It's The Final Countdown!

So here we are, with a little less than 2 weeks to go in Nutrisystem-town! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited that the end is in sight! While I may not have lost 30 pounds or anything, I think I’m accomplishing what I set out to do – which was to develop a well balanced diet, be less crazy, etc. On Saturday I enjoyed a fabulous brunch, a meat-tacular dinner at Redbones, and some of the best homemade chocolate cake I’ve ever had . . . and I didn’t feel guilty about it, and I didn’t gain 17 pounds, and the world continued to rotate on its axis. Miracles!

And speaking of miracles, I am currently reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. It’s a non-fiction book about her family’s year-long experiment with eating locally, which meant growing / raising most of their own food or buying directly from local farmers, etc. While it helped that Kingsolver’s family lives on a farm in rural Virginia, the whole concept of being conscious of where your food actually comes from, who grew it, how far it travelled to get from the field to your plate . . . its an interesting one, especially for a city dweller like me. In urban areas, I think we’re apt to celebrate that fact that we can get pretty much anything we want, any time of the year. Recipe calls for three cups Himalayan mushrooms and some squid indigenous to the waters off the coast of Guam? To the Super 88 Market! Need starfruit in January? No problem! On the flipside, though . . . do we know what asparagus really tastes like when its fresh from the ground, and hasn't travelled 2,000 miles in the back of a truck to your local produce section? What exactly is the “season” for lettuce, anyway? It’s kind of scary just how removed a lot of us are from the actual life cycle of our food . . . which makes it easy to slam any old pre-packaged thing into our faces as we rush out the door. Not only am I looking forward to *not* consuming all of my meals from microwavable containers that contain added drugs – I’m excited about the opportunity to start experimenting in the kitchen, whipping up real recipes where I can control the ingredients and making up my own little signature dishes as I go along. Me of two months ago would have been daunted and stressed by this prospect – but I have been born-again as a fresh-foodie, and I am not ashamed!

In the meantime, though, the boxes in my kitchen still need emptying. This morning I’m having some Cluster Crunch Cereal (from a pouch) and for lunch there’s “fettucini alfredo” (from a ramen cup) . . . dinner will be microwaved goopy-sauce-meal, with some veggies from the Farmers Market thrown in. Baby steps, people. Baby steps.