If you suggested a year ago that I would be baking bread, making pies, and eating bananas and broccoli, I would have suggested you have your head examined. I had all sorts of excuses for why I didn't have the time to make my own food from scratch and, more importantly, I was unaware of information about the food that I was eating that might have provided some motivation to make the time.
Then, several changes took place in my life (some small, some rather enormous) that set me on the hiking trail that I'm navigating today. When I was a student at McMaster I started going to the campus gym, where I went regularly to classes lead by a wonderful instructor named Ruth. She ran a spin class, a step class, and a strength class back to back every Thursday (the heaviest weights were 15lbs, but she did her best and made us hold two at once for something resembling strength training). By the time I graduated I felt my fitness had actually improved (I could make it through all three classes on a good day). But then came the real (non student) world of expensive gym fees and monotonous classes that left me peddling on the eliptical 3 times a week. Not so much with the progress anymore.... I started to suspect a change was in order, but I had no idea what that might be.
Then, my dad died of a heart attack, and my gym routine felt so futile that I could hardly scrape together the motivation to go once a week. After several months of hazy funk, I remembered Christine B mentioning this Crossfit thing at work, and decided that change was definitely in order, and that perhaps this was the change I was looking for. Over a year later, I can say with sincerity that Altitude and the people there have not only changed my life, but my outlook on life as well.
So my fitness was back on track again, and through this new brand of fitness I was introduced to a new way of thinking about food. This coincided nicely with the decision to order a weekly box of organic, local vegetables to share with my roomate (more on that later). Slowly, I began to look for replacements and substitutions in my diet to bring me closer to the Paleo diet, and at the same time the veggie box was forcing me to be more creative with my meals (there were veggies I'd never even heard of, google was required). I also have this compulsive need to immediately research anything and everything that someone claims to be true (I blame math and its tidy proofs, I need that QED), and I directed this compulsion toward all things to do with food and the body.
Put all of these things together, and you end up with a person who went from frozen pizzas and Zoodles, to "one of those people who bakes and stuff". Weird. I still don't bake for fun; it isn't something that I wake up in the morning feeling excited about. But I certainly enjoy consuming the end product, and it somehow tastes better when I know exactly what's in it and what sort of fuel it will provide. There's also the basic satisfaction that you get from making something "all by yourself", and from sharing your culinary successes with others. (And when they declare your creation to be delicious, it's the adult equivalent of when your mom used to stick your artwork on the fridge)
So, the point of that unintentionally long-winded ramble was to introduce the intention behind this space. I consider(ed?) myself to be rather inexpert in the kitchen; I started out profoundly uncreative with my meals, and I have actually managed to screw up cookies made from a mix in the past. This isn't meant to be a place to share my "expert opinion". Instead, I plan to record the things that I'm learning from those I consider to be more expert than myself. In addition, I will share my attempts to become actively engaged in my own fitness, happiness, and all around health, and hope that anyone who happens across this space will do the same.
~Jen
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