Variety: The Lack of Spice

Photo Credit: emilybostic1 Flickr via Compfight cc

(Health Update: The results are in from by visit to the audiologist. I am suffering from mild to moderate hearing loss across all bands, with the problem getting worse at the frequencies get higher. Translation: I am going deaf, but am not yet deaf enough for hearing aids. Lor will just have to speak louder.)

We made our bi-weekly visit to the grocery store yesterday, and while reviewing the receipt afterward (ouch!) a thought struck me: this looked an awful lot like the pile of groceries we bought two weeks ago.

In the name of scientific inquiry, I went through the bags as we were unloading at home. Eggs: Affirmative. Many pounds of chicken: present. Several varieties of cheese: check. 10,000 containers of greek yogurt: yup. We didn't get any protein shakes, but only because they weren't on sale at the grocery store we visited yesterday. Same old, same old, really.

So. this is what I am going to be eating for the rest of my life. The only variety is showing up in the various fruits and vegetables Lor is picking - usually whatever is on sale. And even then I can always count on standards like tomatoes and cucumbers.

It isn't necessarily that this is a bad thing. But it is sort of like that day when you are sitting at your desk and realize that this job is what you've been doing for the last twenty years: so this is who I am. From here on out, my identity is wrapped up in tiny amounts of protein-saturated foods.

As identities go, it isn't a bad one to have. Quite honestly, food has really been shifted to the back burner (ha!) in terms of things we spend a lot of time thinking about. Though we do still have cravings from time to time (I drooled over a pecan pie for about 5 minutes yesterday), they aren't real cravings, if you know what I mean. My mind is craving the memory of something it used to really enjoy. My stomach could care less.

But, really, we are only a few months out from our surgeries. Getting the exact same thing every two weeks will surely lead to burning out eventually, won't it? I think we need to put a little more thought into our weekly meal planning, and make sure that we are injecting a little variety into these trips to grocery store. Substitute low-fat beef cuts for chicken once in a while. make sure we are cycling through different kinds of nuts. We are already doing a pretty good job of trying different cheeses every time. I have no idea what in the heck we will use to substitute for low-fat yogurt, though.

Just one more demonstration of shifting food away from the center of our lives, I suppose. We can start looking for variety in other places: changing up our daily routine, trying different exercise programs, doing new and unusual things for entertainment. We have quite a few more options with our reduced sizes and increased health, right? We need to seek the spice of variety in experience, and not in things like lasagna, beer and desserts.

Now if I can just convince my brain of that.

Wondering If They Make A Pecan Pie Flavored Yogurt,

- Hawkwind