Just Some Thoughts

 I just finished scrolling through my recipes here and realized I haven't done much blogging lately.  I have transitioned through many phases of life since starting this blog, but still find myself planning and preparing a lot of home cooked meals.  We are empty nesters now and have been for several years, but are blessed to have our almost 12 year old granddaughter and her mom, our oldest, living close by.  Our youngest and her her husband also live relatively nearby, but are getting ready to relocate.  We have a lot of food preferences, food intolerance, food allergies and other special dietary needs.  When my youngest became a vegetarian at 12 1/2, I had to learn how to modify a lot of family favorites to accommodate this.  There are entire sites dedicated to vegetarian and vegan recipes, but for me, I was still feeding a 12 year old, and the rest of the family.  We needed familiar food that we could modify.  I got really good at this and I'm so happy, because the 12 year old in my life right now has dairy and soy allergies but still wants to eat like every other 12 year old.  I don't look for dairy free recipes, so much anymore, but shop instead for milk substitutes to swap out in recipes we already love.  Our mashed potatoes, creamy soups and other favorites are now mostly made with extra creamy oat milk.  The vegetarian now eats chicken, so we use turkey and chicken sausages or swap in chicken breasts for just about any meat.  I guess the point of my blog today is to handle any dietary restrictions you may be facing by looking at ways you can overhaul your current favorites.  With all of my label reading and as a diabetic for over 30 years, I also lean more and more towards non-preservative foods.  I do not have a green thumb, so my gardening desires have to be met by shopping at Farmer's Markets or Sprouts or Trader Joes for my fruits and vegetables, but the less processed the foods, the better I like them for my cooking needs.  I plan my meals a week at a time, looking at our family calendar to gauge how much time I will have on any given night to cook and doing prep ahead on the weekends as much as needed.  My crockpot is my friend for keeping meals warm for those busy nights when everyone comes and goes at different times.  Mondays have become our Soup Night, making a big batch of soup for anyone who wants to come for dinner.  It's easy to keep in the crockpot as my family comes at times that work for them and easy to freeze leftovers if not everyone can make it.