One of my current food-favorites is Triscuits. I've been changing up my diet a bit - mainly, trying to cut way back on sweets (but not cut OUT totally; I've declared that there's still room for a bit of chocolate now and again).

This is partly out of a short-term desire to experience a bit of personal shrinkage - I'm noticing the typical midlife female trends happening to bits of my body and I'd like to slow them down (especially the waist-thickening) if possible. But it's also out of a longterm challenge to get myself to eat more healthfully. I have a history of type II diabetes in my family, even though neither of my parents has it, my father was at one time close to "pre diabetic."

The hard thing for me is, frankly, I LIKE sweets. And I get hungry, and when I'm hungry, I'm just HUNGRY and I don't want to wait the ten minutes to boil an egg or something like that. The main things I'm trying to do are these:

a. Most nights of the week, eat fruit (plain fruit or fruit with a small amount of sugar* on it) as my dessert (You must understand: this is a big culture shock to an Upper Midwest farmwoman's granddaughter who grew up with a mom who loved to bake. We ALWAYS had pie, cake, or cookies in the house.) So far it's worked okay, but I'm wondering how it will go when stress and tiredness and many-evening-meetings sets in: will I still be able to cheerfully slice up watermelon, or will I start thinking about Mint Milanos?

(*don't even SUGGEST artificial sweetener. Aspartame gives me migraines, "Splenda" gives me stomach cramps, sorbitol and xylitol and all those sugar alcohols give me cramps AND other GI problems [to be at least a bit delicate about it]. I'd rather eat a small amount of something people have consumed for several thousand years safely rather than experiment with something that's been around for less than 100 years. And Stevia? Tried it, didn't like the taste.)

b. Find more nutritious snacks, or, preferably, eat a more nutritious lunch so I'm not ready to eat the world when I get home at 4 pm. And that's where the Triscuits come in. They taste good to me - I hope I won't burn out on them - and they seem to help keep me full. (I'm also going for more protein; recently I've been eating those rather waxy "string cheese" sticks that they sell. I also have some nice, organic, whole-raw-milk** Cheddar at home in the fridge, but that needs to be cut and packaged to be taken somewhere, and frankly, at 6:30 am, knives and I don't work so happily together). I should just boil a few eggs and keep them in the fridge and remember to eat them up before they go bad.

(**I honestly didn't think that was allowed in this country but apparently it is. And it's damn good cheese)

The biggest challenge, as always, is the vegetable thing. I'm not a big fan of vegetables. (And some, I actually cannot eat. I have a food intolerance to carrots - a few grated in a salad won't kill me but to eat a normal serving of them, well, I'd be pretty miserable the next day. And raw broccoli doesn't agree well with me, and cooked broccoli - well, I've never tried it, because I can't get past the way it smells). So I try to rotate spinach salad/green beans/other beans/sweet potato/tomato things/squash-when-available/cabbage salad and hope I don't get too sick of any one thing. I've recently learned to eat mushrooms (cut up and cooked in chicken broth with a little vinegar and hot pepper and ginger to make like hot-and-sour soup, they're good), but frankly, I think of mushrooms as decoration and not vegetable.

I like corn but I tend to count that as a starch rather than a vegetable.

And pickled beets. I forgot about those. I don't normally like beets but I like pickled beets. (I should make some this weekend - I have everything I need on the shelf.)