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I have all but abandoned my blog. February. That was my last post. Since then I have started working out and managed a few personal crises that, truly, I will not comment on here because I am actually pretending that people are reading this blog. I'll go on with it, even though probably no one in the free world is aware yet, except my BFF Denise, who has her own fish to fry this minute. (Mmmm, wonder if the family would eat fish...?)

Anyhoo, like many other things, blog-keeping requires diligence and consistency, two things that are really hard to come by when the more pressing needs of locating Barbie shoes and managing "Wii time" are in front of me. I cannot pretend to have life all together. Getting dinner is not that easy. But I will say that carving out time for a workout is making a huge difference for me, as well as keeping me off Zoloft. Seriously.

A food blog was my intent, but as with all food experiences, it is impossible to talk about food without talking about relationships. So that's where I will go. I will incorporate my attempts at cooking real meals for my family into my attempts at having real intimacy with my family. They are a good bunch and they deserve both.

Losing steam...but I think I can, I think I can...

It's been a month since my last post. Thank God no one but my dear, dear friend Denise is a follower or I would feel pressured to write often. But since I usually call Denise and chat while I make dinner anyway, my guilt is for naught.

I have certainly not abandoned my cooking resolution. But the past few weeks, it has taken a hit. Lots of crazy in Walker World, so the cooking didn't always translate. However, I have had a few highly successful meals that I will use again: Keilbasa with Cheese Grits, Caribbean Chicken with Pinapple-Black Bean Sauce and the Feta-Cranberry burger (which my husband passed on and decorated his burger with bacon and mayo, like a real man. Even though it was super-delicious. I'm just sayin'.)

The next five days will be an adventure, as I'm scraping by until payday, when I can get all the ingredients I want for any recipe and not worry that we need to survive on Aldi brand ritz crackers and cheese whiz or the kid's leftover Halloween candy, which I have surrendered and no longer use anyway. But that is a story for another day...

Until the next delicious meal, or until I remember to stay up late blogging, eat well!

The Sophomore Effort

This was my second full week of cooking at home. I must say, the first week went swimmingly. I cooked some really good stuff: pork chops and warm black-eyed pea salad, peanut chicken, parmeasan penne pasta with ham, mozzarella chicken sandwiches with Italian BBQ sauce, a homemade apple pie, and homemade brownies. I received lots of kudos from my husband. My children begged for ham and cheese sandwiches everyday until today when I made regular old spaghetti and they ate it all with no complaints!

I am pleased with our eating at home effort. We have eaten out once as a family so far this month and it did seem like a bigger deal than when we did it everyday or so. This second week of cooking was still good, but a little slower. Everything in the world seems slower this week. People I know are hurting and sick and lonely, plus the whole world is just looking at Haiti in disbelief, trying to grasp the heinous devastation that rules there now. Suddenly, trying to create a weeks' worth of brand new meals and putting a rush on my new Rachael Ray magazine aren't priorities. I may still do those things, and that's okay. But this next big grocery shop with be with a clear sense of gratitude for my most basic needs, that are met with barely an acknowledgement. I have plenty of water, shelter, enough to eat, and the knowledge that my children are all safe in bed, dreaming of nothing remotely close to the nightmares Haitian children cannot escape, even in sleep.

When we gather at our family table and give thanks for our meal, I will be aware of the reality of the grace we say. Even if it is over the usual ham and cheese sandwiches.

Should old acquaintances be forgot

It's January 1, 2010 and so begins the Walker family's attempt to eat real food, at home, at the table, using utensils, et al. I grocery-shopped today for a weeks worth of dinners, looking for items such as escarole and arugula. I bought sun-dried tomatoes, extra-virgin olive oil (heretofore referred to by Rachel Ray--my new hero--as EVOO) and fresh mozarella and parmeasan cheeses. I am excited about cooking and hope the meals this week will be a marked change from the standard Walker fare.

