The Key to Cooking Every Night is KISS

Just blast some Gene Simmons and get to it! Well, if that's what you're into (crazy) but we're really talking about super amazing business acronyms. Also, at the end I am giving you my killer salad dressing ingredients. Stick around.

Mini KISS will help cook up some major distractions.

So KISS. This stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid. That's right, you're stupid. So am I. We are all stupid, according to this acronym. Some more sensitive individuals have changed it to Keep It Simple Sir, but I'm no sir, and Keep It Simple, Girlfriend, while fun to say (HAAY), is confusing to pronounce. KISG. Maybe we'll start a movement. Either way, we all have tough skin and we'll be fine, stupid. 

I find that the easiest way for me to be successful at cooking and eating at home is to plan ahead and keep things simple. S gets the credit for the planning ahead. I used to hate the grocery store and put it off as long as possible. A couple of weeks ago my friend R was sitting on my couch and looked at my coffee table and then at me with curious excitement asking "what's that a list for?" Then she realized how lame I was when I told her it was a shopping list. She is single with no babies and lives in New Orleans. That = a life without shopping lists. 

Bought this at Anthropologie. It's a pad and a magnet and helps plan your meals.

 Every weekend (usually on Sunday) we make a list of the nights we need dinner and plan on what we might eat. The cooking at home killer is that you likely have just spent all day at the office, or chasing and cleaning up after kids, and when the house gets quiet the last thing you want to do is spend an hour in the kitchen cooking dinner. I get it. So you have to plan ahead and keep it simple, idiot. I mean, stupid. That is really the only way to succeed if you are trying to cook more everyday meals at home. Here's what we do.

If we are going to cook anything complicated, we try to make sure it can go for more than one meal and we usually make it on Sunday evening, when we are rested and have the time. If it's something we can prep on a Sunday and just put it in the oven later in the week, that is awesome, too. 

Next, we keep some standard items that don't spoil quickly. Items we use in lots of things. To give you an idea, we buy 2-4 heads of garlic at a time, buy sacks of onions and potatoes, and pick up a couple of sweet potatoes almost every week. We always have butter, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper, and a whole shelf of spices. Create a stock pile of fresh staples that will stay good for 2 or 3 weeks and a stock pile of spices you love. This will help you with the simple cooking that's coming up next. 

When you think of dinner, think of your childhood.

When you are planning your dinner, think of it in sections. Think of the things your body needs. Proteins, vegetables, whole complex grains and carbs, calcium, fruit, iron, etc. Build your meal the way you would fill your tray. An example would be 8oz chicken breast, sauteed kale, and grilled sweet potato. Not every meal has to have everything you need as long as you get enough throughout your day. A simple meal is easy to prepare and easy to shop for. Using the same meal above, these are the steps that it would take in my life on a work day. 

Get home from work (5:30) - Landon is usually just finished with her dinner. I clean up, take the chicken breasts out of the fridge. Depending on the thickness I might pound them down to a thinner consistency. I season them with salt and pepper or Uncle Chris' Gourmet Steak Seasoning and toss them in some olive oil. Then I let them come to room temp, meaning I leave them alone. That all took about 3 minutes. 

L and I play some and a few minutes before her bath I wash a sweet potato and slice it about 3/4 Inch in thickness. Sprinkle with sea salt and EV Olive Oil and then I let them sit with the chicken breasts. This took about 2 minutes and I'm on my feet anyway because I'm hanging out with L. 

After bath and bed (around 6:45) I go outside and turn the grill on high and let it heat up. Coming back into the kitchen I wash and dry the kale, tear it into pieces and put a large saute pan on the stove to warm up.  I take the chicken and sweet potatoes outside and put them on the grill. The sweet potatoes go in the grill wok. I close the top and come back in. I put a little EV Olive Oil in the pan and coat it. Then I take crushed or sliced garlic and throw it on the bottom. I keep the heat over medium and put in the kale, turning it to coat. I cover it and go out to check on the chicken and sweet potatoes. 

