Alternative Menu

Day 235 in my "Year In My Life Through Pictures" blog series

It can get kind of difficult to mix it up with a low carb diet menu, especially when your favorite foods are pizza, bread and potatoes. Actually I'm not on a full fledged Atkins diet, but it has cut out a lot of what I would normally have to eat. Hence, the overweight frame I now display.

One dish that I concocted a few years ago, when I was on the Atkins diet, is what I call a Pizza Bake or Pizza Casserole. It is pretty much a pizza sans crust, with sausage, pepperoni, sauce and cheese. I bake it in the over for a little bit, add the cheese and let it get a golden brown. It is rather good and it does, somewhat, crave my appetite for real pizza. I suppose it does crave it enough to be a alternate in light of my "big why" in wanting to lose weight.

Some things I have tried in the past just don't seem to cut it though. The biggie that I heard a lot of Atkins enthusiasts tout was "mashed potatoes" made from cauliflower. The raved at how much it tasted like real mashed potatoes and had the same texture. So, even though cauliflower had never made it past my tongue in the past, I decided to try it for myself. I was actually pretty excited to try them and wanted very badly for them to be good. To make a long story short, they were nasty and tasted nothing like potatoes. I haven't tried them since and hopefully never will. But, I will not say never, as I can't stand fish and I am thinking of trying to stomach it for its health benefits. Who knows, God just might change my taste-buds so that I really like cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts and fish.

God has changed a lot of things in my life and I praise Him for each one. I know that He can change something as trivial as my likes/ dislikes of food choices. After all, I only have to taste it for a few minutes while I eat it anyway. Anything we eat fills our bellies the same. I am giving control of this area to God and praying that I can obey what He wants my menu to be. I still crave a lot of foods from my bad eating habits, but I craved a lot of sinful things too that God gracefully took the urges away from me in. This could also be a thorn in my flesh that is to buffet me and cause me to seek Him further. I need to give all control over to Him, but seem to want to hold on to things here and there. If I was already perfected I wouldn't have a reason to seek Him as much, so these temptations and urges are welcome to draw me closer to the Lord.