Quite frequently, I get asked by people who follow me on Twitter and Facebook - how can you cook so much and be losing weight?
If any of you follow me in either place, most of my weekday updates are quips about what I am cooking. I love to cook, what can I say? I did before starting this journey, and I do now.
The biggest difference -- aside from the fact that typically, the ingredients have changed to more fresh produce, lower fat dairy products, healthier oils and the like -- is me.
I used to eat my way through things I made. By the time dinner rolled around, I had taste-tested the dish so frequently that I already had my dinner serving, but that never stopped me from piling my plate full just the same. When I baked for Christmas, I would eat easily a dozen or more cookies while I was baking them and before I got them put up for storage. I always doubled or tripled cookie batches, and this is partially why.
Now, it seems like the more I make, the less I want to eat, not just of what I am making, but in general, too.
Yesterday was a good example. I wanted to make sausage and pepper subs for dinner. I got up, put the turkey sausage, sauce and peppers in our crock pot, then went to work on a batch of French Bread dough to make sub rolls.
While that was rising, I mixed up a batch of cookie dough and put it in the fridge to chill. After the rolls were baked, since the oven was warm, I broke out the dough and made 3 dozen double chocolate cookies.
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I decided that I wanted to make a few pizzas to freeze, but had no pizza sauce, so on the stove came a simmering pot of tomatoes and spices. Once the sauce was ready, I mixed up some whole wheat pizza dough, and assembled three pizzas with turkey sausage, orange bell peppers, red onions, yellow squash and 2% milk cheeses.
Needless to say, I was working until Randall got home last night.
What did I eat?
I grabbed a lemon yogurt out of the fridge and sat down with a cup of coffee about 10:30. At 2:30, I baked off one of the pizzas and had three slices, wrapping the rest up for Randall's lunches. I had two of the cookies - one off of the first sheet to test them, and one after they cooled as I was getting them in the freezer. We then had dinner - I had one sub, on a roll that was about 8 inches, I would guess. Other than that, I had lots of water. Well, that and a few Hershey's kisses that evening as I let Daniel have some of his Halloween candy.
I used to watch my Mom cook all day and sit down to a holiday meal and hardly touch any of it. I never understood how she could smell all of that all day and not want to devour it all once she sat down. Now, I finally do. The satisfaction is coming from the smells and the visions of success that I see before me as opposed to the actual consumption of the food now.
I am glad that I turned this corner and still am able to cook and bake. Its so much a part of who I am and what I love that I don't know what I could possibly reinvent myself that radically.
I was going to post this last night, but the day's events left me totally exhausted. The plan for today? Probably one batch of cookies, but that's it! Well...maybe.
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