Chicken is turned to the other side and I shake up or turn the sweet potatoes, then lower the heat a little and come back inside to clean off the tongs and get fresh plates for the cooked items. I toss the kale once more and cover while I wash the items up and get the plates. I keep the cover on the kale and turn the heat off, heading back outside to get the grilled items. Take them off, come back in and take the cover off of the kale and dinner is ready. 

You get 5 minutes of prep time when you would have been doing something anyway, then 15 minutes of active cooking time. SIMPLE. If you count the 5 minutes or so that you leave the chicken sitting to cool down, dinner is ready between 7 and 7:30. This also keeps your shopping simple and you can do this with every meal. Pick a protein, do two veggies or a veggie and a carb or whatever your magic combo is. It helps you spend your time on the borders of the grocery store where you should be and it helps you and your family eat healthy, whole foods.

Just because you cook at home doesn't mean you need to be a gourmet. Tonight we had boneless, skinless chicken thighs again. These are becoming a staple because Landon loves them. We had a box of fresh greens in the fridge from last week so we made a salad with the greens and some cherry tomatoes. I really think what makes salad at home so delish is making your own dressing. Hidden Valley Ranch has it's time and place, but the reason salad at great restaurants tastes so good is because they make the dressing from scratch. It's something you can play around with using oils and vinegars in your own kitchen. Tonight I did a dressing with 1/3C grapeseed oil, 1/4C balsamic vinegar, 2 teaspoons of honey, 1/2 teaspoon of sriracha, and a clove of crushed garlic. 

tonight's dressing

We tossed the greens and grape tomatoes in the dressing and put the chicken on top. An easy, simple dinner that is healthy and homemade. Prep your kitchen, play around with your ingredients and figure out what works best for you and what will keep you in there cooking, stupid.

I bought this shirt for all of us. Just so we can remember where we stand.

Don't forget.... KISS. And then since you'll be done with dinner early, you have time afterward to KISS. See what I did there?

-RT

Strange Fact: Life Causes Death.... now get over it

As Syrio Forel once said, "fear cuts deeper than swords." If you get that reference you are such a nerd. Like me. Congratulations. Unfortunately, a sword can slice your head or arm off, and that's pretty scary as well. I'm not sure when the world decided to make people scared of EVERYTHING but I'm pretty over the nightly news. I'm sure if "the one thing I must know before getting in my car again" was that important, it would be breaking news and not a teaser for the news that comes on in 3 hours. 

The BlackBerry thumb will kill you, followed by iPhone brain. News at 11.

 Here's the thing about living with certain fears... the end result of life, is death. Everyone will eventually die, unless you plan to live in hologram form and go on a concert tour following your personal end. (Good for you weirdo.) 

MJ's hologram reads this blog.

 I have recently come to a sad conclusion while delving into health information and worrying about what L is eating... When it comes to local news and the internet everything "causes" cancer. By "causes" we mean, contains an ingredient, mutation, or hormone that has been shown to be a carcinogen. Lunchmeat causes cancer, soda causes cancer, heated hard plastic causes cancer, water bottles cause cancer, sugar causes cancer, the sun causes cancer, and also breathing, something none of us can seemingly avoid, causes cancer in various ways. These statements are all huge reaches, but for some reason, news media in various forms is trying to scare the crap out of us. Also, this propaganda is causing young people to be fatalistic about cancer. None of that is good.

By the way, this doesn't end by me saying "eat and drink whatever you want, smoke 20 packs a day, and renew your tanning bed membership because you are going to die anyway!" It's just a point where I had a realization that released me from a lot of fear. Instead of trying to do everything in a way to be the best and most healthy, and really stressing myself out, time would be better spent making intelligent choices about what I'm putting into my body, while enjoying life enough so that if the world ended tomorrow I would be satisfied that I had lived and tasted and wined and loved and gotten high on sugar, and sunburns, and wine. This is where I realized that you just try your best, you know your limits, but you still push them when you need to, and enjoy your life. Cancer is awful, death is sometimes a scary thing to think about. Most things we don't know much about are. In the instance of the opening quote, cancer/sickness/death could be the sword. Living your life in fear of death or sickness is basically giving in to that fear of sickness and not living at all. Done preaching, now on to more light hearted fears... like the fear of kitchens and raw meat. 

When appliances attack.

