Pintrest food

So I hope I've established that I love Pintrest. I really do. It's a great idea that I would never have thought of on my own. I get to have tiny digital pictures, pinned and organized onto tiny little boards. A womans pintrest boards can really give you a good impression of what she's all about. I am an avid "pinner" and I would say that all my boards paint an elaborate picture of me. Maybe not me as I really am, but rather who I'd like to me if I were exerting a lot more effort. I don't really wear the clothes on my "style board", but I would if I could buy them for super cheap....and if I could grow a solid 8 inches taller. My "dream home" boards are a great display of my taste. I love houses that look like the beautiful pictures I pin, but in reality those gorgeous houses would be peppered with toys, crayons, stray socks, school papers and other random real life junk. The board that really express who I am is the "funny stuff" board. If you looked at that board and didn't giggle at least a few times, then I doubt we have much in common. My favorite thing to do is make funny pins. I'll be doing the dishes or dealing with my family and I'll have a hilarious thought that I know so many other women must also be thinking. I'll make a pin expressing that sentiment and 9 times outta 10 other women relate. It makes me feel less crazy and bit more normal.
The boards I don't deal much with are the food boards and the fitness boards. I have no desire to pin a picture of a ripped 19 year old girl. I always take a step back and analyze those photos. It's always the same thing. "Okay, this girl is super tan, really pretty, wearing more make-up than you should in a gym setting and not only is she super tall, thin and lean, but she also has a boob job. Oh by the way, she probably has never had a baby and she didn't lose a bunch of weight to look like that. She was pin thin to begin with and she added a little bit of muscle to her frame. This is not realistic for most grown women. And also to add insult to injury....photo shop." So yes, I don't get excited about those boards. Most of the time I'm eating pizza or something awful when I click on them. It's not a good combination.
The food boards are a world unto themselves. It's tons of pictures of "food porn". That is to say it's delicious looking food that makes you feel hungry when you don't really need to be eating. The food often has a recipe link that most will never look at, and even more would never actually make, yet these photos are always pinned with little comments like, "Yummy and so easy! I'm going to make this tonight!" or " Perfect for a summer barbecue!". I am not naturally inclined in the kitchen, so none of this looks easy to me. I get overwhelmed if a recipe has more than 5 ingredients and just give up entirely if the recipe includes weird shit that I don't have....cumin, rice wine vinegar, tahini, "fresh" anything (cilantro, basil, rosemary). I don't like complicated recipes at all. Dave sometimes gets a wild hair and decides he's going to make some strange recipe and I'm left cleaning up the mess and figuring out what to do with these almost full bottles of Chinese chili paste and sesame seed oil. Seriously, what the hell else am I going to use this stuff on. I have kids with weird allergies and I make simple bland food. I want a bowl of oatmeal for dinner!!!! So isn't it obvious that I'm not inclined to find new recipes on the internet. Well the other day on Pintrest I find this picture of a cookie sheet covered in colorful vegetables. I don't know why (it's pretty maybe???) but I decided to pin a food picture and by damn I'm going to make this! So I take the girls to the store and we are getting excited buying all these weird things we never buy. I get home and chop it all up and my kids were very enthusiastic about this adventure. I follow the directions and when it's done I serve it to my children. 30 seconds later I realize that I have wasted both my time and my money on this dinner. They each ate a bite or two and then rearranged the veggies on their plates a million times to no avail.....no amount of stirring these items will make them disappear. I rolled up the left over veggies in tin foil and put it back in the oven, in hopes that the vegetables would get more steamed than dried out. Dave came home, covered his vegetables in Italian dressing and loved them. But I still had to feed my kids "second dinner" at 7:00. It was a bust. I'm not cut out for cooking.