Another blog when I don't write on my other one? Introducing myself.

This is my inaugural blog post for Christian, Crunchy, and Cooking! I'm a new mother with a baby born in October 2012. (The picture above was taken during my pregnancy.) I enjoy cooking and keeping home for my husband and baby, and I'm also a piano teacher. I also have a neglected blog, godmygrith.wordpress.com, on which I used to write spiritual ideas that would percolate in my head. I have not written on it lately, and have more interest in writing mom-blog things, so I'm afraid that is what it's going to be! One more mom-blog out of millions.  But I know I'll enjoy having a place to publish my thoughts and activities, and I hope it will be interesting to my friends.

To explain my title:

Christian:
My belief in Jesus Christ is very important to me and will inform much of the content of what I write. If you have never read a summary of the core of Christian belief, what is called the Gospel, here's one of the best ones out there. http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/articles/quest-for-joy

Crunchy:
This is influenced by the book Crunchy Cons (conservatives) which describes how here in America, people who have vastly different belief systems can end up having similarly environment-friendly, health-conscious, frugal lifestyles. On the one side are the "liberal hippie" types, and on the other side are the "conservative homeschooler" types. The author, Rod Dreher,


"introduces us to people who are pioneering a way back to the future by reclaiming what’s best in conservatism—people who believe that being a truly committed conservative today means protecting the environment, standing against the depredations of big business, returning to traditional religion, and living out conservative godfather Russell Kirk’s teaching that the family is the institution most necessary to preserve."
Some of the ways I might classify as a Crunchy Con: I wanted a natural home birth, use cloth diapers for frugality and to help the environment, have a home business, like cooking healthy food (though I am not a vegan or organic freak ... yet), and am interested in how lifestyle choices affect justice issues worldwide (though I do not buy only fair-trade chocolate ... yet.) As you can see, I consider myself to be on the moderate side of the Crunchy spectrum, but I continue to evaluate my lifestyle choices and may someday become more "extreme." :)



Cooking:
I grew up helping my mother cook healthy, from-scratch meals for our large family. I'm not an expert, but I enjoy cooking too. As I said above, I like the real-foods approach. I use Pinterest almost exclusively for food. I don't yet use much organic, due to our tight budget, but I'm interested in moving more that direction. I'm not vegan or even vegetarian and I like eating meat, mostly chicken, but am troubled when I read about slaughterhouses. Every six months or so my husband says he sometimes feels uncomfortable eating meat and would like to be a vegetarian someday. (I teased him last time that this is due to his Indian roots. Generations of his ancestors were probably mostly vegetarian.) But as a nursing mom, I find it hard to get enough protein and find it hard to get filled up enough generally. I'm not yet ready to leave meat, but I'm interested in making my meat usage more infrequent. In parallel, I find the number of varieties of roots, beans and legumes fascinating and want to expand my repertoire there.

I hope this gives you an idea of the inclination of my new blog!