Finny's Mom

about me

I love to cook and I really love Recipezaar! I use up so many ink cartridges printing out recipes from this site. I think my husband sometimes feels neglected because I just have to rate the new recipe we tried that night. I struggle when rating because I want to be honest and sometimes that's hard because I dont like to hurt people's feelings. On that note, my biggest pet peeve is when people over-rate recipes just to be nice. This site only works if everyone rates according to how they truly feel. This is how I base my ratings:
1. I would consider any rating that I give 3 stars or better to be a "good" recipe.
2. Any recipe that I give a "4" my husband and I really enjoyed and I would definitely make again.
3. Any recipe that I give a "5" is an exceptional recipe that I wouldnt want to live without.
I also consider the time to make and how easy it was to prepare. For example, even if a recipe was "very good" (which is 4 stars according to Recipezaar), I might rate it 5 stars because it tasted great, was easy, and didnt take a long time to make.
I am always collecting recipes and seeking to make tasty meals for my family. I have a wonderful husband and son, born to us in August 2006. Being a Mom certainly changes things and now I am finding that cooking has been more of a challenge. When I joined recipezaar officially, my son was just born, now I am expecting again in April but I think that my member name will remain "Finnys Mom". We'll see.
I am a stay-at-home mom, which I love, but I still don't find the time to cook as often as I would like to. Lately I am a one-armed cook, with my boy on my hip. He loves to help me cook. I pull a chair up to the counter and he is my little assistant. Really he makes more of a mess than anything, but he sure does enjoy himself! I have done a lot of freezer cooking, which I really enjoy and have found to be a real convenience.

Favorite Foods:

I like trying new things but I have to be careful because I am one of the more adventurous of those I cook for. In my daily meal plans I have been trying to incorporate more healthy choices, such as avoiding processed foods, using reduced sodium products and reducing the amount of sugar I use, and increasing our whole grains. I like to cook with "real" ingredients and I hate to use margarine. What is margarine, really? If you look on the package you cant decipher any of the ingredients. I look at my butter and there is only 1 ingredient: cream. I know that there is much debate on the subject on which is healthier, but in my opinion butter tastes better, is more easily digested than margarine, and is a "real" product. Yes, it is more expensive but it is a small price to pay in the long run.
I started paying more attention to our food choices when I became pregnant in November of '05. Ever since then I have been either pregnant or breastfeeding. As of this writing I am 5-months pregnant again and plan on breastfeeding my baby for at least a year if all goes well. I figure I may as well make good choices now so that I dont have to fight with my kids to change their eating habits later.

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