Although I made great strides - and my family was eating much better - it wasn't all smooth sailing. Although my son would eat just about anything (Locust Boy, remember?) my husband was a little harder to convince. He knew what he liked and I wasn't going to change him, dammit!
Or so he thought....
For instance, he and I were drinking a lot of milk at the time and I wanted to switch us from 2% milk to 1% milk. Most people would think it was a little change - no big deal. My husband saw it as sabotage of the most sinister kind. How dare I change the milk! He refused to drink it. To me, it tasted exactly the same. He swore he could tell the difference. Also, the color of the cap on the milk was a different color so don't try to fool me, he said. I did what any good wife would do. I found a brand of 1% milk that had the same color of cap as his beloved 2%. MUAHAHAHAHA! I'm evil that way. He was sucking down 1% for 9 months before I finally told him what I had done.
He unknowingly got me back, though.
My dear husband was totally in love with his mom's cherry cheesecake. I began experimenting with different cheesecake recipes, but none of them were "like mom's" according to my husband. (And whilst you may be thinking me stupid for not just calling her up and asking her for her "recipe," I should point out that she was completely unwilling at that point to share any of that kind of information with me. It took me 15 years to pry the coveted potato salad recipe out of her!) After consuming more cheesecake in a 3 year period than I had in all of the previous years of my life, you can imagine my surprise when I walked into her kitchen one day and spied the box of Jello No-Bake Cheesecake. Uh-huh. I had spent years trying to recreate a cheesecake recipe that only requires that you add milk to the powder in the box.
Anyway, after spending 5 years struggling to find a few like-minded people who shared my desire to eat foodstuffs that didn't include an ingredients list of unpronounceable and unidentifiable things, we moved again. This time we were going "home" to Oregon, to a town just outside of Portland. I was afraid that I would have to start from square one, searching out whatever support and real food I could find.
I need not have worried.
Most of these people were way ahead of me! Yay!! I was not only surrounded by good food, I was also surrounded by people who liked to eat good food, grow good food, and raise good food. It didn't take long before we were one of the few families we knew who didn't have chickens in our backyard. (Now we have 7.) We had 3 farmer's markets within 4 miles of our home. Grass fed beef, local honey, and farm fresh milk are easy to come by. Food co-ops, farmer run stores, u-pick farms, and restaurants that specialize in local ingredients are everywhere.
It was like we hit the real food jackpot!
It was also a little overwhelming. I discovered organic veggies are to me what shoes are to some women. There were many times that I would be so dazzled by something at the farmer's market that I would bring it home and it would languish, untouched, before ending up in the composter. (I swear one day I really will learn what to do with sunchokes!) Bronze Arrowhead lettuce and Cherokee Purple tomatoes will get me salivating the way a pair of Christian Louboutin heels will make some women's heart go pitter-patter. (Not that I would turn down a pair of Lougoutin's if somebody wanted to give them to me, they just wouldn't be very practical footwear when I'm hanging out by the chicken coop.)
Stay tuned for Part 5!
Other posts in this series:
5 comments:
I'm finding myself literally on the edge of my seat with this series. Don't keep us waiting too long now, dearie!!
What is a sunchoke????
My mother switched milk on my dad too...and he refused to drink it...so she saved a whole milk container and filled it with skim...and did that for a few months...and then told him what she did :P LOL
Oh gawd...boxed cheesecake? You gotta be kidding me?? But then again, shouldn't you have realized by now that that's what it probably was given what you said about your MIL's cooking skills (or lack thereof)? ;)
Topsy: I'm working on Part 6 right now!
Stace: A sunchoke is also called a Jerusalem artichoke, but it's actually related to sunflowers. They have edible tubers that are supposed to be really good (and maybe someday I'll do more with them then just bring them home. :)
That's funny that your mom switched milk on your dad, too. Funny thing is, now that neither one of us drinks it, 2% is the lowest fat milk that I get (I prefer to cook with whole milk or cream. Just ask my hips...)
T: I probably would have figured it out faster had I known that it even existed! Being the good wife that I am (stop laughing!) I do make him one of the boxed ones every year for Christmas. Just like his mommy used to make. ;)
You are a good wife to humor him like that. Me, I would have told hubby that it's about time he grew up and stop eating sh*t like that (in those exact words too...maybe adding "effing" in front of "sh*t"...LOL!). ;D
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