47 Days Left!

Yep!  Only 47 more days until we can totally & completely make ourselves ill.

Actually, we're going to have a bit of a preview next week.  Andy will be on a business trip for 5 days, and this will be the longest either of us have had to negotiate "bad" food since this experiment began.  Even my week in McCall allowed me to be pretty healthy--while not strictly "legal"--because I stayed in a condo with a kitchen.  So, And is packing antacids and raisins, and he's hoping there's a grocery store nearby. 

Eating in restaurants this year has mostly become an exercise in bravery.  There are two good, locally-owned restaurants in this area that we feel pretty confident about and which haven't caused any sort of stomach upset, but all the rest--most obviously the chains--have become a waste of calories & a cheat.  Knowing one is likely to end up in some serious pain probably doesn't do much for any restaurant, but there is a processed-food TASTE.  I know part of it is the processed food "mouth feel"--which actually I missed for several months, but there's a muted taste to the food as well.  I suppose to make food acceptable to the widest audience possible it's best to aim for an average, middle-of-the-road sort of flavor, but so far it's made the few cheats we've used on food pretty disappointing.  I've even lost interest in pizza--partly because we have discovered Julia Childs's cornmeal pizza crust recipe, partly because it's not quite as good as I remember it being....and partly because I've developed a bit of a Pavlovian response to food that makes me sick for the next 24 hours.  Amazing how that works.

I am STILL holding out hope that cinnamon bears and chocolate will be as good as I remember.....