Me, Myself and Food

First of all, I would like to introduce myself: My name is Nina and I live in the bay area, CA - a place where it is difficult not to be a little food obsessed.
My first confession: until 5 years ago my recipe repetoir consisted of things coming out of a jar, spaghetti, cheese toasties and more stuff coming out of a jar.  It wasn't that I didn't love good, adventurous food; I just was not interested in making it. All this changed however when I had children. I knew I wanted to raise my children on a healthy, organic, well balanced diet - and that I wanted them to be adventurous real food loving children who you could take to a restaurant that did not contain the words chucky and cheez.
Therefore, when my oldest girl was 6 months old, I embarked on an excursion that was to have unknown consequences: a trip to Wholefoods! The unknown side effects of my newly chosen path was a self-imposed reeducation in food and what healthy food means to me (hint: it is not "fat free" or "reduced calorie" anything).
Now 5 years later, I stick to the edges of the supermarket; avoiding processed food (yes Wholefoods have loads of processed food too, albeit most of it a little healthier than most other stores), I make my own tomato sauce, jam, pie crust, pumpkin pure' etc, "white" food is more or less non-existent in my household and I love trying new and exiting recipes and tweaking them to fit my taste buds. I don't believe in diet food, I believe in moderation. I believe a stick of butter is better for you than a spoonful of I Cant Believe its Not Butter. I believe an apple is better for you than a glass of juice and that soda and anything else corn syrupy is the devils work. I love love love to bake sweet things, but as I also love love love eating them, I don't bake very often. I run a GMO FREE kitchen and think red wine and chocolate is an important part of well balanced life.

I guess this is the next step in my  acquired life as a foodie; blogging about good home made food made with fresh ingredients. Im starting this blog with my beautiful friend who is a long term foodie, one who have shared her knowledge and taught me so much about making good food, but I will let her introduce herself.  look forward to some of her "Im making it up as I go-recepies" she is amazing :)