Process This

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had seen a few episodes of Hell's Kitchen.  Well lately I've been taken to watching it's younger and kinder sibling, Kitchen Nightmares.  For those who are not familiar with the premise, Chef Gordon Ramsay goes to restaurants that are struggling and on the verge of collapse, finds out what's wrong, and fixes the place up.  After watching 2 seasons of it, I started noticing a few common threads in every episode: every one of these restaurants has bad food and every one of these restaurants use processed and/or frozen food.  Sometimes the restaurants get fresh food in and then freeze it.  That's when I thought to myself, "Geez...I think I might be eating too much processed foods, and maybe the portions I use are too large.  Maybe I should just start eating fresh foods and cutting back on the portions."
Committed to this idea, I went to the bookstore and bought a couple healthy eating cookbooks.  This was a stroke of genius.  I now have a few hundred recipes that have all kinds of foods I've never tried.  I even made an attempt at baking bread.  It turned out a little denser than I was hoping for, but it was delicious.  Not being overly adventurous, I've just been sticking to simple things that I was familiar with, until last night.  JR's mom and her fiancé were in town visiting and I thought that this would be a good idea to try one of the more complex dishes.  It was a stuffed chicken breast wrapped in prosciutto with a side of mashed potato and steamed carrot medallions.  I prepared it perfectly, using only fresh ingredients (even the herbs had to be fresh, not dried).  It was probably one of the tastiest things I've cooked...ever.  Everyone at the table was impressed as well.  I used to have more of a passion for cooking.  Working with these fresh ingredients and tasting things that I've never tasted before has been so rewarding that it has reignited my love of cooking.

The only challenge with eating like this is that I have to go to the grocery store every couple of days for fresh ingredients, so some minor planning is a must.  But let the results speak for themselves.  Look at the salad in this picture.

I made that for lunch...it took 5 minutes to prepare and was very delicious.  I've fully hopped on the fresh food bandwagon...anybody want to join me?