IT'S NOT EASY BEING GREEN

On April 12th I embarked on my "clean" diet.  Actually I am now calling it my "starvation" diet because I am hungry all the time.  And I have stumbled several times and once I just about gave up all together. Somehow I manage to get over the  hunger pangs and think of the poor people around the world who are actually starving and then I give myself a good talking to and get back on track.  It is truly one of the hardest things I've ever had to do.

For one thing, it's time consuming.  I'm beginning to feel like a sous chef.  It takes me forever to get a meal together.  By the time I drag all the stuff out of the refrigerator, wash it, chop it and stuff it in the Nutribullet I'm ready to go back to bed.  Then I have to clean up the kitchen which takes another half hour.  And then I have to start thinking about what in the world I'm going to have for lunch, not to mention dinner.  

Another thing; I seem to be burning everything.  I cooked garbanzo beans tonight and caught them just in time.  The pot had boiled dry.  Tomorrow I will go though them and throw out the ones that have burned.  And I burned the steak that I cooked on the grill pan.  One of these days, the fire department will be knocking my door down.  Poor Tom, he said it's good we don't have people over for dinner any more. Are you kidding me?  What in the world would I feed them?

Yesterday we went to Wegman's.  That used to be a favorite place of mine.  I like to wander around the perimeter and see all the breads and baked goods and the cheeses and then meander over around the prepared food areas;  the pizza (they usually have about four or five different kinds you can buy by the slice) the Chinese, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, beef and brocoli, and other stuff I don't recognize but it looks good; the Italian, pastas and sausage and meatballs.  It all looks wonderful.  Except yesterday I just headed straight for the sushi bar hoping there would be something I could get that wouldn't have forbidden seafood in it that didn't cost a fortune.  As luck would have it, I found two vegetable rolls - carr0ts. avocado, and cabbage wrapped in lettuce leaves with a sweet chili sauce (which was probably on the no no list, but I had it anyway.

I loaded my cart with lettuce, celery, eggplant, sweet potatoes, scallions, dried beans (some of the ones I managed to cook dry tonight) and a tin of sardines.  I also bought a rotissarie chicken marinated in chili lime.  It was okay.  I thought it would be tastier.  Somehow these days everything tastes the same.  Cashews taste like celery tastes like lettuce tastes like anything else I manage to stuff in my mouth.  I've begun to put sea salt on everything, which is probably not a good thing.

I'm not sure where all this is leading.  I'm really not sure how long I can keep this up.  Maybe if I knew I was really doing some good.  Maybe if I wasn't hungry all the time.  Maybe if I could have something cold and creamy once in awhile, like ice cream, or - I'd even settle for yogurt to take this yucky taste out of my mouth.  Tom asked me to bring him some ice cream back from the store today.  I didn't.  I knew if I saw it in the freezer it would be all over.

So I will keep trying the best I can.  Keep looking for new ways to eat the same old stuff, try different seasonings and try not to think about all the things I am missing.  Most of all think about how much worse my life would be if I was undergoing chemotherapy.  Then I really would be green!