Updates

1. So Far, So Good
Bananas has made it safely to the first mail drop and has updated her journal here. She has met a lot of other hikers on the trail, including one with the inexplicable trail name "Cannibal." I'm sure there's a story behind that one, but all the same, I think I'd be sleeping with one eye open.....

2. Dem Fischer Sin Fru
The final clue came out today. Good thing, too, because when I finally get past clue 1, I'm sure I'll just tear right through the next 6. It's a beautiful pattern (I will post pictures of the final project eventually--can you hang on until 2009?) based on/inspired by the old fairy story, The Fisherman and His Wife. That was my favorite Grimms Brothers story--the old man frees a flounder from his net & it grants him wish after wish, at his wife's request, and she's never satisfied & just gets more demanding. Finally the flounder takes everything away from them.

3. Ex-Wife Issues
I have no idea if the ex-wife repellent is working or not, but now a lot of people are hitting the blog looking for ways to cope with hostile ex-wives, and there has been a huge response. So, I will be adding some future posts about ideas, coping mechanism, advice we received, father's rights. This isn't going to turn into a site about divorce, but I don't think anyone should have to go through this type of thing alone. If anyone has ideas, tips, advice--anything to share, please let me know. One note: I know how frustrating and draining it can be to continually cope with someone who is totally consumed with hate, but only constructive ideas are going to be posted. This is about how to cope and finding options--not about bashing the ex. That which makes you angry controls you. A friend of ours stumbled across a blog by Andy's ex, and it's all about how awful he is & picks apart stuff on my blog, and while the obsessive fixation 4 years later is a bit worrying, what she actually says about Andy & about us is irrelevant--she can't send the venomous letters to us any longer, and obviously has no one who will listen to her, and she's just jealous & angry that Andy is happy & that no one cares what she thinks any longer. The opposite of love isn't hate--it's indifference. As a person, she just doesn't matter.

4. I Joined Another Knit-Along (KAL)
I will be seeking therapy--do you think they treat over-optimistic crafting???? And, in my best "enabler" spirit, it's this one. My theory is, if you take people with you, it's a little less insane. It closes on March 25, uses fingering yarn and size 7 needles (for non-knitters, this is a much bigger needle size than KALs usually use, so it will theoretically go faster--or would if you didn't have 58 other projects going at the same time).

5. Eating
I finally had one of my chocolate cinnamon bears (thanks Ellen!) and I thought they were pretty good. Andy didn't like them, but had two. (I didn't ask). Cinnamon and chocolate are such an unusual combination that it was a pretty unexpected taste, but it was REALLY good to have a cinnamon bear again.
When I eat things that are obviously pretty processed, my stomach hurts, I feel more sluggish, and I feel hungrier about 2 hours later than I should. To be honest, I did not expect that there would be much of a difference--either eliminating the processed foods or having them again--so if anything, I was biased the other way, but even at the risk of permanently giving up a lot of foods I really enjoy, I feel better when they're out of my life. *sigh*

Anyone have any thoughts on how to make oatmeal taste like cinnamon bears?

The Best Laid Plans

As you have probably noticed, the blog is public again. It turns out that Google will only allow up to 100 readers per "private" blog (believing that 350 or so people really qualifies as "public"), so I was either going to need to make duplicate copies of the blog & post to each of them, take bids for the 100 spots, or learn to hack into Google's software. So, until I think of something different, we're public again, but with a sprinkling of obsessed ex-wife repellent:


Our wedding was a year & a half ago, and the divorce was over 4 years ago, so yes, as one person put it, we are dealing with "a special brand of crazy here." I thought that summed it up nicely.

It's nice to be in a "normal" month, but except for a few exceptions (a white chocolate martini, Diet Pepsi, and each getting one stick of a Kit Kat bar), we've mostly stuck with the new eating habits. Sad confession--I still haven't finished reading In Defense of Food, but I guess since we've lived it, Mr. Pollan would understand. To be honest, since he is a journalist and not a nutritionist, his books do need to be taken with a grain of salt, but all books about eating need a "spin" of some sort, since we all REALLY know how we should eat--lots of green vegetables, fruits, whole grains, lean meats in moderation, and probably nothing at all with "Hostess" on the label. I do enjoy some of his maxims, however:

"Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants."

"Do All Your Eating at a Table. (No, a desk is not a table)"

And my personal favorite...

"Don't get your fuel from the same place your car does."

