I challenge all readers to respond to my REALITY PROGRAM, which is simply returning to life supporting practices which are found primarily in our kitchens. Learning to love your kitchen is not directed at getting your cabinets and floors replaced but rather what is happening on top of them. Has your pantry become a jungle of boxes and cans and some have been there for months? Has your refrigerator collected its share of leftovers resembling super bowl souvenirs? Has the microwave become your sole cooking unit?

Well, not to worry. You are not alone in this hectic eat and run world. Whether it’s losing weight, becoming more fiscally responsible, or practicing tolerance towards our fellow human beings, returning to a working kitchen is a slow gradual program. Unlike TV Reality Shows, my living program, LEARNING TO LOVE YOUR KITCHEN, offers no cash, no fame or opportunity to appear in TV commercials–just a lot of pride.

It’s every food-consuming person’s opportunity to turn the tide. Eating and preparing wholesome food must be desirable and even enticing. I will be your guide with savvy and easy to follow instructions to make this task a walk in the park.

Are you someone who really hates anything to do with food preparation and who would much rather have a freezer-full of eat to eat meals or just go to Denny’s for Saturday breakfast? I can totally understand your dilemma. I have had a natural knack for cooking since my teens and enjoy this chore yet. I have two daughters with artistic talent who simply hate to cook. Perhaps, I write this for them as much you.

I think it begins with priorities. You have to decide what’s most important: Having money? Attaining fame? Being lucky in love? Achieving the family you wished for you? Staying healthy? Having caring friends? Earning and receiving respect? Having an active and probing mind? Understanding your role in the world and how your actions might influence and better the condition of the human race? These are the noble goals which of course seldom land on the front page of any newspaper. These are challenges each of us have. Whether any of them are important is a matter of personal choice.

I have chosen to use whatever knowledge I have acquired through my many years behind the stove in a valiant effort to initiate change. I am hardly a candidate for the Oprah Show or to be noted by Andy Rooney on 60 minutes. I only wish for a change in attitude.

Brainwashing you into the easy out of food preparation is multi-million biz which glamorizes the way their product is going to give you more time and glowing praise from the family. It began in 60’s and slowly went to over a hundred new ways to escape the toils of arduous meal making. But 40 years later, even those box dinners weren’t enough. Now it’s dinner under the arches and baked potatoes are being replaced with French Fries and meatloaf is now high fat burger with lots of ketchup and mayo. Sodas have taken the place of milk or juice.

There are soccer games, dance lessons and preparing for next weeks’ bake sale. Who’s got time for meat loaf and baked potatoes? Then you’re so busy you don’t have time for even fast food restaurant so you grab up a bunch of frozen dinner from the local market. They require only removing from the box and popping into an oven. They were on sale. So give yourself a good pat on the back. It was cheaper than making something from scratch. But did you read the label? Did you check the fat content? Are cookies and ice cream your best sources of dessert? Have you checked the salt? Do you know the sugar content of popular soups? Are you confused on what’s a serving?

After all–it takes times to interpret all these portions. I recently took time to read my potato chip label and I discovered that 15 chips were 160 calories and I had a 3 oz bag of these chips in front of me. This entire bag would equal 480 calories. If I were to wash down the excess salt with juice or soda I would be ingesting some 650 calories before dinner. I later discovered that 4 whole-wheat sesame crackers were only 116 calories and had much less fat. Having gained 6 pounds over months of December and January I was now beginning to understand just how easily this can happen. Reading labels is the key starting point in the race for a better life.

Once you have read those labels and decided that all these shortcuts you have been taking are actually harmful to your health and to that carefree old age you someday wish to enjoy, it is tantamount to putting money into investment for sound fiscal future. Carefully thought out plans will yield good dividends. You must decide if you and your family’s health are going bankrupt or it can still be averted. It’s all a matter of priority.

Allow me to be your guide in this journey back to the kitchen, back to the stove and back to the cookbooks–and most of all, back to that wonderfully fantastic taste of simple food prepared without your artificial assistants. It’s so much easier than you think! You really can learn to love your kitchen!