 I get it. Of all the comfy rooms in your house, the kitchen is by far the scariest. It has knives, ovens, stoves, fire, sharp edges, and the air of possible cooking failure hanging in the air like early morning fog. None of that stuff ever scared me. I usually fail at cooking things daily, if not a few times a week. Overcooking eggs, undercoating pans, and most of this is because I often cook without a recipe. It's how I learn best. 

I'm a raw chicken breast, and I'm here to kill you.

When I first started to cook, the things that scared me most were raw foods. The instillation of this fear can be directly attributed to media and pr, as it was not put in me by my mother. The people hacking their antibacterial products like to play commercials with pictures of germs writhing around on your counter tops. I'm not saying you should pick up raw chicken and lick it, I'm just saying Julia Child NEVER washed her hands in the kitchen. She was a cross contaminating machine. If you don't believe me, go watch any of her cooking shows. When this fact came to light, it helped me realize that any time I touched raw chicken, I probably wasn't going to die. (Whew!) Now the only reason my kitchen is evil is because the stove is electric and from the early 90s.

Queen Julia tells salmonella to eff off.

ATTENTION: Full circle moment. Just as you should not let fear rule your life, don't let fear of failure keep you out of the kitchen. Cooking at home is the BEST way to know what you are eating. It is proven time and time again that if you want to weigh less you need to cook MORE and eat out less. Cooking at home isn't the scary sitcom fodder that it used to be. Get a subscription to a great recipe magazine like Cooking Light and follow along. Or use the internet for free recipes and cooking techniques. Spend your time in the grocery store in the produce section, at the butcher, and in dairy for your milks, yogurt & cheese. And your eggs, even though they aren't dairy. That's just where they live. Then GET OUT while you still can... Grocery stores are evil.

The candy section.... MWAHAHAHAHA.

If you want to eat out intelligently and maybe don't have a cook at home option, arm yourself with information and knowledge. If I had only KNOWN that my precious drumsticks had 300 calories a pop, I wouldn't have an extra 3 lbs hanging around that I now have to work and deny wine to get rid of. Knowledge is power. Pick up one of the Eat This not That books. That will fill you in with a lot of information to make healthy decisions when you eat out.

What's the Ramona Pinot calorie count? 666 per glass.

I came up with some wise words all on my own to sum this up: The only thing we have to fear is fear itself, y'all. And holograms of dead people.

Let it be,

- RT

Ignorance is Bliss. So is Stir Fry.

Hello Internet. My name is RT and I'm a Sugar Addict. I know this because I took a quiz online and the results confirmed my suspicions. I also took a quiz online that said I was going to die at 92, so it's totally fine that I have a sugar addiction. If you have been reading along you know that I have a thing for nestle fudge ice cream drumsticks right now. It started out as a fling and was on it's way to becoming a full fledged relationship. I was making special trips to pick him up, we had a date almost every night, and sometimes he slept over (in the freezer). 

Hey there handsome fella.

Then I made a big mistake... I broke into his phone and read his texts! Wait... I mean I actually looked at the nutrition label. I had clearly been telling myself lies, as one sometimes does in a hot and heavy relationship. I could no longer ignore what was staring me right in the face.... 300 calories per drumstick. That, my friends, is much more than just one glass of wine. Well, unless it's this glass:

Seriously, someone buy me this.

And the story gets even more sorted. Sometimes I went back for seconds. On one lonely day during nap time, I skipped lunch in favor of three drumsticks. It was getting bad. I knew it had to come to an end. The calorie information is the last straw and, well, I wanted you all to know it's over. Our relationship was much better before I knew all of the facts. Now I just feel like a cheap, dirty sugar addict with no self control. So I came home to do one of my favorite things, ask google questions. "Google," I asked, "am I a sugar addict?" Google found a handy quiz for me. It is true/false. Let's review.

1. I don’t eat refined sugar every day These answers are complicated. Usually, FALSE. Fine. FALSE

2. I can go more than a day without eating some kind of sugar-containing food If I try, I can. But I don't try. So I'm going to give myself a False.

