Dear Food, I love you.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who's read my blog that I, in fact, love food.  I truly appreciate food.  I see it as an amazing gift.  I get excited about a perfectly ripe mango, giddy about grilled shrimp, think a beautifully prepared salad is a work of art.  I look forward to reading my new Cooking Light magazine every month or any of my dozens of cookbooks in hopes of finding a fascinating new recipe to try.  I plan on continuing to include recipes on my blog as I come across ones that I think are worthy of sharing.  I've also become obsessed with photographing my food.  My husband was curious as to why I was photographing our fruit bowl this evening.  Because the fruit is beautiful, of course!  And, it will certainly be delicious when I eat it.  I think photographing it just emphasizes it's potential for creating joy.

The four of us went to see Gnomeo & Juliet on Saturday.  We don't go to the movies very often, so it's a HUGE treat for the kids.  And, while they'd love to load up on greasy popcorn, astronomically priced candy, and buckets of HFC sweetened sodas while we're there, that is just not something my husband and I can abide by.  Instead, we pack our own movie snacks.  (Yeah, it's against the rules.  I do not care one little bit about this.)  Each kid still gets their own bag of candy (a random assortment of Valentine's leftovers this time) a bag of snack mix (pretzels and mini-marshmallows) and a SIGG bottle full of water.  I know, we're total buzz kills, but it would be nice if we could teach them that the MOVIE is the treat and does not have to be accompanied by a bunch of crappy food to be enjoyed.

There's the movie food!  I added an apple for me.  I think my husband thought this was over the top...

This was tonight's Baked Ziti. (Sorry about the big spoon in the shot.) I usually make it with italian turkey sausage, but left it meatless in honor of Michael's March Madness Vegetarian Challenge.  Not only was it still delicious, but it took less time to make (didn't have to brown the sausage) and it was cheaper--always a plus!

Have I posted pictures of salad before?  Yes.  Will I post pictures of salad again?  Yes.  There's almost nothing better than a good salad.  I like to make a really big one at the beginning of the week and then we can eat from it for a few days.

Why do I love packing my kids' lunches?  Well, for one, it keeps the older one from eating the cafeteria crap that the schools serve (don't get me started on this).  Two, those sandwich scraps can't just be thrown away--late night snack for momma!

And, after that random assortment of food photos, I will leave you with a totally embarrassing photo of myself.  Background: I work at my son's preschool two days a week, but he's able to stay for a two hour after-school program both of these days.  This provides me the perfect opportunity to hit the gym.  I am truly grateful for this beautiful piece of scheduling awesomeness.  In my attempt to make the most of this time at the gym and get in some longer runs on the treadmill, I've started to wear as much of my running clothes as possible to work.  I pretty much just have to change my pants and into my good running shoes when I get to the gym.  I'm sure this shaves off at least, like, 30 seconds.  Totally worth it.  Anyway, the first time I wore this kind of outfit to work, somebody noticed that I closely resembled a character on a show that is currently very popular.  Obviously, we don't have the same hair color (and mine is looking particularly lovely in this photo--it's sort of, um, growing out right now?)  And, I'm not wielding a bullhorn, but what do you think?!

Geez, add to that the 3 1/2 months pregnant look the stiff jacket zipper gives me (at least, that's what I'm blaming it on.).  And do you like the Coach Sue sneer I'm trying to pull off?  My husband thought I was a complete dork for doing this.  And, of course, I am.  But, hey, I got a good laugh out of it!