Love that one!

The one that would have surprised me had I not worked with nutritionists & dietitians for 3 years while working for the American Diabetes Association:

"Avoid food products that make health claims."

This one is surprisingly true. Next time you're in a grocery store, look at the commercially packaged breads and compare anything with the word "grain" in the name to regular whole wheat bread--especially the fiber. A dietitian told me years ago that the more claims a bread makes about "whole grains" the less likely it is to have them. I don't know if this is universally true, nor what advertising loophole allows this little paradox, but whenever I check breads in the supermarket, she has been consistently right.

We live in a very strange world.

How We Think We Did

Here it is, day 3 of eating like "regular" people, so it's time for a little reflection on our experiment:

1. The thing we missed most was diet soda--no contest. I am now drinking them only in moderation, but I'm noticing that they now make me really thirsty. We're thinking perhaps it's the level of sodium or maybe the carbonation? I'm still sticking mainly to water & coffee.

2. Being a human lab rat is a strange experience--made even stranger by the fact that it was totally voluntary.

3. The thing I am actually most thankful to be able to eat again--Grape Nuts. Since I hate eggs in any form & sweets for breakfast make me sick, I am pretty dependent on cold cereal for breakfast. Leftover roast beef was a very strange substitute.

4. I have been experiencing some headaches this month, which are generally caused by my allergic reaction to milk. The headaches were surprising because I have lived with the milk allergy for so long that I can generally gauge how much milk or dairy I can have before I have a reaction. Since I was looking for a milk trigger, it wasn't until the last headache that I started to wonder if it was tied to the few times this month I did have processed foods. The thought of another zinging headache has kept me a healthy distance from those cinnamon bears.

5. We have no idea if either of us lost weight on this little experiment. A year and a half later, we still can't find the bathroom scale.

6. I feel like I have way more energy now. Those of you who know me well realize how scary that concept is.

7. Some processing is okay, like washing. Washing is very good, as is cooking, canning, dehydrating, freezing, roasting, and pickling. I don't think anyone who works full time can eat only fresh foods all the time.

8. I'm a little sick of nuts & homemade peanut butter.

9. If there was an allowable food that could be obtained in a drive-thru that wouldn't upset my stomach immediately, I didn't find it.

10. If it wasn't for the butter chicken curry sauce packets available at Cost Plus and this book, we would have starved. Side note: The recipe for naan is fabulous and does NOT involve turning your oven up as high as it can go. Secondary side note: Olive oil burns at around 500 degrees.

11. Grocery shopping felt a little like being at war with corn syrup.

12. Even though they are now "allowed," neither of us have eaten many processed foods yet.

And the number one thing we learned - People start asking what your current "Month of" experiment is before accepting dinner invitations.

DAY 29 - THE LAST DAY

Today I said something I have never said in my entire life, "Hallelujah, it's February!!!"

That lovely short month!

Tomorrow night we are having pizza--TOTALLY loaded with all those meats that one doesn't like to question too closely. And about 7 Rolaids each as a chaser.

It turns out that there really might be something to this whole processed foods thing (OK, let's face it, we were all hoping that frozen pizzas and convenience foods didn't make a difference). We've had to make a few exceptions (see how much better that sounds than "cheating?"), and almost every time, it has resulted in a really upset stomach and an occasional headache. It looks like it's going to be hard--if not impossible--to go back! Granted, I'm willing to work on a healthier diet, but to give up Digiorno's spinach & mushroom pizza entirely?????? Say it isn't so!!!!

MAINTENANCE NOTE: It takes longer than I imagined to type in email addresses, but I'm hoping to finish tonight & make the blog private. So, if you are not an obsessed ex-wife in need of a life and would like to have access to this blog after tonight, please email me directly or leave your email address in the comments. Anyone except the exwife will be cheerfully given an invitation.

Day 28 - ONE MORE DAY

First, obviously I didn't get the website access shut down last night--it takes a long time to get all the allowed email addresses typed in, but I am hoping to finish tonight. I will be leaving the knitting blog open to the public--if a snooping exwife who needs to get a job, get a life, and move on wants to read about my knitting....well then she's more pathetic than I thought. My other thought was to start posting our wedding pictures on every single post and writing about things she probably WOULDN'T want to read--like our sex life--but let's say it all together.....EWWWWWW! Don't worry--I didn't take that personally--no matter what the Google search engines think, this is not THAT sort of blog! :)

IF YOU WANT TO KEEP FOLLOWING THIS BLOG, I WILL NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS OR YOUR BLOGGER USER NAME AND I WILL SEND YOU AN INVITATION. If you do link to this blog, you may want to link directly to my profile page--I'll put instructions for getting an invitation to view the blog. Basically, I'll add anyone to the approved list provided it isn't an obsessed woman who won't leave my husband alone even 4 years after the divorce. The link to email for permission is already in place.

