What is "the recovery choice"?

Sometimes my ideas about food are so complicated. I have no idea if there is some deep emotional root to this situation, however at the moment I really don't think so.

I am weird about food. I am trying not to be black and white. I am trying to have balance. I know someone who gave me some advice that her nutritionist gave her. It sounded simple enough- when she is choosing what to eat to make her meal plan, she should ask herself, "What is the recovery choice? And what is the eating disorder choice?" Easy right?

Or not.

Today I was planning on baking something with the kids. I fully enjoy cooking and the creative experience it is for me, just as I enjoy writing and art. Mostly I like making healthy recipes for my family, but I have incorporated more baking as of late because I have four January birthdays (including Piper's first birthday) and one December. And everyone wants something special, which I'm trying to accommodate, because well, it's not the kids' fault I am fertile in the spring. So I am practicing in the hope to have some mad skillz here soon. And decorating these treats is actually fun and relaxing to me (I'm basically the only person in the world that finds running around a hot kitchen with an infant strapped to her back in a baby wearing contraption relaxing but nonetheless....)

However, ED circumvented my plans, or maybe not. Maybe I am making this woefully more complicated than it is. Dylan wants Spider-Man cupcakes. Oh heavens, this requires a ton of red dye. I find this incredibly unnatural and am not planning on eating one, but hey, let children be children right? Or not. How bad in the scheme of badness is red food dye for kids? I figure I am yet again overthinking this in a moment of serious orthorexic anxiety, and go to the store for (gulp) red dye and marshmallows.

And this is where I choke a bit on my unsweetened ice coffee with organic milk. The latest issue of "Eating Well" has come out, and apparently one can make a natural (notice I did not say low-calorie, I am fully aware I am not on a diet, and neither are my kids) sugar cookie dough, and decorate these with sprinkles and icing tinted with cranberry juice concentrate and green tea and egg whites, rather than a host of unknown ingredients and chemical additives. My natural hippy heart skips a beat and starts gathering the whole, pure foods necessary to make these cookies. They are perfect! They are moderately healthy and they are still cookies, after all. This, I decide, is the recovery choice. Except no one will die from artificial crap at the same time.

And then..... Dylan. Cranberry juice cannot possibly yield a deep enough red for Spider-Man. It's just a simple fact. So I go, and gather my packaged dye, conflicted. My brain is flooded with thoughts and I walk the aisles of the store for an hour.

Finally I decide that we will do both, although we cannot do both TODAY. I pay for my scary red stuff and marshmallows in a package and decide we will do natural Christmas cookies when it is closer to the holiday.

Dude, I hope this meets the definition of balance. Because I am conflicted and exhausted and starting to rethink the idea of baking. Anything. At all. Ever.