Thank you Martha for giving me the confidence to be an Expert

I am a Stay at Home Mom of four children.  As you can imagine with six people sitting around a dinner table there is hardly ever a single dinner where everyone at the table loves everything on the table.  The worst part for me of fixing dinner for a large family is that it always comes at dinner time every day - the hour of the day when I seem to completely run out of steam.  My lack of energy combined with varying levels of complaints about the food service product built up until I finally snapped.  FINE!  You don't like the food? Then you do the cooking.  

That's basically how it went at our house almost 10 years ago now.   We made up a schedule and every person in the house was in charge of dinner one night a week.  On Friday we would have family movie night and we would order pizza.  Yes, a couple of the kids really were too little to fully prepare a dinner on their own but they were still in charge of deciding what we were going to eat and they had to help in all of the prep.

Today those same kids are teenagers and everyone has different schedules.  Sports, Drama Club, volunteer projects and other activities keep us all from having a formal sit down dinner at 6pm every night.  We still try to have a family movie night and a family dinner at least once a week but its not always easy.

Something amazing happened along the way.  My kids all became the most amazing cooks.  One kid prefers baking and another prefers cooking with a specialty in breakfasts.  They all know how to put together really interesting menus with a nice variety of main dishes with side dishes that are not only healthy but also look nice on the plate.  I was notorious for creating color themed dinners - all things orange or all things white etc.  It was my kids who taught me that if the beater breaks you can use the electric drill and a beater instead.

Last year my youngest son was handed a homework assignment in his class to go home and have his mom teach him how to fix a dinner for the family.   He started to giggle and asked the teacher if he got credit for teaching his mom a new recipe.  

Over the last year my kids have been encouraging me to get back into the kitchen and start cooking again. They are all huge fans of the Food Network, Alton Brown and Hell's Kitchen.  I have started to read more food blogs and have experimented with some of my go-to standard favorites that have been a staple of my food repertoire for the past couple of decades.  But I was still doubting my skills.  My food knowledge self esteem was pretty low.

It wasn't until this last week that I found my renewed confidence in my abilities and my food voice.  I am not the first one to talk about Martha Stewart's criticism of food bloggers but I do have to put in my two cents.  



Martha, thank you!  I have never considered myself an expert in food.  For this reason I really have never talked about food online.  But now I know that I am an expert in helping (at least four) people develop a lifelong appreciation for eating healthy food and living a healthy lifestyle.  That is my story.  That is my voice.  And now Stay at Home Mom will feature some of our favorite food bloggers, mom bloggers, and any other blogger who have inspired us to live life to its fullest - regardless of whether or not we are doing it with great expertise or not (and even if it is a little bit shlocky).   

Life is messy and very rarely perfect.  And along the way it is all worth it.