The Best Things: New Recipes

I love to cook. Cooking has been a favorite thing for me for years, though I enjoy cooking even more when I have someone to cook for. I have always liked trying new recipes and seeing how I can tweak them to make them better for us. I don't cook without recipes. I'm not good at figuring out how to take random ingredients and come up with a masterpiece, but I am good at taking a recipe and figuring out what I can change to make it better. I like to bake as well, but I'm almost too impatient for that. I like eating baked goods, but I don't really like to wait for them to be done or for multiple batches to be finished.

Within the last several years, I stopped trying new recipes. I think I just got lazy. It was easier to fall back on an old favorite rather than trying new things. In contrast, we tried different restaurants all the time. I didn't have any really easy recipes that were quick to make after a long day at school so we would go out to eat instead. More signs that I was getting lazier. I still cooked some, but like I said, it was more likely to be something I made all the time. And eating leftovers didn't always happen. I'm embarrassed to admit how much food I used to throw away. Talk about first world problems. We'd go out to eat with leftovers in the fridge.

One of the first steps I took when I started on this journey was to cut out fast food restaurants. We continued to go out to eat on Friday nights and probably always will. I'm not willing to give up date night. :) So I knew with my resolution not to eat out during the week that I was going to have to start cooking more. I was going to have to have things that I could throw together when life got crazy. That I was going to have to get used to eating leftovers because that made for easy dinners. Around that same time, I started an account on Pintrest. I started pinning recipes that were for calorie loaded desserts (several of which I tried and they were AMAZING!). I knew I would have to change that. The calorie loaded desserts weren't going to get me where I wanted to go. Through Pintrest I found several different websites that had WW friendly recipes and most of their recipes already had the WW points+ calculated for me. It was a godsend to have so many new recipes available to me to try and see what we liked and what we didn't. Truthfully, it was mostly what I liked and what I didn't. Vince rarely has a problem with anything that I cook, which makes him so easy to cook for!

I've been trying new recipes and while I still have some favorites that I will make more often than others, I have really been trying new things. This weekend I made a meatballs and spaghetti soup that is so easy and delicious. I really love making soups! So delicious and warming during the cold winter months. I don't think I would have started looking around for recipes as much without my journey. So now I get to eat delicious things that are good for me as well! Double bonus!

So eating healthy, homemade meals will keep me moving along in my journey! :)