I have been sitting on this idea for quite some time.  If you follow any of my social media you may know that I have been working on my own fitness journey for about a year now. This is something so personal to me, that it takes a lot to share this. But, I think its time to share, the good, the bad, the dark and the ugly. It scares me to be transparent about this. But, I feel since I do share a lot of my fitness routines on social media, I feel like I should share this as part of the blog.

This blog has always been my safe zone, my outlet for expression and although it terrifies me to share things other than books on here, I feel like this is an important journey that I would like to have documented.

I guess we should start at the beginning. As a child, the youngest I can personally remember myself is being around is 3 or 4, when my family took me to a summer home. To be honest the details are a little fuzzy. But, I remember clearly that eating food was not my idea of fun during that tender age. I was more interested in the butterflies that were flying around, or the bunny that hopped by. I would not sit still for a single moment. My mom likes to say that she would run after me with a spoon in her hand (in the literal sense- this actually happened) while I would be running around. Can you just imagine how long it took my poor mom to feed me a spoonful of soup? But, I sure kept her lean, as she ran around after me.

The food in Ukraine was so different from food in America. As I am told apples were a treat and hard to come by. But, the account of food that I do remember is lots of different soups, soups for all occasions. Chicken noodle has and will always be my favorite, and not that fake chicken noodle out of the can- the chicken noodle soup made of fresh ingredients and boiled carrots with thin little noodles. There was always a spoonful of love in that chicken noodle soup. The beautiful part of food in Ukraine there was no preservatives, a lot of the food was homemade and sold at the local markets. For example fresh made cottage cheese, let me tell you that stuff is to die for when made right.

I remember that for my fifth birthday- the first Mcdonalds opened. That is where I had my birthday lunch. My first happy meal- the food tasted so much different than the McDonalds food I would later try in California. I don’t know how Mcdonald’s food is distributed but I am a strong believer that the European McDonald’s food quality is a lot better than in the United States.

Then, a couple weeks later after my fifth birthday, we moved to San Diego. McDonald’s was on every corner, Pizza was served at every birthday party – no more glorious Russian food feasts, and very few people who drink tea after every single meal. My taste buds adapted very quickly and after a few weeks the tears that were cried because I refused to eat pizza, burgers etc, became pleas to be taken to Wendy’s as a treat. Life sure began to be different….

Stay tuned for the next installment!!

With warm cups of tea and a few more bites,

Rina