And So It Begins...

Forgive me, dear reader, for hauling you into this messy affair. I just don't think I can manage it alone. The last decade or so my relationship with food has been a shambles. It was an insidious descent, slow and steady, until one day I found myself standing in the grocery store, incredulous at the realization that there was nothing there I wished to eat.

But eat we must, so life continued more or less unchanged as I struggled to make sense of what felt like a lost love. If only I'd been paying attention! The problem was a lost love. I missed the perfect peaches straight from the tree and strawberries still warm from the sun- foods that made even the dullest days of my childhood summers memorable. The complex tastes of a long-simmered pot of stew were long gone.

For years, I wandered glassy-eyed down isle upon isle of box upon box of foods that seemed to all be variations upon the same ingredients, none more palatable than the boxes they arrived in. Industrial food bored me. This frustration was compounded by three things: a rising fear that industrial food did not adequately feed the body; the dawning realization that it didn't feed the soul; and the embarrassing, inexplicable, and frustrating knowledge that I'd never learned how to prepare real food.

So... I set out to educate myself. And now it's time to develop the skills of sustenance. It's daunting to try to make up for decades of missed knowledge. And my recent efforts at preparing real food, sans prepared ingredients, have been hit and miss. Somewhat more miss than hit, truth be told. It would be easy to cut corners. And that's where you come in- accountability. I earnestly desire a happy, healthy relationship with food for myself, and for my children. With you checking over my shoulder, I know I can get there.