hi friends! How are things going?? Things are going great here! Loving the real food revolution that’s happening in my house and my body!
I promised I would detail our first real food dinner, the results, and reveal who cried during the process. So here goes…
After deciding to jump head first into our new life with real food, I wanted to take the existing meal plan my hubby and I had made for the week and convert it to using real, clean ingredients. I did this because I wanted to see how well our favorite recipes would convert (I suspected pretty easily). Plus I figured keeping the menu familiar would help husband extraordinaire transition to my new real food frenzy.
So up on the docket for sunday night’s dinner was balsamic marinated chicken with Caesar salad. Super easy. I jumped online to look up a recipe for balsamic vinaigrette dressing for my marinade and caesar dressing for the salad. That was pretty much all I had to convert. I already make my own croutons (impressive, I know!) so that was a cinch. I had already been grocery shopping for a couple hours and then spent another couple hours demolishing and reconstructing both my fridge and my pantry so I was pretty beat by the time dinner prep began, and it was a prime PMS night (oh…did you not realize this was going to be one of those kind of blogs? Where we talk about everything, weird, gross, or bodily? It is. We will. So get ready for full disclosure, readers!) So to be fair, the stage was set for disaster. I had just finished putting my marinated chicken in the oven along with my croutons when I embarked on the caesar dressing. I’m not a total ‘make your own dressing’ novice so I had little to no qualms. The only thing that was strange was the anchovy paste. I am not a fan of anchovies or any type of fish paste but the recipe stated that it was critical for that classic caesar flavor. I’m not afraid of new ingredients so I grabbed some at the store and went to work. I was a little nervous that husband wouldn’t feel so adventurous about fish paste (I mean, who does feel adventurous about fish paste?). I tasted the dressing after I made it and something was off. It just didn’t taste right. I tried some experimenting and adding small amounts of things to try and balance the flavors. I did the best I could but it was time to stop fiddling and eat. I thought it was passable and I could work on adjusting it later. I mixed the salad and tossed in the dressing. I asked husband to try it. He took a piece of lettuce gingerly and placed it in his mouth like a dutiful husband.
The face he made was like the face of a child spitting out their ‘nasty’ vegetables into a half chewed heap on their plate. It was a completely involuntary look of disgust. And I lost it. For some reason, my tender feelings (already PMSing and tired) were extremely hurt even though I knew that the dressing wasn’t great either. I don’t know about you fellow wives out there, but one of my absolute favorite things in the world is feeding my husband. Maybe you think that makes me practically ‘barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen’ but it is honestly one of the greatest gifts of our marriage that I can serve him and make him happy in this way. I treasure it. And in that moment, I was a failure. Before I knew it, the tears were welling up in my eyes and husband was totally bewildered. He apologized immediately but it was too late for my tender feelings. I went into hurt, defensive (and kind of bratty) mode and proceeded to tell him he didn’t need to eat dinner if it was so gross and could make himself some chicken nuggets instead. What a mess. Sometimes I am such a mess, I can’t handle it. Even though I knew I was beyond rationality anymore, I tried to get a grip but the tearing kept coming. My incredible husband trudged through my pouting, attempted to comfort me and ate two whole plates of that salad. Two whole plates. Like a champ. And that is an even bigger and better gift of our marriage. A husband who knows how much I treasure feeding him that he will eat whatever I make for him, no matter if it’s a culinary triumph or tearful disaster. (To be fair, the salad tasted much better with the chicken on top-the marinade was awesome and helped balance the flavor of the dressing.) Marriages that have God working in the hearts of both husband and wife transform these tearful moments into some of the most treasured as we can see the silhouette of Christ in our spouse as they sacrifice for us, even by doing something as silly as eating salad. And for that, our first real food meal was a complete success. It was less about the food and more about love and sacrifice. Oh man, God using wonky caesar dressing to touch my heart. What a crafty guy He is.
We have since had several very successful and delicious clean eating meals, of which I’d love to share about (and share recipes) next time. This first week is shaping up to be awesome.
Till next time!
Molly
Ditching the Processed. 