3. I never have cravings for sugar, coffee, chocolate, peanut butter or alcohol Just False. FALSE FALSE FALSE.

4. I’ve never hidden sweets around the house so I can eat them later Like in the bathroom? Hidden from whom? I'm pretty sure this is TRUE

5. I can stop after eating one bite of pastry or one piece of candy What are the circumstances? Is there a gun to my head? I guess I can, even though I usually don't want to, so TRUE.

6. There are times when I have no sugar around the house When I eat it all or when I'm trying to lose weight. Does fruit count? Because it shouldn't. TRUE.

7. I can have sweets in the house without eating them So in this scenario, do I have PMS? That would really change this answer. But TRUE.

8. I can go at least 3 hours without eating without shakes, fatigue or bad moods I didn't know we were getting this serious. But also, I have a 15 month old. I am always fatigued. So I need to tie in the food and the fatigue? I'm so fatigued by this quiz. TRUE.

9. I do not eat something sweet after every meal Harsh. This question is harsh. And the statement is FALSE. Because special K red berries is like eating candy for breakfast. Be honest. It is.

10. I rarely drink coffee or eat donuts or sweet rolls for breakfast Is this TRUE? yes. I don't drink coffee. Do I wish I had donuts and sweet rolls for breakfast often? Yes.

11. I can go more than an hour after waking without eating TRUE

12. I don’t drink sweetened soft drinks every day TRUE. I really do believe that diet soda in particular is the devil and will lead you to an early death. When something has zero calories, there is something wrong. Full sugar soda should be consumed in moderation. Like fountain coca cola poured over sonic ice with a fresh squeeze of lime juice. Preach.

Here is what I got: 

"For the record, if you answered four of these questions FALSE then stop lying and seek help for your sugar addiction."

That's a little harsh. I just answered all of her questions and she is calling me a liar. So how does she know I'm not lying about my sugar addiction for blog material attention? Here is my big girl moment and I'm putting this out there for all of the internet to see. S, you were right. I was eating too many chocolate fudge filled drum sticks. Print this out to save and throw in my face later. Actually, never mind. Don't do that. It might not end well.

 Anyway, ignorance is bliss, knowledge is power, blah, blah, blah. I'm switching to Skinny Cow and stepping my way down. I cut my calories in half. Everyone do a cheer. And I didn't have one tonight. Because I had a couple of glasses of wine to get me through the breakup. Regular glasses, not full bottle size glasses. You know what else goes down as easy as a nice pinot noir in the middle of July? Stir fry. (Just go with me on this one.)

Stir fry is actually a great and easy meal for the family or just the two of you or just for you. All you  need is love some veggies, add in a protein if you want, some sauces for flavoring, and best case scenario, a wok. Happy healthy Asian delights. (I think that is a meal I ordered at a Chinese restaurant once.)

Here is how our Stir Fry Night went....

Veggies: Two heads of broccoli (chopped), one red pepper, chopped shallots,
sliced garlic, and sliced green onion.

We used skirt steak marinated in soy sauce, salt, pepper, and a bit of sugar. (Addict)

Here is our rice cooker. It is making rice. It infuriates me.
I need a new one. Please send suggestions.

Seasonings: Light soy sauce, sesame seed oil, & oyster sauce (not pictured)

The broc takes the longest to cook, so it goes in the wok first
with some grapeseed oil and some soy sauce.

Shallots and garlic added.

Show me the beef.

Red pepper so they'll still have some crunch and green onion tops.

The rice is ready. Seriously, someone tell me a great rice cooker. I need it.

Here is dinner! Leftovers were amazing with a little Frank's Hot Sauce.
You could also add some Sriracha.

The reason stir fry is wonderful is because in a wok you can cook with less oils making it healthier. Also, there isn't a lot of guess work with cooking times since you cut everything up before you cook it and you can easily see how it is going. Make up your own stir fry recipes using different ingredients and sauces. It's a fun thing to cook as a couple or with older kids. 

And pour a little pinot out tonight for my homie, fudge filled drumstick. 

Pour out all of the Ramona Pinot you can get your hands on. I'll help.

 We had it good, real good. We were hot and heavy, and cold and delicious. But all good things must come to an end, and it's still bikini season in Texas.

