Getting Started

Well, here I go again! I have tried my hand at blogging twice, wrote one entry each time and disappeared. Blogging is pretty foreign to me, but I have recently begun to get very interested in lots of different blogs. I am sure the movie "Julie & Julia" has something to do with that. I began to notice that all of the blogs I have bookmarked have something to do with cooking and food. As I look across my bookmark bar, I see three cookie blogs, two baking blogs, and one slow cooker blog (okay - so I JUST added that one). Hmmmmm - seeing a pattern here? Might that give me some insight into my constant battle with the bathroom scale?

With Christmas still in my rear view mirror, I have a "new" toy to play with. Greg gave me (another) new Crock-Pot this year. I say (another) because he gave me a wonderful new one 2 years ago after I finally broke the one that had been a wedding gift more years ago than I can count. (Well, I can count up to 28. It's just that sometimes I choose not to count that high!) That wonderful item only lived for about 6 months, thanks to a 130 lb dog who is the biggest baby known to the animal kingdom during thunderstorms. So a new one joined our family this year. The box tells me this one has "removable stoneware", "shifts to warm setting automatically", is "dishwasher safe", has "recipes included", "uses less energy than conventional oven", and is "ideal for 7+ people 6 lb. roast". Never mind that we are empty-nesters with one adult already out in the world and one adult graduating from college in May. Good thing Greg loves left-overs.

So why do I have such a hard time sticking with this blogging thing? Could it be that I have simply been trying to blog about the wrong thing? Maybe the answer is as easy as finding just the right thing that to become obsessed with. With that thought in mind, I am giving myself an assignment. My mission is to find new and wonderful healthy meals to put in this crock pot. After cooking the first meal in my new toy straight from the cookbook that came in the box (which definitely did not qualify for this category), any meal that is not low fat, low calorie, and (for my Weight Watchers membership) low points will not find it's way into the crock pot. I plan to use it at least twice a week (more would put more leftovers in our fridge than we could eat in a lifetime!). Not only will this give me hopefully lots of great healthy meals for future use, but let's face it - every time I used this gift from my husband, he loves it!

So I will use this blog as way to document my journey down the road of healthy crockery. What do I expect of this? Do I really think anyone will read this or begin to follow it? Probably not, but if I can keep all of the recipes I try and my thoughts on them in one place, that alone is a victory for me. So here I go again!