost makes me sorry that I said yes. I know, I know, I should use this as a learning experience and grow from it. But some things are hard to admit to and this is one of them. This is my family we're talking about and as the wife & mother, it's my responsibility that all nutritional needs are met. So now I know I fall short in that category.

So, I've been giving some thought to things I can do better. I think I might try to have the refrigerator stocked with items that are ready to assemble for lunch -- taco meat so they could have tacos for lunch, black bean burritos, ingredients for pita pizzas, veggies that are cut up with dip, etc. I see the benefits from this but I also see the downside--it would require a part of my weekend spent in the kitchen preparing this. After working all week outside of the home, I'm not sure that I care to spend a chunk of my weekend doing food prep. I'd rather be spending it with my children doing fun things -- going to the pool, taking walks, eating ice cream, going to the library, etc.

So after further thought I discovered another way I could do this that wouldn't require my weekend to be spent in the kitchen. I'm going to increase the amount of food I make for our evening meal. This will allow for leftovers for lunch and won't require any extra effort on my part. I know that our evening meals would fall into the realm of 'healthy.' This will also allow for a larger variety in the lunch menus around here (no sandwiches everyday). However, let me just say that my family could care less about variety for lunch. They're perfectly content in eating the same thing every single day. Variety is not the spice of life for them. I, however, am a different story.