Here's to attempting the skinnies for a little while longer. When winter comes, I won't want ice cream anyway. 

Flat tummies and skinny cow fudge pops,

- RT

Like the Raising Texas Facebook page and share posts as we try to build fans. When we hit 50, the person with the most shares gets a Goode Co or Royer's Pie!! I promise it's worth it. 

Then I Went Crazy and Now Spaghetti Squash

Alright people who need people and my friends who are reading this so they can say they did when I interrogate them later. Shockingly I am going to try to talk about food. I know. Calm down. Wait, don't leave... Food is cool. I promise. 

If food wasn't cool, the people on Top Chef would not be high fiving ALL THE DAMN TIME. Duh

 The fact that I am typing this right now is actually amazing. I have a fab guest post from JJ in DC waiting in the wings and I logged on to use it. Then I saw I'm about to hit 1,000 page views and I decided to take one for the team to knock it over the line. In the midst of a week full of monsoons and a nanny who lives in a flood zone (so she had to cancel both work days) and a toddler who just started loving to throw major tantrums, I've got cabin fever. Bad. I actually frightened S tonight with my aggressive chatter and unpredictably giant hand and body gestures. The only time this much rain is cool is in a romcom. 

What she is really saying is "You got us stuck in the rain, you screwed up my hair, you ruined my dress, and so it's over."
The original version of The Notebook was really short.

When the rain cleared for a bit today I realized that L was almost out of proteins. Since you are my friend and reading this, you probably read about that fancy little almost emergency room visit Sunday night. It threw off my week. I had plenty of chicken for Landon, but she decided this week that she really isn't into chicken. Not into chicken in the way of spitting it back out as soon as it hits her tongue. I'm a believer in proteins and I HAD TO GET OUT OF THE HOUSE. So we ran out to Whole Foods to check out the already prepared protein situation. It was good. There were other people there. I'm pretty sure I scared a few of them.

Hello strangers, you are not my baby or one of the walls of my home. So nice to see you.

 Then I took my crazies to the regular style grocery store for other essentials not good enough to be carried by Whole Foods. Namely cat food and ice cream drum sticks. Running these kinds of errands with a child is so much better than prebaby. People don't judge you as harshly for walking out of the store with an economy size back of cat food and a box of ice cream when you also have a baby. It's like a magic code. For the record, we only have one cat. We just hate buying cat food all the time. Senor don Gato is from Montrose, he lives outdoors and he has a boyfriend named Yoyo who we also support. We are open to these things in our family. 

Mee-Ow!

 Because sharing is caring, I feel that I should tell you that I need a shower. Baby emergency leads to bad grocery planning added to torrential downpours that lead to cabin fever (still with me?) equals yoga pants, stretchy jeans, and S's high school undershirts. And all of that equals me needing a shower. I should just go outside in the back yard and use the free water. Well, I would and all, it's just that the mosquitoes are really bad right now and I don't really need a mosquito bite down there. That's the only reason though.... Oh, and on a similar note, did I tell you I got a call from my church today and they asked me to teach Sunday school? S thought that was pretty entertaining. I told them this year might not be good but I would be happy to do advent wreaths or hide Easter eggs. She was pretty excited still. She must not read this blog.

Wait, was I going to blog about food? YES. I was. Guess what? It's healthy food. Bonus. It's also versatile food. Mega jackpot bonus. And growing up we NEVER ate it. (Side eye, mom.) Today I'd like to introduce you to my good friend Spaghetti Squash.

I will squash the competition. Get it? Shut up, it's late.

At my old job we were peer pressured into working through lunch. The bonus of this is that the people I worked with were fantastic. The down side is that we were stuck in the office all of the damn time. BUT because of this "working lunch" environment, I got to learn about spaghetti squash from my lovely coworker/friend H who brought it one day while in the midst of a very successful spin on the South Beach Diet. Apparently it's the mainstay pasta replacement on low carb diets. In real life, it is amazing in and of itself and if you want to use it to replace pasta or rice or other things in your life, it is perfect for that as well. We are going with spaghetti squash basics tonight. I'm going to show you how I cook mine and then show you how to use it in place of pasta in a regular spaghetti style meal. Once you have the basics of how to cook it down, you can sub it for so much and the mild sweetness is great with a bit of al dente crunch to the squash strands. 

