I'm In It To Win It!

I've been doing pretty well so far with the new diet. I decided though, that I wouldn't get too strict with the health-specific aspect of it right now. I'm just going to focus on general conversion for the first couple of months. It's been stressful enough just trying to figure out what to eat everyday, and having to avoid all the little things I used to snack on without thinking about it. There are more than enough new things on my plate as it is. (No pun intended.)

I just received two books from Amazon that I've been reading, and have been checking out some of their recipes (more details on New Word). The thing is, I have to get all these new ingredients, some of which I never heard of in life, like umeboshi plums, aduki beans and wakame seaweed. Yes, seaweed. All kinds of seaweed. It ain't just for sushi anymore.

I did have fun at a new health store I found yesterday. I had about 3 different lists, which was confusing. My sister faxed me a list of her do's and don'ts, then I created one with all the obscure stuff to get at the health store, and another for the supermarket. It was a bit nerve-wracking, and it was about 100º out (or close to it), so my anxiety level was on the high side. I could have dropped a couple hundred dollars in there easy, but I kept to my $50 budget. $50.19 to be exact. I still have to make another trip to the supermarket to round everything out, but I should have enough stuff to whip up at least 2 or 3 interesting dishes. That might not seem like much, but health food ain't cheap.

I also got a cool new software to keep track of all these new recipes. It's called Cookware Deluxe. I actually had an old demo version of it that I never registered, so once I started all this I took another look at it. Since I'm so committed to my new life ;-), I figured I'd actually pay to register it. It was only about $25, so it didn't break the bank. It came with a bunch of recipes, which is nice, but unfortunately, I'll have to ignore most of them. It's been great so far though. I've started entering and printing out recipes, which is helping things to settle down and make some sense. It'll also help me create shopping lists, which should make my next trip to the health store a lot more organized and a lot less stressful.