Better Living Through Eating

This might seem to be counter to what any diet guru will tell you, but food is not only my life, but my passion. I have watched cooking shows all my life, since I was 6 years old. I started with the Galloping Gourmet and Julia Childs, dreaming of being able to create beautiful dishes when i got a bit older. I later found The Frugal Gourmet, and my cooking (which was fine already) really took off.
I was always a foodie, and a slow food person, altho I didn't know it until a couple of years ago, when it because vogue to eschew fast food and restaurants, and grow/cook for oneself. My German grandmother taught me the basics of cooking, those techniques that she learned from her relatives from the Old Country, like slow roasting, cooking grains from scratch, pots of spaghetti gravy simmering day-long on the back of the stove, and oh, the baked goods! Cakes and cookies and pies, oh my! Nothing could be better!
When I was a young adult, I was dirt poor, and fell into poor eating habits fostered by the American (and I use the term loosely!) food industry. I bought Hamburger Helper, and boxed mac and cheese, all those things which now have been termed "edible food-like substances" by food author Michael Pollan. I was calling it Plastic Food 20 years ago, guess I was ahead of my time once again!
Having a food-challenged child has been an exercise in stealth. A couple of years ago I discovered smoothies, that blended concoction of juice and fruit. This year, I began incorporating veggies in the mix, starting with carrots, and graduating to raw greens such as spinach, and raw cucumber. W either hasn't noticed, or had decided that they taste OK anyway, but he does drink them, which is the whole goal. I was totally amused at the two authors who came out the the 'hidden food' cookbooks, mothers like me have been doing this for decades, we just never bothered to write books about it. Oh well, another money-making opportunity missed!