I think I have been extremely patient with this woman--I have tried being nice to her, and met with vicious accusations. I have been kind to her son and done the parenting she does not do, but we finally could no longer deal with her hostility, verbal abuse (quite often in front of her son), and manipulations. Yesterday uncovered people across the country who had been stalked and/or harassed by vicious exwives, and I know several other men who have gone through this, so in my first, and probably only, political post, it is time to really start speaking up about women as harassers and harassment by ex-spouses in general. We have 4 years of hateful & abusive letters and emails--and documentation of calls at work, scenes at dropoffs, spiteful parenting, etc. (not to mention the excessive medical bills and ongoing legal costs for problems she's creating but that we have to pay for), the "parent alienation" (the hostile spouse saying bad things about the other spouse to the child which happens so often that they have a legal term for it but don't do anything about) --all of which has been copied to our attorney and later this month will be sent to several legislators that I know. If you know someone who has had to endure similar treatment--document it and start calling politicians. Not all single moms are in that situation because their husbands left them for younger women--many were driven away by verbal and mental abuse and they deserve to be protected from further abuse.


OK, pardon me while I step off the soapbox........umph

Andy came home from the store with this:


CONTRABAND!!!! It's actually for making the food for Bananas on her hiking trip, but all the same, it was quite strange to find boxes & bags in our kitchen again. Look at these--not a single one looks like recognizable food.

The pi shawl is done and blocked!!!


And furred!

I could barely keep him off the sheet long enough to pin the shawl--

As we say now, he was as obsessed as an ex-wife with a blog line!!!! :)

Day 26 - I can almost taste the Diet Pepsi

What we have given up this month:

diet soda
my daily cinnamon bear (Andy is handling this one better than I am)
white chocolate martinis
delivery pizza
Digiorno spinach & mushroom pizza
one of our favorite soups (illegal ingredients)
all cold cereal
almost all food in restaurants
most breads
boneless turkey breast
ham
pasta
chocolate
canned soup
pretzels
microwave popcorn
salad dressing
anything & everything that comes in a box
even the beef jerky I keep in my car for the "no time for lunch but need some protein" moments

The thing that has been the absolute hardest for either of us to give up all month?

Diet soda - without question. We've been like smokers trying to just make it one more day without carbonation. I have not even trusted myself to sit next to someone who is drinking a diet soda. I don't really think I'd sneak a sip from a total stranger's glass, but still......if they weren't really paying attention.....

Day 23 - There's Been Some Cheating

Forgive me Readers, for I have sinned.

On Monday I coveted my neighbor's delivery pizza. It was probably covered with processed cheese food and mostly likely oozing with high fructose corn syrup, but I bet they loved every bite of it.

On Tuesday I had bread with preservatives because I just couldn't face three weeks in a row of cobb salads without dressing. To be fair, it was a lousy sandwich.

On Wednesday I had a roll with my salad at another lunch meeting. The shepherd's pie they were serving might not have contained preservatives, but that still doesn't make it food.

On Thursday I had two crackers at a cocktail party. Yes, I did know what I was doing and knew that it was wrong, but unless things are to get pretty wild, I should not have a glass of wine at 6:30 without any food to slow down its absorption. Obviously this little experiment does not equip us to be able to be invited out in public.

Last night we may have cheated--it all depends on whether or not Copper Canyon makes its Caesar dressing from scratch. Now our lives have definitely taken a turn for the weird--we are HOPING that our salads involved raw eggs & real anchovies.

The month of not buying anything new was SOOO much easier!

Day 21 - Things we have learned so far

1. Business lunch meetings are a good way to torture someone who is trying to eat healthy. Shepherd's Pie, for heaven's sake???

2. Groats are fine in granola, but they are really lousy as breakfast cereal all by themselves.

2. Even though I haven't eaten sugary cereal in years, after 20 days of this, I'm having slightly impure thoughts about Cap'n Crunch.

