About Viva Catalina

It all started with the dressing.

When I was little, I adored Kraft’s Catalina salad dressing. I’d drench it over every salad I had for dinner and licked my bowl when the greens were gone.

But it wasn’t just the bright orange sugary sweet taste that drew me in – I also loved the name.

Cat-a-lin-a.

It was the most exotic word I’d ever heard in my short 6 years of life. I tried to use it whenever possible. When my neighborhood friends and I were playing house and they were naming their baby girls Stacey and Lucy, my daughter was always Catalina. I was even convinced that this would be the name of my first-born girl one day.

As I got older, my love for the dressing never died, but I did have to make a few adjustments here and there. It wasn’t offered at my college, so I switched to French – the next best alternative. Coincidentally, I also minored in French, but I can’t credit my dressing devotion to this one.

And as it always is, years of education and experience have since changed me. I dived into the world of healthy living in November 2009 and I’m no longer the Catalina connoisseur that I was long ago.  I try my best to eat mostly non-processed foods, and sadly, Catalina doesn’t fall in this category.

This blog will document my new loves – cooking with whole foods, yoga and my ongoing flirtations with vegetarianism. But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever forget my first love.

So with a heavy – but healthy – heart, I say Viva Catalina!