Diet is important in our house. It's probably because my wife and I both grew up as "the fat kid". I think we're both a bit petrified that Thing 1 and/or Thing 2 might have to go through that growing up. We take it pretty seriously. We even fired Thing 1's first daycare provider for taking him to McDonald's without asking. Seriously.
We also have a lot of dietary restrictions around here. The kids can't have dairy, the adults don't eat gluten, my wife doesn't eat meat. We don't use refined sugar or eat processed food. It means I pretty much have to make everything from scratch. It's a pain in the ass really, eating healthy and all that. It leads to spending way too much of my time in the kitchen. And just like I have no natural athletic ability, I also have no natural cooking ability. If I don't have a recipe, I'm up a creek without the proverbial paddle.
Which brings me to Pinterest. Pinterest has every recipe imaginable, and a few you wish had never been thought of. And my wife loves the damn app. If I make the mistake of asking her what she wants for dinner this week, I wake up the next morning to 47 new pins with such meals as Vegan Chicken-less Tofu Noodle Soup and Vegan Moroccan "Meatballs". Some of which have 47 frigging ingredients. Who has time for that shit?? I've made cauliflower "popcorn" and vegan "bacon" out of portobello mushrooms. I kid you not. Just last week my wife read somewhere that the Flintstones chewable vitamins that we give to Thing 1 cause cancer, so I woke up to pin for homemade gummy vitamins. Did I make them? Of course I did. Luckily, the kids are still at the gullible stage when they'll eat anything if you tell them it's candy or a cookie or a pancake. Beet or spinach pancakes? More please, Daddy! We eat so healthy that if I ask Thing 2 if she wants a snack, she heads to the cupboard and hands me a can of chickpeas. Chip of the old block, that one. These kids are going to be really pissed off when they find out what real candy tastes like.
So just because someone took the time to post a recipe on there, it does not mean it actually tastes good. Even if the author puts "Amazing" or "Delicious" in the title. I've made countless dinners where not even the dogs came around for a taste. What happens to those dinners? They get put in those aluminum trays and frozen for a year until I finally throw them out blaming freezer burn and not the fact that it was crap to begin with.
In case you're not familiar, I'll give you a bit of a description on how a Pinterest recipe works. First, the person writes a long diatribe on how good and easy the recipe is, including about 47 pictures of the dish at different angles, then finally gets around to posting the damn recipe way down at the bottom. Oh and there's always a pop up ad as you're scrolling down that stops you midway asking you if you want to subscribe, of which you have to search for the little black X to close it. Now I'm perfectly aware of the irony of bitching about other peoples' long blog posts in my own blog, but you didn't come here to get a recipe as two kids are whining at your legs saying they were hungry, did you?
Also, never believe the prep time and cooking time calculations. If it says prep time is 15 minutes, it's at least triple that. Fifteen minutes if you employ a sous chef maybe or spent 47 minutes cutting everything up the night before. Oh and if the kids want to help make it? You may as well forget about everything else you had planned to do that afternoon.
It's 8:30 am, I better get cracking on dinner...
Today's post was brought to you by the number 47.
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