Home cooking

If you have followed my blog you should know that I am very opiniated when it comes to food. First of all I'm french and I grew up in an environment where a home cooked meal was served every night. Hey I even had breakfast with my parents until I left home when I was 23!
I am fortunate in the sense that I learned how to cook and it is now part of who I am. Cooking does come naturally for me. As we are getting older the weight tends to stay on. B and I are very fond of good food but we also want to be lean. I am making an effort to shop for the whole week, plan my meals in advance because it is better that way and with 2 kids a full time job I just don't have time to go shopping more than once a week in more than one store. I rather save that time to play with the kids or go for a bike ride.
Naturally I have my low week when nothing sounds good, when everything is frozen and at 9pm I haven't started anything. In general we try to keep our restaurant outings to one during week night and probably one or twice during the week end for brunch/lunch or dinner.
Why did I start on that post, because I went to a triathlon meeting last friday about nutrition. The core of the business that hosted us very nicely bugs me. They offer custom meals nutritious and balanced delivered to you. They are catering to people who don't like/know how to cook and rather go eat out every night. They advertise their product as time savings because you take out the shopping for/preparing/and cleaning after the meal, calorie controlled and also probably better for you.
Remember cooking comes naturally for me, it is a way for me to unwind after a long day at work. I do take pleasure putting together something new, something tasty and present it nicely for just the two of us. Hey I even cook for myself homemade soups when B is on a business trip. I tend to forget that everyone is not like me nor they want to be. Eventhough it really pisses me off when people advertise cooking healthy as time consuming I do understand that some people like it. The only thing is that at the end of the day you still depend on someone else, that you still have to plan days in advance what you are going to eat and this time you cannot accomodate your ingredients differently. For instance when I buy my ingredient for the week (meat, vegetables) I usually can swap things out and if on Saturday asianish pork with baby bok choy sounded good on tuesday I may rather have something more like a slow cooked pork with Italian flavors and polenta. I truly believe that you don't need to cook elaborate meals to put something both tasty and healthy. The key to success is a well stocked pantry, freezer and fridge. My mom bought me this awsome cook book called "They will be there in an hour". This book is filled with recipe to put together a whole meal in an hour. It also tells you what you should have in your pantry. Now for those of you who aborre the kitchen yes please go ahead and order your custom meals online. But for those of you who don't cook because it seems so complicated and so time consuming there are a lot of recipes that can be put together in a small amount of time.