Time Travel Tuesday

Time Travel Tuesday

I was visiting Barb of A Chelsea Morning. She is participating in Time Travel Tuesday. It sounded like fun, so thought I'd join her.

For today's TTT, we are supposed to post our very first blog entry and tell how we got started blogging. So here it is:

So, my cardiologist wants me to "do the Zone Diet." According to him, it is a good, heart healthy diet and my whole family can benefit. I won't have to eat differently or prepare separate meals for myself. Sounds too good to be true. But I was willing to give it a try. If I am not successful, he wants me on meds. I haven't told him yet, that I won't take them even if this diet doesn't accomplish what he wants it to.

I went to Barnes and Noble to purchase two books he recommended. It sounded like it was a workable. We could live a normal life on it. Well, the first week life was too stressful to try it; A high school graduation, graduation party the next day...so the diet would have to wait a week.

Anyway, you don't want to hear about my procrastinations to start this new, incredible diet. So last night I began cooking one of these wonderful all-in-one dish meals. Sounded way too easy.

I am used to cooking for at least 7 people every night. Everyone living in this household is a teen, young adult, or full-fledged adult with the exception of one almost 3 year old. With teens and young adults come spontaneous invitations to dinner. So we often have extras, which translates into 7 to 10 people. I've learned to stretch meals by adding fresh fruit, bread, etc.

This is the meal I decided to create: Chicken Zucchini Italiano

Mmmmm...fresh basil, onions, chicken, mozzarella cheese, mushrooms, garlic...sounded delicious! It quickly became quite a chore, though. I did not have a pan big enough to cook all of the ingredients...I don't think my stove is big enough, and I did not have a serving dish big enough.

I cut up the chicken just fine. Then came the mushrooms, zucchini and onions. The orginal recipe called for:

4 cups zucchini
3/4 cup onion
2 cups mushrooms
2 tsp garlic

That is for 1 serving. So am I supposed to mulitiply that times 7??????? For those like me who don't like math, that means:

28 cups of zucchini
5 1/4 cups of onion
14 cups of mushrooms
1/3 cup garlic

You've got to be kidding! I figured I'd make less...but then was it ok to serve bread as a filler if that wasn't enough??? Of course there were other ingredients too. By the time I finished chopping and dicing and preparing small batches at a time, I was in tears.

The good news is, everyone pretty much liked it. The bad news is it was a lot to clean up, I didn't have the patience to prepare that much, and I was overwhelmed at the sheer volume of veggies. I don't have that much room in my 'fridge to store this much for daily consumption. I would have to shop every other day to cook like this.

So, do I call my cardiologist and tell him I can't follow the diet because it is too much work? Or tell him that I don't care if my family eats "non nourishing food" and gourges on bread and the likes and I will just prepare separate meals for myself?

For tonight's dinner? The doorbell just rang. It's pizza.

I'm trying to recall just how I started blogging. I have always kept a hand-written journal, so enjoy writing my thoughts. I believe I was on a message board when someone shared they were blogging. I had no idea what it was, so perused hers. She had a list of links to others and I became hooked. The rest is history.
(Update: I'm not very good at Meme's. This was not my first post, but my 3rd or 4th. Here is my first post.)