I love food! Not like a mild attraction, but a full on love affair. Food has been a source of happiness and joy since I was a child. It was also a coping mechanism. My earliest memories of my grandmother are her in the kitchen. Especially on Sundays for after church. She and my grandfather never believed in going to a restaurant. ‘Why pay so much more for dinner when you can just make it yourself?’ I do not have the same thought process. Cooking and eating at a restaurant are equally enjoyable in my opinion. Holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas were huge for cooking at my grandparent’s home. My mother and grandmother would spend days cooking and baking. My grandmother always had a small table set up for desserts only. It was a kid’s dream come true! So many cookies, cakes and pies. I carry the same traditions with my children.
As I have gotten older, food became a source of comfort when I was feeling depressed or unhappy. I didn’t understand growing up that eating your feelings isn’t the best decision. I am grateful that the last couple of years that has changed dramatically for me. Figuring out the best things to fuel my body while enjoying eating has been a big step in my health journey. I was diagnosed about 19 years ago with hypothyroidism. It is a butterfly shaped gland at the base of your neck. The thyroid controls several things in my body such as metabolism. Being hypothyroid, it slows the metabolism down greatly. With medication, it keeps it in balance. There are many other things that go along with this, but the most noticeable is the weight gain. I gained about 30 lbs before my wedding. As you can imagine, dress shopping wasn’t my favorite thing. To this day, I have no idea what the dress size was.
Last year, I enrolled in the Academy of Culinary Nutrition program online. It was an intense 14 week course. I graduated with honors from the program. If you are looking to expand your knowledge of medicine as food and how to actually prepare it, I truly can’t recommend the program enough. It introduced me to so many flavors that I had never even thought of or had been exposed to before. The program puts it in such a way that you want to know more. I enjoyed every minute of it.
So many happy memories come from sharing a meal with friends or family. Most of my happiest memories are around a dinner table with an abundance of food, family, friends and wonderful conversation. I look forward to sharing recipes from my childhood as well as trying out new recipes.