3. Nobody eats tuna for the taste of it.

4. By Thursday, no one wants to cook or do dishes.

5. If you can't go down the aisles, grocery shopping goes pretty quickly.

6. It's hard to tell when the bird seed ends and the health food begins in the bulk bin section.

7. It's hard to convince people to come over for dinner if they know about your little food experiment.

8. Your husband can get a lot of sympathy at work if his coworkers read your blog.

9. It's hard to stop calling food by its labels--protein, carbs--and start thinking of it as chicken and potatoes.

10. Short months are better for my little "experiments."

Day 19 - Tonight Would Have Been a Digiorno Night

There are just nights when we come home from work and neither of us feel like cooking. Generally speaking, those are the nights when we would heat up a Digiorno spinach & mushroom pizza. Generally speaking that is--not when we're doing strange food experiments. When we're doing strange food experiments, we "graze." A little cheese, a few vegetables, some nuts for protein--a balanced "meal" without the actual "meal" part.

Only 10 days left....

Tonight Andy pointed out that after NPR did a story, we had a month of no spending. After NPR did a story, we have a month of not eating any processed foods. He suggested my next project be a month without listening to NPR. Obviously, the lack of Diet Pepsi is starting to get to him....

Day 17 - What Mr. Pollan Started

This little experiment of ours is based on an NPR interview with Michael Pollan about his book In Defense of Food. We picked up a copy of the book immediately, but I sheepishly admit that I only started reading it today--and I was actually listening to the audio book version on loan from the library while I made my version of tuna salad (every vegetable I can think of, a little vinegar, and enough stone ground mustard to stomp out any actual taste of tuna). (The urge to jump into a project without thinking it through entirely is one of my most predominant qualities, and probably explains the insanity of a month without buying anything new right at the Christmas gift-giving season and a few jobs that I went into not having the faintest idea of what the job was about. Details just get in the way of some of my best/most memorable ideas.) Even in the middle of this little experiment of ours, his book made me think.

Why don't we eat food any more?

We eat carbs, protein, complex carbs, fiber. dairy products, oat bran--I may be going out on a limb here, but I think my grandparents actually ate things like eggs, potatoes, apples, spinach, corn, beans--actual foods--rather than the nutrients, and I would bet my car that not one of them ever had a discussion about trans fats or omega 3 fatty acids (they would probably have probably thought they were new breeds of cattle or a type of automobile). They got nutrients by eating foods, not vice versa. I think they even got to enjoy food for the taste of it.

The whole point of his book is summarized on the front:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

I think that's pretty hard to argue with, but 17 days into this little experiment, I can definitely say this has been a harder concept to follow in today's America than I ever dreamed. We have an entire industry built around "convenience foods," which are so named because nutritious food is not all that convenient. We are spending far more time thinking about food--planning meals, making lunches ahead of time, planning healthy snacks, counting the days until I can eat cinnamon bears and drink diet Pepsi (maybe even at the same time)--than I would have ever dreamed possible. And while I've become insanely boring, I feel great. Now if only one could have interesting conversations about broccoli....

Day 16 - WE GOT PIZZA!!!!!!

Last night, after THOROUGHLY checking the ingredients and nutritional information for our local gourmet pizza shops, we ordered an allowable pizza!!!! To a woman who had tuna salad for breakfast AND lunch yesterday, this was like winning the lottery!!!

Yeah baby, walking on the wild side....

Uh huh.

And update time, because I've been a little remiss...

For Valentine's Day, Andy--the most romantic man I've ever known--decorated the house with a trail of cards & gifts (constructed with YARN since I'm not buying any new yarn all year), and these were among the trail's stops:



There's a man who REALLY knows how to woo his wife! 13 more days and I can actually have those cinnamon bears!!!!

My gift to Andy included, among other things,


Ain't love grand?

And in a totally unrelated update, my dem fischer sin fru is making progress


albeit slowly. I'm still on clue one and clue 4 came out yesterday, and my goal is to only be 3 clues behind, so I need to get cracking before next week's clue. In the files section of the group there's actually a second project for people to work on while they're waiting for the next clue to come out, just in case it wasn't humiliating enough to just be behind.

To be fair, I have been working on other things (that's my excuse & I'm sticking to it). The tie-dye pi shawl is almost done and I'm just adding the edging--I say "just," because it's small in comparison to the rest of the shawl, but it's about 1200 rows of knitting. (I try not to think about that part).

