Eating Right

I’m a big fan of a varied diet and I have to admit that I love food and I love to eat. Going out to a restaurant is always a fun adventure and I try to order different things off the menus to expand my culinary horizons. Of course, there are some places where I have my favorites and then it is a toss up if I will stick with the familiar that I know I love or take a chance and try something new.

This time of year looking good is even more important when the clothes you wear are shorter and more revealing than what you wear in the winter. Sorry to say that tee shirts and even golf shirts are very unforgiving about showing all the love handles and belly bulges that most middle age guys are carrying around with them. On the plus side, there are plenty of fresh vegetables and fruit for fresh salads and grilling, and it is easier to get exercise when the days are longer and the weather more conducive for outdoor activities.

Maybe I’m in denial, but I believe that eating right and getting exercise will be the best things I can do to maintain a healthy weight. And I don’t consider myself overweight, but I would like to lose a few pounds, maybe those 10-15 pounds that have been creeping up on me these past couple years. And then I ran into a guy that I used to work with at the real estate company and, holy cow! He’s lost a lot of weight and he really looks good! I had to ask him what he’s done to drop about 60 pounds since I saw him last, and he told me that he had gone on the Medifast diet. Well, that’s the first real life testimonial I’ve heard about a good diet plan and that really got my interest. If John can lose 60 pounds on the Medifast diet, then surely I can lose 15 pounds the same way.

In fact, John has inspired me to get serious about a diet and getting back into shape. I checked out the web site called “Weight Loss Diet Help” and read through the different top diet plans that they profiled on the site, like Nutrisystem and Weight Watchers. I was especially interested in what they had to say about the Medifast diet and it sounds good to me. A deal clincher for that diet was the links from this website to money saving coupons by entering a Medifast coupon discount code. So now I can save money and lose weight with a diet plan that I have a lot of confidence will work for me.

No Broccoli

At the grocery store tonight there was a sign on the freezer doors in the vegetable sections saying that due to acts of nature and circumstances beyond their control, there will be shortage of frozen broccoli and possibly other vegetables this summer.

I’m not sure where the top broccoli producing states may be and what acts of nature were involved, but I suspect that with all the flooding in the Midwest these past couple weeks and the fires in California, there may well be shortages of other vegetables and fruit later this summer.

On a good note, there are plenty of cantalopes and they are wonderfully sweet and at a great price this week. I plan on eating fresh cantalope daily while this bounty is here in our local stores. And my tomato plants are producing 2-3 ripe tomatoes every day. Last night we dined on BLTs and they’ve never tasted better.

Tuna

Tuna fish to me always meant a small round can of flaked, beige fish meat packed in oil or water that strongly resembles cat food. You used a can opener to go around the top edge and after the top clicked loose, you left it on the can so you have someplace to place your fingers and squeeze when you carry the can over to the sink and tilt it to drain off the liquid.

My mother made tuna by adding Kraft Mayonnaise, chopped white onion, chopped celery and bottled sweet pickle relish. Heap it on fresh white Wonder Bread and put a few leaf pieces from a head of iceburg lettuce. Serve with potato chips.

My stepmother had her own idea of tuna. She used Hellmans mayonnaise, if she used mayo at all. She preferred the sweet-sour taste of Miracle Whip. She chopped up one or two hard boiled eggs to add to the tuna, along with some chopped onion. I don’t recall any pickle relish or celery, but to be honest, I hated that tuna recipe and would do almost anything to avoid having to eat it, from I’m not hungry right now to I don’t want to spoil my supper when I get home (to my real mom after the Sunday child custody visitation was over).

Now I celebrate the diversity of tuna and enjoy it with a variety of add-ins, including sweet pickle salad cubes or chopped “bread and butter” pickles, a slice of American cheese of top or shredded any mix of cheeses stirred right into the tuna. Onions in or out. Add anything crunchy that you like. Put it on any kind of bread or roll you want, and put any kind of lettuce - or not - on it.

The only place I draw the line is that IF you include mayo, it MUST be Kraft real mayonnaise. Any other brand of mayo or “salad dressing” ruins it for me.

ConAgra, Publix and Home Depot

While standing at the customer service desk in Publix I noticed a little pad of coupons on the counter and pulled one off. This coupon turns out to be a pretty cool deal from ConAgra Foods, Publix and Home Depot.

The deal is that you buy $20 worth of ConAgra brand foods from Publix and send in the coupon with the Publix receipt for those groceries and they send you back a Home Depot gift card worth $25. Now, you do the math. Spend $20 plus a stamp and get back $25. That’s a sweet deal and not that hard to do. ConAgra makes a lot of big brands that everyone recognizes and uses, like:

• Hunts (ketchup, spaghetti sauce, etc.)
• Libby (hash, canned corned beef, etc.)
• Chef Boyardee
• Peter Pan Peanut Butter
• Van Camps (pork and beans, weenie beanies, etc.)
• Slim Jim
• Reddi Whip
• Crunch ‘n Munch
• Gulden’s Mustard

and probably a few more that I forgot to list. But come on - how hard is it to spend $20 on any of the above groceries?

I don’t know where you are supposed to get these coupons from, but I found mine at the customer service desk - so if you want to take advantage of this you should head out to Publix ASAP because it expires June 29.

Lance Snacks

We went Krogering yesterday and I was wanting a snack of some sort, but cruising the cookie aisle I couldn’t find anything that looked all that appealing. What I wanted was something small and portable, that I could munch on late at night when all I need is a small snack. Since I’m usually in the car and most stores are closed, I need to bring it with me.

I lost my sweet tooth years ago and most of the snacks I like nowadays are on the salty and crunchy side. So Kroger was running a special on Lance snack crackers and I stopped to take a look. I didn’t realize that there are some many variations and different flavors of those little square orange crackers filled with cheese. Do you know which ones I’m talking about? They come in little rectangular cellophane packs of 6 crackers. I picked the ones called “Captain’s Wafers” which is regular crackers filled with peanut butter and honey. I bought 4 of them them on sale and tossed them in the car console so that next time I need something for a snack they’ll be handy.