Friday, January 4, 2008

Prolific

I seem to be writing here an awful lot. If you're reading, don't get too adjusted to it. I'm sure, once I get a better handle on what I'm doing and why, I'll slack off as a writer. It does seem to be my habit.

Yesterday I prepackaged a bunch of little salads to use... mostly because I'm lazy. One of the reasons I don't eat salad on a regular basis is that it's a hassle to make. You have to buy lettuce and carrots and celery and cucumbers and peppers and... then you have to chop it all up, and it wilts fairly quickly, so if you're not on top of things, more than half of it goes to waste. So, by doing it all yesterday and packing it in easy-to-use containers, I hope to be able to eat more salad without being quite so grouchy about it. Of the 10 (or 11?) packs I made yesterday, we've already eaten three. Depending on how things go, I may have to buy 2 monster packs of pre-cut lettuce (which has always been the biggest thing I hated about making salad was cutting up lettuce...) per week. We'll see.

Today's 'self-assignment' is to spot tag all the food in the house. I bought some sticky-dots at the Office Max yesterday in 8 colors. Light green, medium green, dark green, blue, yellow, light orange, medium orange, and red. What do people have against purple or pink? Really!

I've assigned them out thus:

  • Light Green: 0 Points (free food)
  • Medium Green: 1 point
  • Dark Green: 2 points
  • Blue: 3 points
  • Yellow: 4 points
  • Light Orange: 5 points
  • Medium Orange: 6 points
  • Red: 7 points
[If things go past 7 points, 1) I probably shouldn't be eating them anyway and 2) I can just add a second dot. Two red dots is Right Out.]

The idea is to make things simpler. Rather than having to look up everything I want to eat when I want to eat it, I can check the serving size, and eye the dot. Obviously, this will be a lot of work at first, and will add probably a half-hour to grocery trips as I 'put away and label' rather than just 'put away.'

So far, I've managed to tag everything I've eaten today and everything in the freezer.

That's good, I guess. I have 2 cabinets, the fridge, and the pantry to go... might take a while.

The problem I thought I was going to have with Thomas; I already have. Yesterday he went to bed 5 points down. And I was hungry, after using all my points.

Sigh.

And there's just, really, nothing satisfying about having a cup of carrots. I can eat it, yeah, and maybe I'm not hungry afterwards, but I don't want to eat them. They hold absolutely no interest for me.

I wonder if I'll ever get past that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

There are moments in life when it is very clear that carrots are evil.

You're hungry late at night, staring into the refrigerator and having that inevitable conversation with yourself. "I'm hungry. I should be good and have something healthy. I have no points left. Which means... ignore the bread, pass on the cheese, skip right past that leftover pasta... what's in this one? ooh cake! no, don't even look at it. Oh look carrots. They're mocking me. They sit there with their smug 0 points among all the tasty food." Carrots, clearly, are evil.

But perhaps they can be redeemed. Condiments are the key. Zero point condiments come to the rescue with flavor and zest to turn the blah orange vegetable (or green if you're talking about the carrot's evil sidekick, Mr. Celery) into a crunchy vehicle for something more cheery.

Next time you're staring into the abyss of your crisper drawer, maybe one of these could help:
* 0-point salad dressing
* vinegar
* salsa
Or any other 0 point condiment you're up for trying. (For some reason, A1 steak sauce sounds really appealing right now, but then I really like A1.)

Food plans require three ingredients that they never tell you about; mind games, creativity, and humor :)