aaron's eats

Aaron loves pizza. He says ideally he would eat pizza twice a week. He doesn't even care about the quality of the pizza--a 5$ Hot and Ready will do. That doesn't really cut it for me, so I decided I need to adopt the practice of my parents and always have pizza dough on hand in the freezer, and pizza toppings around. Our first (actually second) batch of homemade pizzas were a great success, and a great failure. The first pizza was a success because it slid off the pizza peel onto the stone with no problems. Tomato sauce with homegrown tomatoes from Grandpa's garden, chicken leftovers from Aunt Julee's delicious Sunday dinner, cooked spinach, slices of more tomatoes and mozzarella. The disaster was when the pizza did not slide off so easily, and when I accidentally assembled the pizza on the counter instead of on the peel. Whoops!

Also, unlike the majority of the American population, Aaron has decided he is done losing weight and wants to start gaining it. I wish I could say that. This knew desire means mostly that he has to eat a lot more (and work out a lot) so we have been having fun thinking of ways to pack in the calories and protein to his diet. We made two batches of protein shakes, consisting of ingredients such as Chobani Greek Yoghurt, Whey Protein Powder, raw oats, bananas, peanut butter, chocolate powder, wheat germ, flax seeds, and other random things Aaron threw in there. I made granola that is also packed with protein, and have those steel-cut oats ready in the fridge. I also bought cottage cheese, but Aaron doesn't know if he likes it, and hasn't tried it yet. I started putting extra pieces of turkey on his sandwiches for lunch, and when I made broccoli Alfredo, I also cooked some chicken so he could throw that in his pasta. Aaron also has an unlimited source of milk and ice cream and work...yet somehow he always forgets about the ice cream. I don't know how that is possible.

I feel like I finally figured out something about food that gets Aaron excited. Unlike me, who loves to eat for pleasure, he loves to eat for purpose. When confronted with a salad, he thinks, wouldn't I be able to pack in a lot more if this where all blended up? It was exciting for me to see him excited about food...even though it wasn't exactly what I would call food.

The tricky part is that I am still in the category of Americans that would enjoy loosing weight. How will I survive having all this food around me intended for Aaron's use and not want to gorge myself as well?

Will power? It has been proved that I have very little of that when it comes to food. Hot fresh cookies out of the oven? I'll take three.