A Welcome, a Story, and My Favorite Breakfast

Welcome to my new blog! I am so very excited to have a place to really focus on all things health and fitness. Although, when you say “health and fitness,” that makes it sound all hard and boring and miserable, right? So maybe we should call this my yummy food and dancing blog. I’ll work on it and find something more fun to call it.

I’m still changing and adding stuff, so bear with me until I get the furniture arranged just so. I have so many things I want to share with you, but I want to hear your suggestions, too! Email me with any suggestions, questions, or just to say hi! My email is Emily@thatswhatieat.com. Also, if you want to see my updates on Facebook, come like my brand shiny new Facebook page here.  You can allow follow me by clicking those “connect with me” buttons over there on the right ——->.  Have I mentioned that I’m excited? Hooray!

So now a story. Those who have seen me eat now (and those who know my husband and his carnivorous ways) would be surprised to know that I was a vegetarian for about 4 years, from about the age of 10 or 11 until I was about 14 or 15. It wasn’t because I felt bad about the whole killing animals thing, that didn’t really bug me. It also certainly wasn’t for health reasons, I was probably one of the least healthy vegetarians in the world and didn’t actually consume many vegetables. It was simply because I decided I didn’t like the taste or texture of meat.

That all ended one fateful day when I was on a trip to California with my (geek alert!) high school marching band. We had spent the day in Disneyland, and I don’t know if you have noticed, but the food there is pricey! So my friends and I had eaten nothing all day except churros from those little stands they have all over, and by the time dinner came that night we were starving. We went to a restaurant called Medieval Times, which is actually an awesome restaurant where they joust in front of you and feed you with no utensils and you get to pretend like you are back in Medieval times.

The problem with a place like that is that they only serve one thing for your meal, you don’t get to choose from a menu. If you don’t like what is served, you just get to be hungry. So there I was, starving from a busy day fueled only by churros, staring at a whole roasted chicken, a side of pork ribs, and two little carrot sticks on the side. I quickly munched the carrot sticks while that chicken and I had a stare down. It smelled so, so, so very good. I stole my neighbor’s carrot sticks, but that still just didn’t quite fill the gigantic, aching hole in my belly. So I ate that chicken. The whole chicken. Just in case you didn’t know, if your stomach isn’t used to digesting meat and then you throw an entire chicken in there, it becomes very, very unhappy with you. You know, just for reference. And I’ve been a meat eater ever since!

You thought that was my story, didn’t you? But it wasn’t, that was actually a round-about way to get to the real story, which actually happened a few years before. One day while I was having dinner at my grandma’s house, she tried to feed me the grossest thing ever. It was green and it was slimy, and it just looked…. wrong. Gross. Something. There was no way I was going to eat it! She coaxed and she pleaded for me to just give it a try, but I refused. She tried to appeal to my vegetarianness (yes, I totally made up that word) by telling me that vegetarians ate them all the time, but I wouldn’t budge.

Years later I worked in a sandwich store where one of the most popular sandwiches was a hot turkey and avocado sandwich with cream cheese and tomatoes. I thought the people who ate it were just gross, but one day the other workers there convinced me to give it a try, and my passionate love affair with avocado began. That grandma that tried to get me to eat the avocado has long since passed on, and every once in awhile as I’m eating avocado, I speak a little apology to the air, “I’m sorry, grandma, you were so right, and I was so wrong!”

And now I’m going to show you my favorite breakfast of all time, the open faced avocado sandwich. This is one of those things that is so simple, and yet so very perfect in it’s simplicity. First you start with a really good whole wheat bread. The bread pictured is actually this recipe, which is my favorite sandwich bread recipe, but this certainly works on store-bought bread as long as it is a good, hearty bread. Take a ripe avocado, slice it up and smear it all over the bread. Make sure it’s good and thick! Sprinkle a little salt and pepper on top, and if you want you can serve it with a side of scrambled egg whites for a little kick of protein. Yum, yum, yum! Best idea ever!