Cooking Healthier

Audio quote of the day:
“Because I like to eat, is that such a crime?” – School of Rock (click above for audio)

Yeah, I’m sorta on a diet. I really want to go on a diet, but unfortunately, I’m at this point where I’ve really started loving to cook. I sit at work and when I’m not drafting in Autocad, writing up meeting minutes, or walking around the US Capitol, all I can think about or talk about is cooking. I just read Soul of a Chef, which was probably not the best book to read if you're wanting to stop cooking so much.

For the first time in my life I actually have good things to cook with AND someone to cook for. I had to have the basics of oven cooking and sautéing down from when I cooked for 50 guys every week in college. Now that I’m scaling back the cooking though, I’m learning about pan frying, starting things on the stove and finishing them in the oven, broiling, making pan sauces and gravies, seasoning, and all sorts of other fun activities.

Cooking is actually relaxing for me, assuming I’m not trying a recipe I made up for the first time with 20 people eating. I like that when I’m cooking my brain doesn’t start thinking about work, bills, or any of life’s other little attention grabbers. I’m focused on the done-ness of the meat, whether the water is boiling yet, when I should start steaming the vegetables and making sure the pasta isn’t going past al dente. The kitchen is full of the fragrance of onion, garlic, oregano, chilli powder, or whichever other aromatics are being used in the nights meal.

And absolutely best of all, when it's over I get to enjoy a nice meal and the satisfaction that “I made this.” Honestly, it’s a great feeling knowing that the meal your eating might cost you 20 or 30 bucks in a restaurant.

However, it’s also a great way to NOT lose weight. Originally, I would make too much, and then it would all get eaten because it tasted good and was there. The last few weeks though, I’ve started portioning out the “left overs” before I even plate up the meal, this makes it less tempting to eat too much.

Now, I’m trying to come up with recipes that are fun to cook (lots of chopping, cooking, seasoning, etc.) but are healthier. Amon isn’t a big fan of fish, which would be one easy method for making things healthier, but she does like quite a few vegetables so I’m going to start trying to feature the vegetables more prominently with the carbs as more of an accent and make sure to use chicken and turkey more than fatty cuts of beef. I noticed that ground turkey seems to be much cheaper than ground beef so we’ve been using more of that recently.

So now you all know, my evil secret’s out. I like to cook, is that such a crime? Now I just need to balance loving to cook, with cooking healthier.