But I know what I'm up against. We are leaving the world of processed food and drive-thru convenience and entering that much-feared area of the perimeter of the grocery, the outside aisles. My families' taste buds, I fear, are all-too conditioned to crave the two main ingredients of the American diet: high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oil. I must admit to some fear that after cooking a meal that consists mostly of whole foods with actual nutritional value, that someone (read: my husband) will pine for several tablespoons of corn-syrupy, cheap barbeque sauce to drown its flavor and goodness.

My first official home-cooked meal of the decade will commence tomorrow evening in the form of Peanut Chicken over brown rice. Each night this week I have a delicious and nutritious meal planned for the Walker five, and have jumped in with both feet to even invite the preacher over on Sunday for Pork Chops with Black-eyed Pea Salad.

In an extra-brave twist to the story, I have also parted company with refined sugar. I am not quite willing to end it all with flour, but will use whole grains wherever possible, and have chosen to abstain from sugar, particularly in the form of desserts. If you want to know what I am like in the middle of a sugar detox, please pick up your local newspaper and refer to any section detailing activities in downtown Fallujh.

Wish me luck, dear readers, wherever you are. Probably eating a big fat quarter pounder and ordering a Reece's Sonic Blast or Java Chiller. Damn it.

Practice

Well, since I'm not officially starting the cooking experiment until January, I haven't chronicled our meals, at home or out, in several days. I thought, "I will update my readers about our meal situation," and imagine my relief when I realized: I don't have any readers! No one in the world is following the mealtime choices of the Walker family with bated breath! But of the record, this week I have made baked chicken with potatoes and peas, cheesy chicken vegetable soup and gravy with toast and bacon. I'm feeling the love from my husband. That's right, I am June Cleaver. Only cooler. And without the heels and 1950s style dress when hubby walks in the door.

I have been collecting some recipes to try so we aren't relegated to spaghetti and tacos all the time. I look forward to the slow change that will come as we eat at home more than not. I'm holding out hope that the kids will learn to stay seated for a whole meal. However, tomorrow is my birthday and I feel sure that a little visit to Macaroni Grill will happen, you know, before all this is official. And then Thursday is pizza night...then Friday we're out with family...

Sometimes, pork tenderloin changes things

Who would have thought a pork tenderloin could lead to this? But here I am blogging for the first time ever, while the faint scent of a cranberry glazed pork tenderloin wafts around my kitchen, playing to the edges of the room like a tease. The crock pot has been cleaned, dishwasher run, kids tucked in, but the smell of the tenderloin lingers. I would know. I made it.
I have long lamented, even scorned and begrudged, the fact that our family of five-me, my husband, and three super kids-rarely eat a home-cooked meal. We have a chronic eating out problem. We employ restaurants, drive-thrus, delis, take-outs, and deliveries. We spend way too much on little nutrition and have developed a difficult habit to break. But that all changes with the tenderloin. It was our first home cooked meal since Thanksgiving, a meal that I, sans one dish, did not prepare. I made it in the crock pot and served it with a vegetable and rice. We used real plates and, for a grand total of about eight minutes were all sitting around the same table.
Now, lest anyone be saddened by the thought of us never sitting down to dinner together, be assured that we eat together everyday. It's just that we usually do so in a small booth where the kids get crayons to use and we throw peanuts on the floor. The kids are asking, "Where are we eating dinner?" My husband, who has never suggested even the slightest expectation that I have dinner ready and is as bad as I am with the eating out, does seem quite grateful for any meal I have troubled to prepare.
And so it goes that the Walker family in 2010 will attempt to eat out less. Way less. I'm talking only twice a month, a significant reduction in what we are accustomed to. We will cook at home. We will try new things. I understand this means regular planning and shopping. I am still unclear on all the details. But the kitchen table will be used for more than a catch-all, a laundry table or an art desk.
Join us, won't you, for an adventure in food and self discovery?