Not really wanting to eat the food you grow

Tessa, good advice!

I grow what I like to eat and hubby grows what he likes to eat though in the past he grew stuff he thought I would like to eat.

I learned that I could cook radishes that he thought I like and then he ate them because he thought they were turnips or something like that.

Hi from SW Western Australia.  My dictum for the food garden is to grow what you eat and eat what you grow. Yes, experiment with different plants but don't persist if you don't enjoy them. Be prepared to freeze or dry excess crops, and have hens or ducks to consume excess or waste plant materials or any food scraps. I give all waste chicken bones, prawn shells, cooked egg shells to our small hen flock which then reward me with beaut eggs. Hens are evolved from jungle scavengers and live to dig around in soil and weed oatches and are great nanagers of kitchen waste. My thoughts, and many thanks to the great contributors in this stream set. Happy New Year 2023!

First, Happy New Year, permies!  Whatever you choose to do, be kind and good to yourself, and enjoy! :D

As the wisest ancient king wrote:

King Solomon wrote:Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart...

Better a small serving of vegetables with love than a fattened calf with hatred.

One who is full loathes honey from the comb,
but to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.

So whether you are eating out with a bunch with friends, snacking on "junk" food at home alone, cooking up a nice healthy meal from your garden, or barely making ends meet with inexpensive food at the table...may it be with joy and gladness and in the loving company of others!

Cécile Stelzer Johnson wrote:

[OK, not the raspberry jelly: they might eat it, but it's probably not good for them, so I'm stuck with that]. After all that work of growing/ canning food, yes, I feel bad to have to throw it, but if we are not going to eat  it anyway, it can be given to friends or go on the compost pile.

With some things like that, I try to think of another way to describe it. So Raspberry jelly becomes part of the "sugar" if I'm making muffins. Most of my baking is lower in sugar than anything one would buy in the store, and I try to make sure what I make has "redeeming characteristics". I have a breakfast bar recipe that calls for pumpkin and oats, and I could imagine using some of the jam instead of half the sugar.

Lexie Smith

One thing that has really helped me is canning ready to eat foods that only need heating up to be delicious, healthy and easy. I can chili, bbq chicken, spaghetti with rice (since you can’t can flour) and a variety of other things that involve washing only a single mason jar afterwards and that appeals to the part of me that loved to eat out all the time.

This! I think part of what we crave is *not* having to spend an hour in the kitchen preparing the meal. The house I live in is not designed for that kind of pressure canning, but I keep trying to figure out ways to make such things practical and I really hope I get there. In the meantime, I make do with freezing food, but would like to reduce my dependence on freezers!

A lot of great tips in this thread! I had the same problem, especially when I lived in the city and eating out or ordering was so easy, fast and diversified. (I still miss my favorite Lebanese restaurant!)

One thing I did that helped me at least lessen the cravings for restaurant food, was figuring out which specific "tastes" I was looking for in food. For example, I reaaaaally love sugar and vinegar. And restaurant food also usually have a fat element too. So I try to incorporate these tastes in my cooking and I found that my cravings are less often. I almost always add a bit of vinegar and a bit of maple syrup to everything I cook now hahaha!

Another thing I did was to cut myself some slack about the complexity of my meals. Sometimes beans with dressing or rice with oil and pepper is enough to keep you going.