Percolating Thoughts

For the last few weeks, I've been blogging over at Real Food. Real People. Real Simple., issuing a challenge to any who are interested in learning more about eating "real food."

Real food (according to Megan):
Is or has been alive. It can't be "made".
Rots, wilts, decomposes - and sometimes quickly.
Doesn't have an ingredient label (unless, of course, the only ingredient is the food itself.)
Doesn't have celebrity endorsements.

The traffic on the site has been amazing! I've had almost 500 hits in just three weeks. People have been excited about the recipes and the concepts, and yet I frequently hear that *time* is one of the biggest hindrances to moving towards real food. It's really hard for me to separate cooking due to biological necessity, and cooking for the love of food. I'm not even really sure how much the rest of the non-food obsessed world cooks, or wants to cook. However, I'm trying to be conscious of how long recipes take from start to finish, how complicated they are, and what types of ingredients make up the recipes in my weekly menus.

I realized something very important about myself through the last three weeks of guiding others through a healthier lifestyle of eating. I'm a burster. I work in quick, short bursts. I prefer weight lifting to running; I like spending a whole day painting or decoupaging, or...cooking - and then, I want to move on. I don't cook every night. There's usually some sort of "science experiment" going on in the form of sprouting, dehydrating, or soaking, but the stove sees little use all week other than to reheat soup or cook some oatmeal. The oven makes an appearance on Saturdays only. So when people ask me how I do it, how I manage to eat whole, real foods that I've made from scratch, I usually shrug. It's only lately that I've realized just how I do manage it. I do everything on Friday evenings and Saturdays, and make sure there's "extra." I understand that might not work for people: I'm not issuing an order or a bottom line, but just an explanation, which quite possibly is more for me than anyone else...