What I Love Most Today is Cooking...

Today, for most of the day, I prepared to hold a cooking class in my home for the evening.  We started at 7:00pm.   The menu included, Chicken with Tomato Herb Sauce, Autumn Salad with Sweet Potatoes and Brussel Sprouts, Roasted Vegetable (Cauliflower, Red Onion and Butternut Squash), Lentil/Bean Soup and last but not at all least Cranberry Cake.  

Here is my kitchen.  I did a cooking class last year too for these church gals and try as I might to clean while I cook it doesn't happen.  I suppose it's because I am talking and making six dishes all at once.   So all the clean up just has to wait until the end.  Here are the roasted sweet potatoes for the "Autumn Salad."

The Brussel Sprouts are a nice touch in this salad.  I really loved the dressing for it.  It's a warm maple vinaigrette   Sooo good.  The salad turned out really good.  I think it would be great as a holiday salad, either for Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I used this "Bean Trio" in my soup tonight.  It's a lentil mix.  It's from Costco and I believe it was $3.69 for the bag, such a deal.  I couldn't get a good picture of the soup.  As I was preparing the soup I made the chicken and of course forgot to get pictures of it.

Some of the ladies had never roasted their vegetables.  They all agreed it's the best way to make them.  That Butternut Squash was great.  I love the sweet Butternut with the savory Onion and the Cauliflower is perfect with it's crisp edging.

The ladies took home a dressing bottle to hold the homemade dressing recipes I gave out.  I forgot to take pictures of the Cranberry Cake which is always divine.  All in all the evening was a success.  They loved all of the food, but the favorites were the chicken and the Cranberry Cake.

I had eighteen women here tonight in my home.  I really enjoyed cooking for them.  There were a lot of them so they talked among themselves for moments at a time while I was trying to get food done.  I heard some interesting things about losing weight and different diets.  I mentioned that I eat salad and yams on a daily basis.  Someone responded by saying, "you don't worry about too much starch?"  And my response was simply, "no."  I'm no expert and I'm not here to judge.  But I have a few opinions and that's okay.  Because the proof is in the pudding and I think I have some proof to my opinions.

I mostly hope that the ladies saw that cooking with whole foods can be simple and easy and really good.  I also hope they learned that there certainly are foods you can cut out, eat less frequently and so forth, but keep those yams and other amazing starches coming because your body will thank you.

I've had to lose weight six times.  Each time was after my babies were born.  It's not easy but I think this is where my proof lies.  I don't do any dieting.  I just eat a lot of whole foods.  A good breakfast, which you can observe below.  A good lunch; salad, leftover soup with yams, or dinner leftovers, something along these lines.  And dinner is simple but a variety of foods.

 I don't lose the weight quickly after the babies, especially after getting into the late twenties and early thirties but I do lose it.  It takes about a year, I complain a little here and there, but I eat a variety of whole foods as much as possible and with exercise, slowly but surely there is progression.  Do I eat dessert, yes.  Do I like sweets, yes. Sometimes do I want to eat chocolate all day, yes.  And I know I'm not the only one :).   But, I also do really love good food.

I also hope the girls realized that you can be creative with the food.  I told them that I would put four things in my soup always to start it off; olive oil, onions, celery and carrots.  Next, I told them I would look in my fridge and just put in what I had.  So I ended up having some fresh Oregano, and fresh Parsley and the Bean Trio.  So I added these.  Soup is great for being creative, and it's hard to go wrong.  I learned a lot of this from my best friend Marie.

I love cooking for people, it's very rewarding and eating good food makes people feel good.  Below are some foods we've had lately.

The children really love roasted vegetables.  A couple of weeks ago they specifically asked for roasted red potatoes, so I delivered.

After carving pumpkins the children really wanted to toast the seeds.  Kalen and Gwyneth did this themselves.  They looked online for a savory pumpkin seed recipe and a sweet pumpkin seed recipe.  This is the sweet.  Very good, I might add.

This is what I have for breakfast almost everyday.  In this order it's granola, little bit of milk, plain greek yogurt, a tiny drizzle of honey over that with cut up grapefruit, strawberries, pear, blueberries, apples topped off with toasted pecans.  Sometimes I don't have all of the fresh berries, but I try to put at least two fresh fruits in it.  I love it, but it's getting cold here too so I have started eating a lot of oatmeal again.

This was dinner the other night and it's very similar to this most nights.  This night it was Salmon, salad, Broccoli and Brown Rice.  I don't always serve a meat at dinner time.   We eat very little red meat and this is my routine:

A big dinner one night, enough to give leftovers.  The next day we eat those leftover and if I have still a bit of leftover combine it with something else.  Two nights out of the week I try to do a simple dinner like Quesadillas(isn't this how to spell it, my spell checker doesn't say so) and salad.   Simple meaning without all of the courses but still nutritious.

I love to cook, I love to eat and I love that my children are cooking and eating well.   I try to teach them with my words about food, but teach mostly by example. They are learning.  I don't forbid anything really, well that's not true, sugar cereal never comes into our house and soda very infrequently.

 But, this is one of the children's favorite meals.  They love Salmon and they call this salad the #1 because it's their favorite.   I love seeing the children eating good food and enjoying it.  And because of this What I love Most Today is cooking!