Fact: I really love feta cheese.  Just ask my husband – any time we cook a recipe that involves feta (which is at least once or twice a week, easily), I always pile a ridiculous amount of feta crumbles onto my pasta/salad/sandwich/whatever.  It’s so salty and it has such a great bite.  Delicious.

In the past few months, Jeremy and I have tried to increase the amount of veggies, nuts, and fish in our diet.  We bought a mediterranean cookbook and are now working to eat more fresh, plant-based meals.  We’ve also (somewhat accidentally) cut back on our meat intake – I just went to the store for this week’s meals and only bought meat for just one recipe.  And you know, we really don’t miss it.  We’ve found that vegetarian meals can be just as dynamic, satisfying, and delicious as their meat-based counterparts, and they are often much healthier (and cheaper!).

This means I’ve been buying a lot more produce lately, and I’m getting into the habit of thinking beyond the painfully boring lunchmeat sandwich when I eat lunch.  One of the great luxuries of summer vacation is that I don’t have to pack a sack lunch – hallelujah!  I despise sitting in the school cafeteria nibbling on my sad little sandwiches, so I’m always trying to bring leftovers or salads as alternatives.  Of course, once in a while I’ll eat cafeteria food too – especially on chicken nugget day.  I may not want to know exactly what kind of “chicken” is in those nuggets, but chicken nugget day is almost as delicious when you are a high school teacher as it is when you are a high school student.  Almost.

But I digress.  Along with continuing to train for a the Plaza 10k in September and trying to focus more of my energy on healthy living (not that I was unhealthy before, really), one of my personal goals for this summer is to make more creative lunches and I couldn’t prep as easily at work.  In both lunch and dinner recipes, I’ve been happy to find lots of recipes that feature lots of my favorite things. I already told you about my love affair with feta cheese, but I’ve also obsessed with chickpeas (they’re so mealy and delicious) in basically anything, and I’ve fallen in love with kale, too.  Jeremy and I both love seafood, and even though we live in Kansas City, sometimes we splurge on the good salmon fillets and whip up a Greek salad to go with them, and as easy as the prep may be, there aren’t many more delicious dinners than that.

So here I am, trying to channel my focus on food into the blog-o-sphere.  I’ve been itching to post SOMETHING about cooking on this newborn site, because I love reading other food blogs, and I’m always inspired by their beautiful photography, design, and creative cooking. I want to develop new recipes or adapt old ones and include them in my posts on this blog, too.  I won’t claim to be a pro, but I’ve gotten to be a pretty good cook and baker in the past few years. So we’ll see where this goes!

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