Being a "foodie"

[SunsetRunner]

I've been just curious if trying to lose some weight, being pushed into different diet plans and changing own eating habits cause anyone of you to actually love food even more. I noticed that with all the awareness I gained trying to lose my weight I also improved my cooking skills and started to actually taste the food rather than only fill my stomach with it. I think a lot about food, about what to cook next etc. No, it's not that I'm hungry but it's more about the excitement of trying yet another recipe, creating my own recipes, and experimenting ( sometimes with failure 😄 ). I started making food which usually I would buy in the store (bread, pasta - all home-made ). I always consider if there is a way to make something as home-made ( next mozzarella is on my list 🙂 ). If I think now about my eating habits a year ago it's not just I've been eating unhealthy and overeating most of the time. My food back then was just boring. Yes, it tasted nice when home-made but I could easily divide it into maybe 5-6 different dishes. Now, I go with crazy ideas ( which, as the Internet shows, somebody always tried already 😄 ) like lasagne using wholemeal crepes instead of pasta sheets ( de-lic-ious! ). Moreover, I really care about cooking everything healthy and since I do log my food even now, I'm always aware of the amount of energy and nutrients each dish comes with. But I feel like now I love to eat even more than before. Sounds crazy if you think of eating as an "enemy" of diet ( and I learnt that food is not the enemy, it's us being our own enemies in first place ).

Did your cooking and eating improve in terms of richness, flavours and variety? DId you became a "foodie" ( there is such term, however, I'm not a big fan of it, hence I leave it inside a quotation marks 😉 )?

[WendyB]

I agree with you. I like looking for new recipes and trying new foods all the time!

Really into my Instapot right now. So I'm finding all kinds of new things to cook with it.

[emili]

I cook a greater variety of food for my family than for myself (out of preference) but I do find that I think about it a bit more than I used to.. how do I make it a little more interesting or what spice can I try. I am lucky that they will try anything.. if I completely miss the mark- they call it "dish of the week" and I never make it again 🙂

[SunsetRunner]

@emili Since there is only me and my wife, there are not many people to please with cooking but it became trickier. I'm all into healthy options while my wife into tasty ones. I'm not fooling myself and I know the unhealthy food can be ridiculously tasty and flavoursome 🙂 I sort of took over family cooking and ended up cooking two different meals ( it takes a bit of training to do it effectively if one doesn't want to spend all the time in the kitchen 😄 ). I find healthier options also flavourful but I understand it takes a bit of practice to switch so I'm trying to experiment how to make dishes my wife likes into "lesser-of-two-evils". My success is that usually, my wife asks me if what I prepared is healthy 😄 At least she cares haha. I managed to remove deep-frying, excess use of oil, refined sugars ( incredible how many things are sweet naturally and can improve overall flavour ), encouraged eating raw vegetables, provided portion control ( one thing is measuring, another thing is plating to make it look visually "enough" ). I don't want to enforce anything, but one thing is that I'm willing to help with improving eating habits and secondly, I do enjoy preparing those meals and I don't mind preparing separate dishes for each of us. Making something unhealthy into a healthier option with as little flavour sacrifice as possible is like solving a puzzle and I love puzzles 😉 On the positive note, last weekend we went out to have a pizza in one of the local pizza places ( yes, there are exceptions to my "healthy rule"... sometimes ). It was good to hear that my homemade pizza ( I love pizza and I bake my own quite often ) beats the one we ordered, especially because of the crust, as I use wholemeal crust and this seems to get crunchier 🙂 It's incredible progress considering that very first pizza I couldn't even place properly on the stone and it turned into messed-up (unplanned) calzone and made the stone totally dirty and after all, it came up inedible. Cooking for somebody is way more fun than just for self and trying to make the dish not only tasty but healthy is quite a challenge but worthwhile.