I watch a lot of cooking competition shows, and it always amazes me what kinds of dishes chefs can come up with despite bizarre ingredients, time constraints, or other rules. One of my favorites is Chopped , where chefs get mystery baskets with four unknown – and often odd – ingredients and have to use them in an appetizer, entrée, or dessert.   But as much as I enjoy seeing their creativity, I can’t say it’s something I necessarily share. I may occasionally try a new recipe,

You’ve probably heard about the changes to food guidelines  that flipped the food pyramid, with more focus on protein and less focus on whole grains, among other things. As is often the case, I have a hard time with these broad categorizations, and thinking about it reminded me of an exercise I did a while back.   Good food or bad food? The exercise was to look at certain foods and ask, is this good or bad? Some items to consider were chocolate, pasta, hamburgers, and a salad

How do you overcome negative thoughts?   Someone recently asked me this question, wanting to know my answer, especially in relation to my journey with food and weight. Here are some of my specific thoughts and how I got past them.   I’m so fat and ugly I had this thought almost constantly in my younger years. It started with getting dressed in the morning, and it continued with seeing media images and comparing myself to every other woman I saw.   I only started moving past i

Even if you’ve never heard the term “hyperpalatable food”, you probably know about these kinds of foods. They’re the ones that have been designed to taste so good that you have a hard time stopping once you start eating them. They also don’t make you feel full very quickly, even though they have a lot of calories.   I began thinking about these types of foods, and my own journey with them, after listening to an episode of Trevor Noah’s podcast that featured an interview with

I recently got a surprise gift card to the meal kit service Sunbasket  from work. Since I attended a benefits meeting and filled out a survey afterward, my name got entered in a raffle drawing for the gift card, and I won! (It makes me wonder how many other people filled out the survey, but I’m not complaining.)   I’m not generally into meal kit services, but as a free experiment, I was all for it. And as with most things, the experiment had some pros and cons.   Things that

Sweets seem to abound this time of year. I should know, since I contribute to them. For my church’s holiday fair, I made peanut butter fudge, chocolate fudge, and pies, and I’ve made three kinds of cookies for holiday gifts.   But there are also holiday meals – Thanksgiving, Christmas, second Christmases, and whatever else you might celebrate – plus my church often has some kind of sweet after the service, even apart from the church fair.   When I was younger, all these sweet

A recent episode of the Stuff You Should Know podcast was about Julia Child , and that in turn prompted me to re-watch the movie Julie & Julia . (You can currently watch it on YouTube for free , though with random ad breaks.)   Between the two, I started thinking about what an amazing person Julia Child was, and how her example offers many lessons for all of us.   Be willing to try something new If you’re not that familiar with Julia Child, you may not know that before she an

For those of us who’ve struggled with eating and food issues, it’s not always easy to feel grateful for good. It can all feel quite complicated when food is sometimes a source of shame, guilt, or frustration, among other things. It’s easy to get lost in those details and forget how important food actually is.   But I want to take a moment and express how grateful I am to have food, to have access to the foods I want, and not have to worry about where my next meal is coming fr

Do you like yourself? This probably isn’t a question that comes up every day for most of us, though if you struggle with eating or body image issues, it may crop up more often.   I only started thinking about it after watching the new documentary about John Candy titled I Like Me . I still find it hard to accept that it’s been 31 years since Candy died in 1994, and from the movie, it was clear that he’s still very much in the thoughts of his friends.   I realized while watchi

Note: What I’ve written about the Day of the Dead celebration is my understanding. If I have gotten anything wrong or caused any offense, my apologies, as that is certainly not my intent.   You may have heard the phrase, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” I certainly have, although I wouldn’t say it’s universally true. I suspect it depends on the man and the cooking, among many other things.   What I hadn’t heard is any similar phrase for women, so I was a bit