Alaina and Food

A have received a few comments wanted to know a little more about me. So, here I go.

Say hola to low quality laptop picture!

My name is Alaina, and I am 19 years old. I actually turn 20 on Friday, and I hate that. I don't want to grow up. At all. Ever. But I digress.

I know this isn't an "About Me" page, so I won't bore you with that. However, I will bore you with this: my relationship with food and what I hope to accomplish with this blog.

I have been on a diet since I was in the first grade. I have felt fat, ugly, and an outsider since I started preschool. In retrospect, I can't believe how I survived with all of these negative feelings, but I did. And so did a million other girls. It's such a hard time growing up.

Needless to say, I haven't had the best relationship with food. I ate when I was happy. I ate when I was sad. I ate when I was stressed. I just ate. An I ate everything. Anything from salad, to pasta, to cookies.

My parens tried to help me. My Mom and I joined WeightWatchers (twice), bought healthy cookbooks, got a gym membership, even went to a doctor, but all of these attempts fell short of expectations (and cost a LOT of money).

Even though they tried to help, they never tried to stop my eating habits. Now, I'm sure some of you don't think that that was the right thing to do. As parents, aren't they supposed to guide you into the right decisions, to health? I used to think that. I resented that for a long time, actually. However, now that I am older, I think they did the perfect thing.

I learned a lot about food, through eating it and through researching it during my diets. I learned what I liked, what I didn't like, and how to experiment. Since my Mother is a downright awful cook (Sorry, momma. You know I love you anyways), I started teaching myself how to cook. I fell in love with it. I respect food and the power that it has over me, and the emotions it can induce when people eat it. Food is a special thing.

Now, as a college student who lives off campus with no meal plan, I was thrust into a world of cooking for myself. I bought some cookbooks, stocked my pantry, acquired about 200 too many kitchen gadgets, and just cooked.

Slowly but surely, I am learning how to cook and cook well. It's so much easier to cook healthy when you don't have others making your food and when you are the one who goes grocery shopping (and it's so much easier to learn how to cook when you are a part of a welcoming and loving food blog community). I have been learning the magic, deliciousness, and frugalness of fresh veggies and fruits and I have explored the local natural food shoppe for cheap, high-quality spices.

I am learning to love food for not only how it makes me feel emotionally, but how it makes me physically. Food shouldn't be a crutch for happiness, and it's taken me 20 years to figure that out.

I would absolutely love to someday write a healthy cookbook for college students. As a current student myself, I know what it's like to be living off of less than $10 a week, and little to no time to cook anything more extravagant than toast, let alone something that is healthy. I can't find any cookbook like that, so I want to fill that gap. Hopefully someday that dream becomes a reality.

Phew. I hope your still with me! That was longwinded, and maybe a little sporadic in thought, but I hope that helps you get to know me a little better and where I'm coming from.

Thank you for listening. Honestly.

Alaina