I’m a married mom to three boys who love to eat which is great because I love to cook.  We live in Northern Indiana where summers on the lake are amazing and winters in the house suck big time.  I get through the winter months by cooking for my family and friends, I started this blog in January so most of my recipes to date have been made in the oven, on the stove, or in the crock pot.  During the summer, the grill is where most of the magic happens!

I like to make dishes that taste good but are also good for you.  It’s very easy to make healthier versions of traditionally non-healthy food, you just have to know what you can substitute and ensure that you’re not sacrificing flavor.  It is a crime to eat bad tasting food, in my opinion.  My other rule of thumb when cooking is to simplify, I’m not into making a meal that has me running around the kitchen sweating profusely because I’m stressed about the complexity of a recipe…that does not sound like a fun time.  I also have a day job and I’m addicted to Zumba so I don’t have a ton of time to cook elaborate meals.

My boys are 7, 5, and 2 1/2 so they are pretty good judges of whether something tastes good or not.  Forget food critics, if a 5 year old likes your vegan split pea soup…you’ve got a winner of a recipe on your hands.

Since starting my food blog a few months ago, I’ve actually lost some weight and have gotten much leaner thanks to yoga and dance classes…and eating healthy.  I’m not a vegan, or a vegetarian, I don’t eat paleo, or gluten-free, or follow any other restrictive diet.  Some people need to follow a certain diet due to allergies or intolerances but fortunately I don’t have any of those medical conditions.  I don’t typically label recipes as “gluten free” or “paleo” because I don’t know enough about those diets to claim that my recipe falls into one of those categories.  I saw a recipe on Pinterest the other day for seared mahi mahi served on a bed of arugula with a balsamic vinaigrette that was labeled “paleo” and I was a bit confused because I thought paleo meant the “caveman diet” as in, “this is what the cavemen ate so we should still be eating this way”…except I’m not too sure how many arugula salads topped with seared tropical fish and drizzled with balsamic vinaigrette were being eaten during the stone age.  If they were, then I think we may have slightly underestimated those cavemen…or maybe I just don’t get what “Paleo” means, therefore I won’t go there.

I will label dishes as vegetarian or vegan, that’s pretty easy to figure out.  I have followed a vegetarian and sometimes vegan diet for extended periods of time in the past so I think I can figure out if one of my recipes falls into one or both of those categories.  

These days I’m more interested in eating food that is “real”.  “Real Food” has become sort of the catch phrase these days for healthy eating, and I’m on the bandwagon!  Sixty years ago people would have been totally confused by this term, back then it was just “food”.  But we humans in our never ending quest for innovation (and bigger profits) have made the term “real food” a necessary part of the food conversation.

There are artificial ingredients in everything these days, from bread to fruit juices (turns out that “naked” doesn’t necessarily mean “natural”.)  To summarize my feelings on this, I’m SO over it.

I’ve been a habitual label reader for years but now with companies literally lying on a bottle of fruit juice it’s even harder to know what you’re putting in your body.  My advice…drink water and eat pieces of fruit.  Make what you can from scratch (it’s not that hard I promise!) and know where your food came from.  Wow, I’m getting a little preachy here…let me reign myself in.  I can’t tell you that I don’t occasionally eat an Oreo or a piece of birthday cake from the Target Bakery (just don’t look at the label if you decide to do that).  I am not a purest, it’s just not in my nature…if I was I would probably still be a vegan.  I buy organic meat at whole foods but my kids eat fast food chicken once in a while and I’m okay with that.

Bottom line, this is a judge free blog…I’m not into scolding people, if some of these recipes inspire you to cook at home instead of getting that bucket of chicken at KFC then I think that’s great…not that there’s anything wrong with the family feast at KFC, it’s delicious!  You get the picture.

Cheers!

The Good Cooker