Because of the strangeness of the striping effect of the yarn, I couldn't find an edging that worked (though Andy can attest to the attempts--and the swearing), I made one up. Luckily, it seems to be working--or I'm just deluding myself in an attempt to get it finished. I'm willing to go either way.

Day 14 - Happy Valentine's Day!

And guess who won't be getting any chocolate?

No, I don't try for such bad timing on purpose--it's just a gift, I guess.

Day 13 - Are We Making Any Progress?

Aside from how it seems (and feels), we didn't start this "no processed foods" project just to torture ourselves--we jokingly call that a "perk"...really jokingly. We are truly doing this for health reasons, partly because of an NPR interview about food and partly because I grew up in a small cattle-ranching town in Idaho where people seem to live well into their 80s and 90s, and seemingly without too many health problems, whereas the people I know now who are living in mostly urban areas seem to not live as long and have more health problems. There is probably an exercise factor in there somewhere, but I have begun to suspect there is something more.

Which leads us to the current month of torture--Oops, I mean eating healthy.

So, 13 days later--do I feel any different?

For one thing, I feel hungry much of the time, so I'm continually eating small amounts of fruit, vegetables, and nuts. I know it's good for me and I love fruits & vegetables, but I'm feeling a bit like a rabbit.

Secondly, I do feel like I have more energy, although that could well be tied to the amount of coffee I'm drinking now... :)

And lastly, I have fantasies about caffeine-free diet soda in a tall glass with lots of ice.

So obviously my body is improving but my mental state may be another story.....

Day 12 - A Scary Thought

In March I am going to be REALLY excited about getting to eat Grape Nuts.

I think I need to get out more.

Day 10 - For about 20 minutes, I was brilliant

Having determined that workday lunches are a big problem on our "Month of No Processed Foods," I thought I would line up some leftovers for us, and have a beef roast in one slow cooker, and "Mexican Chicken Woops" in the other one. Having never actually mastered either slow cooker, I realize that letting them gang up on me might be a serious mistake, but those who have had as much oatmeal as we've had so far this month are willing to try anything.

The roast, I actually think should be okay--I seared it on all sides with some seasoning before putting it in the slow cooker, so we're hoping it will have some flavor. As you may have already guessed, the "Mexican Chicken Woops" has already had issues. First, I found more corn syrup lurking in the diced tomatoes with green chilies I originally planned to use, so that was scrapped, and when I tried adding "just a dash" of chili powder to the chicken, I seem to have gotten "dash" and "dump" mixed up, and only part of it could be scraped out, so IF it's edible at all, it's going to be WAY too hot for my little Northern-European insides to cope with, so I have made lunch for Andy this week. How very June-Cleaver of me. If only I had been wearing pearls at the time....

Day 9 - The Breakfast Challenge

Guess how many of our favorite cereals qualify this month?

Absolutely none.

It was a bit of a surprise to find that our "healthy breakfast cereals" were off limits, since we weren't exactly eating them for their flavor. "All Bran" was by far the biggest offender--quite cheeky of it since it is also the worst-tasting of the bunch and looks more like a dismantled bird's next than any naturally-occurring food. Grape-Nuts would have qualified if we knew how to obtain soy lecithin as an ingredient. It is one of the only cereals we found without corn syrup, however, so it will be "re-allowed" at the end of the month.

Still, that leaves 20 days of breakfast left. Breakfast has always been a bit of a challenge, considering I dislike eggs, am allergic to milk, and don't like sweets for breakfast, but removing ready-made cereals has spurred me to a whole new level of weirdness. So far this month I've had leftover butter chicken with rice, leftover roast beef, cottage cheese with toasted sunflower seeds, several attempts at an oatmeal variation I can stand, homemade pretzels with snap peas, and today's cooked cracked wheat.

I am beginning to have fantasies about those Grape Nuts.

Day 5 - Reality vs. Toni

As much as I try to avoid it, one must occasionally have a brush with reality, though living in it is entirely optional. (Toni-ism)

REALITY: Unless we are going to spend the month grazing on the grass that is currently buried under ice & snow, everything we consider "food" is processed somehow--cleaned, cut, milled, pasteurized, baked, blended, chopped, frozen, canned, etc. A brighter person might have selected summer for this experiment so one could grow their own vegetables--and in fact, a brighter person would have figured out how to grow said vegetables instead of losing them to bugs and weeds--but it was my idea to launch into this in February, so we need to clarify things a little.