First you preheat your oven to 400 (my favorite, if you remember). Then puncture the skin of the squash like you would a potato. I use a large knife because the skin can be tough.

Need to take out some aggression?

The skin won't be eaten so no need to wash, just puncture and place it right on a baking sheet and insert into the oven. It will take an hour total to cook, but ignore my timer in the photo below and set your timer for two 30 minute increments. Once the thirty minutes is up, you will want to turn the squash 180 degrees. If you leave it on one side the entire time, it will brown all the way into where the spaghetti squash lives. No bueno.

After an hour in the oven your squash should come out looking something like this:

I have found that it is much easier to deal with the squash when it has had lots of cool down time, so I will often cook the squash earlier in the afternoon and let it sit for up to an hour before cutting it. When you are ready to harvest your spaghetti, cut the squash in half long ways. The innermost part will have seeds and thin strings similar to a pumpkin that you can take a spoon or your hand and remove.

The top half still needs the center cleaned out, the bottom half is cleared.

Both cleared of seeds and strings.

 Once you discard the seeds and seed mess (technical term) you take a fork and simply scrape it along the insides of the squash and the spaghetti threads just come up like magic.

Left squash half is empty, right squash half is mid scrape.

Here's your squash guys. I know it looks exciting. Hold your applause.

At this point your spaghetti squash is good to go for whatever you want to use it in. You can seriously chop it up and sub it for rice in a dish, you can use it in place of pasta or spaghetti or in place of hash browns. It's a great way to cut calories from your meals and I prefer the flavor sometimes. Or you can screw health and throw some butter and Parmesan cheese on it and go to town. Following is what we did with our squash. 

Browned some lean hormone free ground beef.

Added Newman's Own Tomato and Basil

Frozen baguette fresh from the oven, fresh grated parm, and thinly cut fresh basil from my amazing basil plant.

Final Product: Spaghetti Squash with meat sauce, fresh basil and parm.

 All of this rain is making my plants crazy. My sweet potato vine is taking over the front yard and my basil now thinks it should be a tree. So all of Houston, if you need basil, please let me know. It's raining basil, among other things. Don't let this lead you to believe I have a green thumb. Sweet potato vine can grow in a drought and my basil has had good fortune in the rain. The rosemary bush was here when we got here and I leave it the f alone so as not to kill it.

I'm not sure how to wrap up a post that has taken so many different directions, so I'll just let you know that I plan to shower after posting this. Rest at ease my friends. More rain tomorrow = an evening of Chinese take out, champagne, and a romcom. Obviously S will not be home.

-RT

I Quit Fad Diets When Beyonce Ruined Lemonade

I have done a lot of fad dieting in my life... at one point I was a really smelly expert on the Cabbage Soup Diet. I actually liked the soup the first 4 days and worked hard to not vomit it up the last 3. After so many rounds of cabbage soup, just typing the name makes me want to gag. 

Look familiar? I can smell you from here.

Before cabbage soup the real metabolife was legal (the kind with the heart attack drug, ephedra, in it) and I stayed fit by being too busy to eat that much. Oh metabolife... thanks for all that focus in class and the straight A's senior year. 

Buy Ephedra... never sleep again!

 Post cabbage soup was the second half of college and the cult following of the Atkins diet, followed by the South Beach revolution. In retrospect, even if you are losing weight, you really shouldn't be eating bacon covered in melted cheese for every meal. (You know who you are, and I'm looking right at YOU). 

If any vegetarians were thinking about reading my blog, they just left.

 Where are we... OH, yes, the Hollywood juice diet you bought at drug stores. It came in a bottle and told you you could lose up to 10 pounds in 48 hours*. Then it didn't tell you that once you started eating solid food again you would put on 15lbs of bloat. I stopped fad dieting partially due to ridicule from my husband and partially because I COULD NOT do the lemon water, cayenne pepper, maple syrup Beyonce for Dream Girls diet. It was just too much. I believe in cleanses, but that was BEYOND. It was fasting. 

Here is my apology for saying anything bad about Bey. But really, this was disgusting.

