dietary requirements

I have so much food to post. I need a better way to get it from my camera to my computer since the dog likes to steal the transfer cable and chew it into submission...

But right now, I want to take a few moments to talk about diet. Not a diet, but diet. Lately, we've been eating horrifically because we've all been working so much-- there have been a few wonderful breaks from that, but mostly we-- and especially I-- have been giving in to the Fast Food Fairy and eating far too much of it. And recently, H and I gave up High Fructose Corn Syrup. I gave it up pretty successfully a few years ago and dropped ten pounds without trouble, but it's everywhere, and my love of sweet bbq sauce, sweet and sour sauce and rootbeer combined to let it back in.

Shame on me. Especially since the problems with it have been proven, and I knew all of them* beforehand**.

So I haven't been losing weight, my stomach's been a mess, and I can feel gall-bladder issues coming on. And it's really all my own fault.

So I'm trying to clean it up again. It's classic entropy-- you get a collection of meals you like and can easily make and they're healthy and lovely, and then you get busy at work and eat a burrito from Taco Bell or whatever, and the next thing you know, it's two months later and you're hardly eating any real food at all. After I get to the bank, I'm portioning out monies for staples. We're way low on the sorts of things that make good food, and I, personally, haven't gone grocery shopping in ages. I wish we had a real grocery (not just a boutique over-priced grocery) closer to home so I could just bike down each day and shop European-style. I hate having to plan a week or two in advance; how am I supposed to know what I'm going to want to eat a half-month from now? Or waht veggies and fruits will be perfect then? Or what my schedule will be like?***

I think I've lost the point of this post.

So I'll try to salvage something out of it:

I want more veggies, and the time to turn them into good, wholesome food without having to only eat it raw because I don't have time to cook. I'm craving a salad like woah. Seriously like woah. That's a real level of measurement.

I want to make my own bread. It's not hard, it just feels like a lot of work because of the whole rise for three hours thing.

I want to shop as much at real markets as I can, and I'm sad that the farmer's markets are only open twice a week, and that it's almost impossible to get to one of them because of foodtail's need of weekend work.

I'm going to wean myself back off the fast food and up the activity level. The weather's great, and I need more exercize anyway, especially since it will be almost impossible to move once the heat sets in. D's necks cut is hydrogenated oils, which pretty much leaves us with home-made food only. We'll have to set up, like, days for cooking ahead-- days when we can make a whole bunch of granola bars or prosperity-cake breakfast bars (that's one of the posts I need to post!) or cook up chicken and freeze it so we can just thaw and toss it into a salad or something.

I still have tons of miso. That stuff really doesn't go bad, and, actually, it sort of ages into something with more complexity of flavor.  Best of all, it's super-healthy. Even the salt is better than regular salt (it's been fermented, and it breaks down better in the system. And I'm pretty sure I could use a little higher blood pressure anyway).

So yeah. That's where I'm at.



*They are the following:
- HFCS makes you fatter, faster
- The specific forms of fat are the worst kind to have
- It's technically like table sugar, but by breaking it up, it absorbs into the body faster and it doesn't trigger the 'full' feeling, making you eat more
- It damages the organs, either through direct action or through secondary action
** I looked them up when D went off the HFCS and I read some frothing-at-the-mouth crazies blaming it for the fall of western civilization to see what was truth and what wasn't. I try to stay what you call grounded in fact, especially with info I get off forums on the interwebs.
*** These are more things that are to be addressed in my Life Makeover as I look for a better job out of the retail / hospitality / foodtail business. Fixes to them count as part of a good job.