The guidelines we're working from now:

1. Does it look like food?
2. Could we have made it ourselves?

#1 encompasses vegetables & fruit in their normal, found-in-nature (though not necessarily in our garden) state, and meat.
#2 allows things like flour, butter, WINE, cheese, etc. (NOTE: I did not say "can." I said "could" in the more "if-we-knew-how-and-the-cooking-gods-were-in-a-good-mood" sort of sense)

We have also opted to allow the chocolate soy milk we drink in the morning for protein. Andy is lactose intolerant & I am allergic to milk, so we're making this a technical exception because, hey, it's our experiment.

Now if I could just figure out how to make cinnamon bears.....

Day 4 - This is SOOOO Much Harder Than it Sounded!

Having just returned from an hour-long excursion in a grocery store, I can now swear quite positively that the American diet is composed largely of corn syrup. The stuff is everywhere, which amazes me because the corn syrup in my cupboard is a thick, sticky, very sweet substance that I use once every 8 years. What is it doing in Italian sausage for heaven's sake--meat candy?


The other thing I learned tonight is that I have no idea what most of the ingredients listed actually are, but I left with the slight suspicion that our grocery stores are highly explosive. Nitrates, acids, phosphates, sulfates--didn't we blow these things up in high school chemistry class? I was very VERY careful not to drop that pasta....

No Cinnamon Bears Either!!!!

Yesterday was a harsh, harsh day. No white chocolate martinis. No caffeine free Diet Pepsi. And to add insult to injury, the cinnamon bears in the office candy bowl are off-limits as well!!! (sob) While I am struggling to remember why I came up with this idea in the first place, Andy has filled in as guest blogger:

Forgive Me Father For I Have Sinned

Day two of "Don't eat any processed foods" month, and I blew it already.

This morning Toni was walking down the stairs, as I was carrying a bowl back to the kitchen from the office. Toni asked, in her kindest and most loving voice, as I walked past

"You did not just have a bowl of illegal cereal, did you?".
"I had a bowl of cer... Oh sh*t!"

Only two days in, and it is strange what we decide we miss most from the "processed foods" world. Toni sent me a page yesterday stating that she had been used to eating one cinnamon bear from the candy bowl at work each day, and was missing her cinnamon bear today. I evidently will be missing my morning bowl of "sticks and trigs". [Toni's note: I wasn't sure if this was a typo or if this was a special brand of cereal for engineers, so I have left it as-is]

Late Thursday night we decided that alcohol was out as well for the month. What were we thinking? No chocolate martinis? No butterscotch mudslides? Little did I realize this last decision would impact my social life. I was planning on meeting up with some friends at a bar last night after work. So I sent Toni an email stating that I was going to stop for a beer on the way home. That email was immediately followed by another email stating , "oops. Beer is out. I'm going to stop for a soda with the guys. No, that is out too. I am going to stop for tea with the guys." It was then I remembered that we were going to be meeting at a bar right by the Harley Davidson dealer. Yes, a BIKER BAR. Now I'm very comfortable in my masculinity. But I just could not face showing up at a biker bar, and drinking tea. The thought of trying to explain the month of healthy eating to my friends while they are at a biker bar, chugging down beer, and eating something thoroughly processed and greasy, is a bit of a stretch for me.

When we ended the month of not buying anything new, we decided to resist the urge to go on a buying frenzy on the first day out. We limited ourselves to $40 each that we could spend on anything. It was fun to see what we each bought at the end of the day. Now for the month of eating healthy, it seems we should likewise limit our 'binge eating' at the end. Last night I asked Toni if on March 1 she could eat any two 'banned foods', what would they be. She did not even hesitate, "pizza and white chocolate martini". That describes Toni Sutton very well. I'm married to a pizza and white chocolate martini kind of woman.

Andy

Toni's note: Andy is joking that if I finally break down and have one of the bears at work before the month is out, my future post should be "Forgive Me Father For I Have Cinnamoned." We're very punny around here.

Day 1 - I Wasn't Ready!!!!!

February 1 and the month of no processed foods is kicked off. In a discussion late last night, it was decided that white chocolate martinis should probably not be allowed (sob). I had been mentally preparing myself to give up Diet Pepsi and mulligatawny, but white chocolate martinis??????!!!!!!!!!!

I'll be back when I have recovered the will to live.....