Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Food porn on Pinterest

I admit, I'm rather addicted to Pinterest. It's the perfect time-waster when I have nothing else to do at work, or if I just need a quick mental break.
One of my favorite categories, of course, is the food. (And the gardening, and the crafts, and the random beautiful pictures, and the humor....) I think that's the category where I have the most pins, which is rather impressive because of how many ridiculous recipes there are on Pinterest. I think somewhere along the line the diet advice to "eat foods with fewer ingredients" got a bit skewed. I see recipes all the time which are labeled, "Only five ingredients!" and such. But the ingredients tend to be: crescent rolls, Italian seasoning, ranch seasoning, Cool Whip, boxed cake mixes, and on like that. So it's very difficult to wade through all of these things to find real food recipes. I've discarded countless Crockpot recipes because they rely on something from a box or package which I'm trying to get rid of. Or it's just a plain Meat recipe and I prefer more nuanced (read: veggie-centric) recipes.
I am glad for many of the recipes that I have found. Other than the salad, the things I made for our anniversary were recipes I found via Pinterest. I tested out and loved a homemade hamburger buns recipe, and I have many other recipes which I'm really, really looking forward to trying out. (Crockpot vegetarian curry!) But it is a bit discouraging to see how many recipes I won't be making because they use crappy ingredients. Do you really need to use crescent rolls in everything, people?
If Pinterest gets more people excited about cooking at home for their families that's great. But if all they're going to be cooking is crap, then it's a mixed good. You really have to be picky about what you choose. And yes, some of those crap "food" recipes do look amazing. But knowing about all the chemicals and non-food items in them keeps me from making them. If you look carefully, there are plenty of real, whole food recipes to be found.

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