A Day On The Farm... Can't Get More Fresh Than This!

I'm the first to admit I have allergies to kitchens!  I try to stay in one as little as possible, but ironically I do love food.  That is when someone else prepares it, and then I revel in it because the food they "love" to prepare  always taste so good.  I was raised in a small town, within a large city in Southern Cali.  My Mom didn't, and still doesn't like to cook,  she finds it as tedious as I do.  Mom could open cans,  pour whatever was in them into a sauce pan, heat and serve. She'd then cook up a hamburger patty or bake a meatloaf,  and serve those   on a plate with some corn, beets, carrot sticks, and wallah dinner was served. Her specialty was tacos, spaghetti, and lasagna.  We would always end dinner with  a "huge" bowl of ice cream!  To my Mom's credit she was given a little taste of ice cream when she was an infant,  and thereafter ice cream became her drug of choice. I don't remember a time our freezer was ice cream less... 

My food time line goes something like this: 1st salad ever- college.   1st brown rice and zucchini dish- college.  1st bagel and cream cheese - college.  It could be that my brother and I were terribly finicky eaters when we were growing up.  He always had to have his chocolate milk!  I drank mine white, but then I would come home from school and make my own concoction of butter and brown sugar  whip it up to a yellow creamy sweet treat!  My Mom and Dad were working but my brother always let them know this.

My high school/college years  were so active;  lived to swim, hang from bars in gymnastics, skied, played the best boys in  racquetball and tennis, and I never had a problem with weight, being heavy or the opposite having anorexia or bulimia, though I knew girls who did.  I always liked feeling strong, fit, and I just loved to be outdoors.

Fresh produce was out of the picture for most of my childhood because I was a finicky eater.  After discovering just how great  food can taste  I began to put on weight, and become less active after I was in my forty's.  So here I am a late bloomer when it comes to cooking, combining ingredients so they taste good, and all this at age 55 no less.  I'm following the Belly Fat Cure lifestyle by Jorge Cruise.  

I spent the day on the farm searching for fresh ingredients and I hope you like these pictures.