The Blanding

      I eat semi-healthily.  My weaknesses are a sweet tooth and a fondness for ham, sausge and beef.  Oh, and pasta.

     Salads are great -- they're better with a good vinaigrette, which includes, oh dear, salt, fat and often sugar.

     Oatmeal?  Yum -- if it's sweetened.

     And so on.  I've cut the amount of sugar in my coffee (again) to half a teaspoon, and all but given up Reese's Cups.  Salty crunchy snacks are harder to give up -- unsalted and half-salted mixed nuts help.  Bacon's got to be more of an occasional treat than it has been.

     Backing away from refined white flour is not a problem for me, other than pasta (and, okay, saltines -- oh, with a little peanut butter on them, is there a better treat?); I grew up with good rye bread and Roman Meal whole wheat, and have always preferred them to squishy, tasteless white bread.  (Our national preference for what amounts to brioche will never cease to amaze me.)

     I'm trying.  The last doctor lecture was just short of scathing; I'd not been eating as well as I should have been, and it showed.  I got worse about it during the pandemic, especially because I was keeping canned meat on the shelf and rotating through it to maintain a consistently dependable supply: Spam and corned beef hash are delicious, but....

     There are ways in which I'll never get out from under pandemic habits; I keep paper goods and hygiene supplies stocked in depth, and canned foods, too.  But I can and will eat better, and I have been doing my best for the last few months.

     I've got a lot of spices, and I'm always looking for something new.  A little more herbs and seeds, a little less salt; a little more pepper, a bit less sugar.  It's got to help!