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Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Living With Real Food: A husband's perspective

I asked my husband James to write something for this blog. Here's what he came up with, unedited by me. I'm glad to hear that he is willing to give new foods a chance, since I have a special surprise for him later this week. (Check back, it'll be a good one ;)  

Living with real food: A Husband's Perspective

This post is from the guy who is eating all this “simply real food”. My wife is an amazing cook, unfortunately I am not an amazingly adventurous eater. Lets just say when we first got married I didn’t eat salad or much of anything else that you couldn’t find on a kids menu at a local restaurant. I pretty much grew up on hotdogs and macaroni and cheese despite the encouragement from my mom to eat new and heather things.  You couldn’t use any amount of reasoning with me, for instance, “if you don’t eat…fill in the blank…you won’t grow up to be big and strong” yeah well I’m not buying it, I was a tall kid and I ended up being six foot 10 inches, so try again. I’m a picky eater and I don’t like food changes, enough said.

Chanelle and I have been married for ten years and I am happy to report that I can now eat a salad and actually enjoy it. In fact I even think mac and cheese is pretty disgusting (wow, never thought I would say that). These changes did not come easily nor did they come quickly. I am still kind of a picky eater but I am much better than I was. My wife broke me in easy. Actually, she tricked me into eating a lot of stuff at first, like putting ground beef into a salad with ranch dressing and crushed up chips on it, looked like some kind of weird nachos to me. I caught on after awhile but she still sneaks secret ingredients into our meals; stuff that she knows if I knew was in my food I wouldn’t eat. I don’t hear the, “so what do you think?” question as much after dinner anymore because she knows before I answer I’ll say, “I don’t know, what was in it?” Truthfully, I really like most, if not all, dinners she makes. Regretfully, I gave my wife way more grief than I like to admit about our food changes. Some things I still think warrant a small amount grief like when I ask, “what do you want for Valentines Day?” and she says, “a real cow” or when I ask her what she wants for her birthday and she tells me, “chickens in the back yard”. Seriously woman, our backyard is not that big! No room for any type of farm animal.

While writing this I have come to the same conclusion that I always do, my wife loves our family and she will do everything in her power to make sure that she takes good care of us. So to anyone that has a hard time with food changes I say give it a chance. Do I love all the simply real food changes? Not always, but we are able to talk about what works and what I seriously will not eat (I still hate sea food). In the end Chanelle is an amazing cook, an amazing mother, an amazing wife, she is simply the real deal.

This post is part of real food wednesdays.

9 comments:

  1. awww, that's sweet! "Adventurous eater" was on my list of non-negotiables when I was looking for a spouse. My husband is very open to whatever I make, but does complain sometimes if I make something without meat. He doesn't consider beans protein LOL.

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  2. James is quite the guy. I like him too. :) But as for not having enough space for "farm animals"...he may be quite mistaken. Chanelle, you must come visit me and see our city chickens.

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  3. I'm forwarding this post to Travis. He actually has been getting a lot better lately about eating whole foods and even commented the other night that we were eating more like "Chanelle's family."

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  4. Slowly, slowly my dh is being converted also. He will eat what is put in front of him but he definately has his preferences. Now wonder how big and strong you would have been if you had eaten healthy?? Like 7'2" or something LOL!

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  5. I give a BIG round of applause to husbands who will give real food a chance. My hubby is like that too. He has a few things he digs in about: avocadoes, squash, liver...all of which he has taken at least one bite of in the last six months. And make no mistake, James, your willingness to try new things is rubbing off on your kids BIG TIME.

    My husband agrees with you on one more point: He says I'll see a divorce lawyer before I see chickens in my back yard.

    Rats.

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  6. Thanks for all the great comments! I had a long list of requirements for my future husband, but I never thought to add adventurous eater! I wasn't much of a cook back then, so I guess I never thought it would come up.
    Tamlynn, your chickens are part of the reason I'm convinced we can have some of our own!

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  7. Chanell,
    I'm Jenny Jensen's mother and I'v spent the entire evening on your blogg. I am going to be in Ca next week and would love to get together with you. I have some very good healthy receipecs and if you ever tasted my homemade raw almond milk with saome sesemeseeds you would give up milk compleatly. Research the benifits of almonds. Susan Gravell

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  8. Almond Milk
    Courtesy of RAW Restaurant, San Francisco
    1 Part Almonds
    4 Parts water & Blend
    To activate almonds, soak overnight, pour off water & follow recipe above.
    For a delicious smoothie add: frozen fruit & pure maple syrup
    Halvah
    1 Cup Sesame Seeds (Can substitute 1 cup Tahini - Sesame Butter)
    2 Tbsp Honey
    1 Tsp Vanilla (Optional)
    1 Tbsp Raw Carob Powder (Optional)
    Grind sesame seeds past meal stage into a nut butter. Scrape out into a bowl and dribble in the honey. Mix well until you get one sticky mass. For a "chocolate" halvah, mix in raw carob powder - don't mix will; allow it to become marbled. For more vanilla flavor, add 1 teaspoon of vanilla with the honey.
    Line a small (about 4x3 inches) box with waxed paper and press in the mixture. Put in the refrigerator to chill for an hour or so, take out, and slice into cubes.
    Makes about 1 dozen 1 inch cubes

    Avo-carrot Soup Go Raw- Las Vegas

    1 cup Carrot juice
    1 cup almond milk
    ½ avocado
    ginger
    cayenne
    garlic
    onions

    Blend all together in blender or if you like it chunky just blend
    avocado, ginger, garlic, and juice together. Then add chopped onions, cayenne

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  9. @ Susan,
    Hi! Good to hear from you! We just got back from a week long trip to Utah. I wanted to get together with Jen but it didn't work out with travel plans. Anyway, thanks for checking out the blog and for the recipes. Sorry it didn't work out to get together! Maybe another time- let me know when you're down here again.

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