It's a diet

I was protesting to people that I'm not on a diet. Oh, but I most certainly am. It calls itself the No Fad Diet, but it is a diet plan. And it's really frustrating. Oh, the recipes are fabulous, easy to make. The ready made menus are great too, they take the guess work out of trying to balance a menu to get all the daily servings of grain, protein, veggies/fruits, dairy and fat that people need.

It's just a bummer to cook so many parts to meals. My example: today's lunch: 3/4 cup of chilled tomato-basil soup (think gazpacho), toasted cheese sandwich, 1/4 cantaloupe, 1/2 cup diet ice cream, water. Ok, the soup must be made from scratch in the blender, easy enough, and then must sit for 30 minutes. The sandwiches need to be 'toasted'. I cheated and sprayed a little olive oil on the grill and grilled them. I substituted grapes for cantaloupe because there isn't any cantaloupe for more than 200 miles, seriously. I substituted sugar-free, fat-free pudding (1/2 cup) for the ice cream, because, well, it's cheaper and ice cream is really hard to get out here, and Schwann's doesn't get here until tomorrow, and we're down to $35 in the checking account. Doubt we're going to spend it on ice cream.

Dinner is supposed to be salmon with caper sauce, but again, no salmon. I love the advice to buy fresh fish. HAH! I live in the Chihuahuan desert! The only fresh fish is some almost radioactive catfish in teh Rio Grande, and you couldn't pay me enough to eat them. And salmon from Schwann's is about $25 for 6-8 miniature filets.

Some of these meals require even more preparation. All have at least 4 parts, and there's also desert with dinner. It's a lot of food, and a lot of cooking. I love cooking, but when it's 5 pm and we're all standing in the kitchen, we want dinner in under an hour.