Woefully behind, and the state of my cupboards

I am woefully behind in blogging. I still have meals from the October challenge to dig out of the camera or from the dim reaches of memory, along with any number of other things I've meant to post about. Life has been a little too exciting in the Chinese sense, and I hope things will get sorted out soon.

Local eating fell a bit by the wayside in the wake of various health issues, and I did a few things I almost never do. The biggie is that I went shopping for food at the regular grocery store. It was an odd experience, having to pay attention to whole sections of the store that I normally bypass on my way to the cat food or pharmacy. And despite the fact that I was sick, hungry, and desperate not to cook, I could barely find a thing I wanted to eat. Prepared foods looked unappealing, except for some spicy California rolls (spicy crab is a big weakness of mine.) Canned soups also failed to tempt me. Frozen dinners were right out, even the vegetarian ones. I ended up with a loaf of multi-grain Tuscan bread (another weakness of mine - makes incredible stuffing!), a very small wedge of cheddar cheese (I had used all the local stuff to make Welsh rarebit), and a can of Heinz baked beans (the English import.) I also had a package of Archway frosted gingerbread cookies (that were stale! How tragic!) which are a holiday tradition in my house, and two boxes of holiday ice cream novelties in my cart (snowmen faces and christmas trees, also a holiday tradition.) The snowmen faces aren't very good, but I stand by the minty christmas trees.

I looked through my cupboard and freezer to see how well I have practicing what I preach. The following lists the things that were not put up by me or otherwise produced locally. In the freezer: aside from the newly-purchased ice cream novelties, there was an open package of garlic naan from Trader Joe's. That's it. The cupboards contained some Kashi cereals, hot cocoa mix with extra marshmallows, ovaltine, one can of black beans, a couple of sauces from Trader Joe's, and a package of instant miso soup. I think there is some instant oatmeal and a can of tomatoes knocking around in there, plus a box of farina. There are some lentils, couscous, brown rice, bulgur wheat and Asian noodles that aren't produced locally, but I still put those in the category of whole or almost whole foods.

You'll notice the heavy emphasis on cereals. While I do enjoy my local oatmeal with apples, some mornings you just want to grab a bowl of cold cereal or something quick and instant. And cold cereal is our favorite food for those late-evening munchies.

So despite some slacking in the cooking department, I am pretty happy with how our eating is going.