Food Porn

I don't know if it's ironically appropriate or terribly sacrilegious to bring up Food Porn on a Sunday, but stick with me - there's a method to my madness! Food Porn is the enemy of Frugal, Functional [Real Food] Kitchens (and happy cooks)!

For those of you not familiar with the term “food porn” allow me to explain. Regular porn is unrealistic, air-brushed and obscene. It creates unhealthy expectations and unreasonable obsessions. Food Porn does the same thing - but unlike regular porn, it's completely legal and available at every corner. Foodie magazines, high end catalogs, furniture store fliers, HGTV, Pinterest boards – it lurks in so many places! Every time we look at astronomically expensive kitchen remodels, sigh over flawlessly photographed recipes and silently berate ourselves because we know we'll never make anything that perfect or ignore the twinge of guilt and spend money we don't have on yet another kitchen gadget just because so-and-so has one we experience the rot and ruin of food porn in our lives.

The reality is that most of us don't have endless shelf space and huge budgets. We can't own every kitchen gadget or shiny new cookbook that comes out. Running a happy, healthy home is hard enough without comparing ourselves to tv cooks who have entire staffs to do their prep and dishes or the retouched photos plastered all over the internet.

Do yourself (and your family) a favor. Decide today not let food porn get in the way your Frugal, Functional [Real Food] [Happy Cook] Kitchen. Keep your salt shaker handy and throw a pinch on all the polished, retouched and unrealistic stuff you see marketed in your direction.

Then make some popcorn (in your dented stock pot or dirty microwave – it's okay!), toss a little salt on that too (or a lot of salt if you're like me) and get ready to start enjoying your real-life kitchen just the way it is!