Variety!

As I was packing my lunch this morning, I looked at it and thought about how fortunate I am to eat so well. There's an issue in the SAD which relates to the varieties of food consumed in one day--most people tend to eat the same few ingredients every day. I decided to break down my last four meals (breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack) into their components to see what sort of variety I'm eating. Divided into logical categories, here we go:

Nut and legume--peanut, almond, walnut, lentil, lima bean

Grain--oat, rye, wheat

Fruit--date, raisin, apple, pear, clementine

Vegetable--onion, garlic, carrot, celery, tomato, collard green, red cabbage, beet, pumpkin

Dairy--cow milk, butter, yogurt; egg; goat cheese

Other--cinnamon, clove, honey, chia seeds, herbes de provance, thyme, bay leaf, baking powder, sea salt

Some good variety, I think. Of course, I wasn't eating massive quantities of all of these. When you break down a pumpkin cookie, for instance, there's only a tablespoon of actual pumpkin in it. When you use a bay leaf for flavor in a stew, you don't end up eating the actual leaf. However, that small amount is still providing essential goodness, doing its job for your overall nutrition.

Give this a try! Think back over your last day's meals and separate things out into their original components. See whether you have as much variety as you'd like, and think about which categories could use a few additions.

Regarding the no sugar challenge I'm on, I have noticed one of the typical side effects of not eating refined sugar: I'm not having the usual problems with my complexion. Even with my current hormonal roller coaster, my face hasn't broken out lately. It's so nice. Maybe there's some truth after all, in the old wives' saying along the lines of "don't eat junk food--it'll make your face break out."

Scarf knitting project is moving right along. One yarn has gone from black to gray to black, while the other is moving from purple to bright blue slowly back to purple. Sometimes knitting does this to me: I want to keep going and going just to see how the color change/lace pattern/two-color pattern will turn out.

Really looking forward to the farmers' market tomorrow!