Reinventing Myself

No, I'm not trying to turn myself into a vegetable!
Picture from weknowyourdreamscom

Once upon a time, at the beginning of January, I was sitting on our couch with a notebook and a pencil in hand.  Derek, on the love seat, was watching a sporting event of some kind.  After I had been concentrating on that notebook for a while he asked what I was doing.  Mostly to get a rise from him I said, "reinventing myself".  It worked!  He said, "Oh no you're not!"  He likes to tell me that I can't make any goals without his permission because I have too many.  He understandably does not want my goals to backfire and, instead of making me better, have them turn me into a blubbering mass of discouragement.  Perhaps, on occasion, I maybe, possibly could have overdone the goal making!

What I was really doing was trying to come up with more little things I could do to help me be better, happier, healthier, smarter, or any other good adjective.  Naturally I came up with a few.  Besides having a thankful Thursday, I came up with six others that I can think of right now that I have started.  (Derek is feeling justified right now about thinking I make too many goals!)

One of those goals is to eat more vegetables.  I generally think they are yucky, but I also realize that they are good for me.  Due to the fact that I have so many oral allergies, I can't eat most raw vegetables, which is how I think they taste the best.  I started out planning how to fulfill this goal by having a conversation with a couple of sister-in-laws and a brother-in-law who were sharing ideas.  I was so negative about vegetables that I'm pretty sure they were very convinced I would not succeed at this goal!  The good news is, when you hardly eat any vegetables, it is fairly easy to improve!

So we tried a recipe of baked cauliflower that Erin (Derek's sister) gave me.  It wasn't awful, but it still tasted a little too strongly like cauliflower (imagine that!) even when I kept dumping seasoning on it.  We all ate it, but it isn't on the favorites list.

Next I tried a recipe for citrus bacon green beans.  Connor had two helpings of green beans for the first time in his life, and I had three -- also for the first time.  Bacon isn't really very healthy, but it sure makes green beans taste better!  Since usually we eat our vegetables dumped out of a can and warmed up in the microwave, I decided that the best way to improve our consumption of veggies was to actually use recipes with flavor so they would taste better.  So, I have three more recipes printed out to try this week.  Feel free to send me all of your favorite cooked vegetable recipes (with no milk and cheese because then Dan can't eat it).  When it comes to eating more vegetables, I'm pretty sure I can use all the help I can get!