So I took on the favorite annoying credo that people say and tried to start eating healthy for life. It did work out well. All of the weight that was always back and forth all of the sudden stabilized and although I still feel like I always have 5lbs to lose, I FEEL better. I don't feel like I'm starving myself or like I never get to eat what want. And I could be healthier, but that's fine. I would rather drink wine and have chocolate chip cookies and feel satisfied.

Now I want to talk about how much I love food. I love food. I love it so much I categorize it so I know how best to eat it. I don't have some filing system for food, this is mental categories. Also, I'm crazy, but whatever. Here are the categories:

HEALTHY for real: this is for vegetables and lettuces and things. Like you could literally eat your face off with these things when they are steamed or raw or boiled and actually lose weight. I also count certain proteins in here when prepared the healthiest way. Like steamed fish or other healthy sounding preparation ways.

Healthy for real.

Healthy Healthy: I put fruits into the healthy healthy category because they are really good for you, and you should definitely eat a lot of them, but some fruits just taste too good to be trusted. I'm not saying to ever not eat fruit, what I'm saying is when I am shoving an entire large mango into my mouth, I could just be eating raw spinach, so I could be healthier. Also in this category are the delicious non veggie vegetables: corn, potatoes, and any other vegetable that tastes a little too good. And your usual suspect lean meats, chicken breasts, fishes, pork, and Bambi. I also put triscuits in here because they have three ingredients and for health I would rather binge on them than lose a fat battle to a box of oreos.

Here is a giant mango for you to enjoy.

Healthier OPTION: I love this category. These are foods that might not be good for you, but they are better for you than what you could have eaten. I don't really believe in grains (although I eat enough of them) so my favs brown rice and whole wheat pasta go here. Because I really eat too much per serving for them to be healthy healthy. Also here is pretty much any casserole or recipe from cooking light. Because really those delish meals are just a substitute for the biscuits and honey covered in egg yolk that I was going to shove into my mouth. If I have ice cream after dinner you might consider this a "treat" (see below) but really it's a healthier option because it has less calories than the two large glasses of wine that I sacrificed to eat the ice cream. My peanut covered ice cream drumstick is a healthier OPTION. See where this is going? Most foods fit into this category.

Chicken tamale casserole from Cooking Light. See the salad, that's so health right there.

Treats: I love treats. Potato salad, grilled corn and blue cheese salad, have you ever realized how many unhealthy things have the word "salad" after them? Dinner out is a treat all around. I mean seriously, I don't care what the biggest loser tries to tell you, who goes out to a nice meal and then tells the waiter to tell the chef how to boil their meat with no oil or seasoning and then steam their vegetables? Come to my house. I'll make that for you where it is supposed to be eaten... at a house. You should try to eat healthiest in every day life. Dinner out is a treat. It's something that you do every once and a while. Not a daily or even weekly part of your diet. Tortilla chips with a really amazing and fattening dip = treat. Fried chicken = treat. Chocolate Sheet Cake = treat. Greasy Cheese Enchiladas from Spanish Village = the best treat ever. And so on.

These are the real life Spanish Village Enchiladas. Now pass the margaritas.

Chemicals: I do enjoy chemicals every now and then, and I feel it's better to recognize them for what they are. Chemicals are things like skittles, cheesy/ranch/almost any Doritos, well really packaged chips in general, candy with color dye in it, squeeze cheese, cokes and most sodas, the cookies from the store with the fluffy frosting that taste like cupcakes.... best chemicals ever! Chemicals are good, but you have to see them for what they are. They shouldn't be a part of your every day diet. 

Needed to Survive: These fall into the categories above at times, but if I want them bad enough, I do it... because I have to. I  need these things. I also have a rotating spot on my need to survive that is my obsession of the moment. Right now it is ice cream drumsticks. Tonight I had figs and honey for dessert instead. It was really hard. Needed to survive: Most melty chocolate chip cookies, homemade bread and butter, gin and tonic in the summer time, champagne any time, peanut butter, and cheese. 

Doesn't everyone carry this wherever they go?

Maybe blogging is about exposing my crazy to the internet. Someone else please tell me you categorize your food and then send me your categories. 

-RT