Introduction

Hi!

I'd like to start by introducing myself and describing what this blog will be like.  My name is Jaime Bunting and I am 26 years old.  I am in my 4th year of teaching 3rd Grade in my hometown of Gloucester, Virginia.  I love to read, watch Jeopardy!, run, and COOK! We have two very sweet labs named Kenai and Nala.

Oh, oops.  My mistake.  That top picture isn't Kenai.  But if you knew Kenai you would understand my confusion.  He's a 105 lb. chocolate lab that seems to be about the same size as a grizzly bear.  The main difference is that Kenai is way sweeter and more lovable than a grizzly.  

I also have a mild obsession with Disney World.  We go several times a year, and our favorite thing to do is sample all the different foods in the restaurants there.  I get my love of food and cooking from my mom, who has earned a reputation as an excellent cook.  We spend a lot of our time in the kitchen cooking new things, and when we're not in our kitchen we love to visit different restaurants to see what the people in their kitchens are cooking.

I guess I should explain the title of my blog, "The Reformed Eater."  Well, when I was growing up, I was the definition of a picky eater.  The only vegetable I would touch was corn, and that was only if it was fresh from my dad's garden.  I thought anything green must be laced with some sort of deadly poison, because I couldn't come up with any other explanation for why it tasted so awful.  I didn't like many fruits either, limiting myself to apples IF they were really crunchy and sweet.  The only meat I really liked was chicken, primarily in the fried form.  I could handle a steak every now and then ONLY if it was well done with absolutely no pink whatsoever.  Hamburgers were okay - if they were paper thin like the fast-food hamburgers and didn't have any toppings.  (One example of my picky ways - ketchup.  I would dip my fries in it but wouldn't want it anywhere near my burgers.)   

One area where I was much less picky was in the junk food area.  If it had chocolate and/or was considered unhealthy in general, I would eat it.  Heavily processed treats, the worst kind, were my favorite - if it was a little chocolate cake filled with cream and wrapped up in cellophane I loved it.  A typical lunch when I was in elementary school would consist of a mayonnaise and American cheese sandwich (I was picky when it came to which kind of meats I liked so my mom would leave it off), potato chips or some sort of cheesy puff thing, and a snack cake of some sort.  I should note that my picky eating was not from lack of my mom trying to get me to eat healthy foods.  She was always trying to get me to eat more vegetables and fruits, but being the stubborn, picky kid that I was, I wasn't having any parts of her healthy meals.  It was not unusual for my mom to have to cook two meals at suppertime - one for her, my dad, and my brother, then another meal for me because I didn't like what they were having.  

 And as I mentioned earlier, my mom has always been a great cook.  When we would have people come over to our house she would spend hours preparing all sorts of dishes to serve them, and usually I'd end up skipping everything and waiting for dessert.  See this table full of food?  All I was thinking about was the cake.

 

As I got older I started joining my mom in the kitchen, mainly focusing on cakes, cookies, and brownies, as they still constituted about half of the total food I consumed each day.  I gradually began adding more recipes to my repertoire, until finally I realized that I really loved to cook and wanted to start cooking a whole lot more.  When we first got cable I remember sitting in front of the TV glued to The Food Network for hours at a time, taking in all of the chefs' cooking tips and techniques.  I'd think about how pretty the food looked, but I wondered why they always insisted on using those poisonous green vegetables, among other healthy ingredients, rendering those beautiful dishes unpalatable to me.  For a long time I stuck to just cooking unhealthy, artery clogging basics, like this coconut cake from when I was in middle school.

But gradually, I began to change.  When I was in college I majored in Kinesiology, which meant I took classes on all aspects of health and fitness, including nutrition.   I slowly began to realize that the foods I had been eating, although delicious and readily available thanks to the prevalence of processed, ready-to-serve serve meals at the grocery store, were truly causing harm to my body that could lead to major problems as I got older.  I decided that I needed to really start thinking about my future rather than the desires of my picky taste buds.  

So over the past 5 years or so I have really started to change my eating habits.  I've begun to embrace the organic, unprocessed foods that I previously thought looked gross or boring.  My mom has also begun to see the importance of eating fresh foods as well.  Together we've been making an effort to reduce our intake of processed foods (especially processed meats) and increase our intake of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables.  I'll admit to still be slightly picky in some areas.  For example, I still have a hard time with eating fruits - they always seem either too sweet, too bitter, or too seedy for my liking.  But I really have opened myself up to a whole new world of foods.  

For the first time in my life I'm eating things like salads and yes, even those poisonous green vegetables.  The crazy thing is that I'm not just forcing them down either, I'm finding that the more I try new things the more I actually like them! It's a new experience for me to go to a restaurant and actually have more than one thing to choose from on the menu.  Also, just a month ago I actually ordered my first ever hamburger with all the toppings! And I liked it! I even took a picture because I was so proud of the fact that I was eating it.

So that brings me to this blog.  I was recently at work and spotted a cookbook called "Cooking from the Farmer's Market".  As I flipped through the pages I was amazed to discover that I really wanted to try these recipes that used fresh fruits and vegetables.  I quickly ordered the book and leafed through every page as soon as I received it in the mail, stopping to admire how savory and delectable all the pictures looked.  Who knew that the kid who grew up eating chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese would ever end up having her mouth water by looking at recipes involving peas and cabbage?  I decided that I would make it my goal to cook a recipe using every fruit and vegetable in the cookbook, most of which I still haven't had a chance to ever try before.  With my new reformed eating habits I'm confident that I'll enjoy both cooking these new foods and eating them.  I can't wait to cook my way through the supermarket's arsenal of fresh fruits and vegetables and share my experiences on this blog.