Why we started this blog.

About four years I was told by my doctor that I had high blood pressure and high cholesterol. He told me I needed to eat a low-sodium diet, less red meat, and more fruit and veggies. He suggested I read a book called the Dash Diet. I bought that book and a couple of others. I must admit that for a variety of reasons, we had very bad eating habits. I feel bad now looking back. If I had known what I know now, there is no way I would have been feeding my family all the crap that we ate. But meals were always done in a hurry. We ate a lot of Hamburger Helper and a lot of bagged meals. I did, on occasion cook things that didn't come from a box or a bag, but not as often as I should have. Veggies for us was to open a can of something. Fruit for us was to open a can of something. Unless we got corn-on-the-cobb or I made a salad, we rarely ate fresh veggies or fruit. And we sure didn't eat anything organic. Why back then, organic was something health food nuts ate.

Another bad habit that we had developed over the years, was the fast food craze. We had Big Mac Mondays. We ate at place like Burger King, McDonalds, Wendys and the likes. And this was before they had all the healthy salad options. Even if we ate out at a nice place, we usually ordered red meat.

Now I'll admit that even though I cut down my sodium intake, I still didn't heed my doctor's advice. So he started putting me on medications that had side effects. The turning point came when we left San Luis Obispo and moved to Orange, CA. We decided that since we had so many food options here, that there was no need to eat at the fast food chains we had previously frequented. The second change occurred when we bought our steamer. The third change came when we bought our Jack LaLane Juicer and a blender. We started eating more veggies and drinking more smoothies and fruit juice. The fourth and biggest change came when we signed up for the CSA program from Tanaka Farms. I have Chapman University to thank for that. They started the program in 2011 and I immediately signed us up. Every two weeks we get a box with 11 or 12 varieties of organic fruits and veggies. That led to us learning to eat things we've never eaten before.

So I decided that I would start a blog with the recipes I've found and pictures we took. I was sharing these on Facebook but that's kind of a pain when you're limited on space. So I'll start posting some of the old things from Facebook and mix in some of the newer things we are doing.