Lament of the Lettuce

My diet has two really big weak areas-- my love affair with sugar and my lack of vegetables.  The sugar affair, well, I'm not going to give it up cold turkey forever and ever.  I've tried it and it didn't work.  I didn't feel the cravings go away (like so many of my no-sugar, no-processed, no-anything-that-tastes-good friends promised).  So I've made a truce with it.  I'll try to minimize the sugar I eat, and savor it it smaller doses, with the goal of those savoring moments getting smaller and fewer.

Vegetables are trickier.  I have nothing personal against them.  I even like some of them.  But somehow, I never seem to manage to eat them much.  Back when I was a much more dedicated to healthy eating mom, I made a huge effort to serve lots of vegetables all the time, so my kids would grow up liking them.  It kind of worked (with some veggies, anyway-- like broccoli & peas).  But as my life has gotten more frantic and I've added more kids to the mix, my effort at preparing and serving veggies had decreased exponentially.  In my defense, cooking for a family of seven while handling all the schedule craziness that comes as the kids get older is much more challenging than cooking for a family of four.  (And expensive.  But that's a topic for another time.)

Anyway, I have such grand intentions every week when I go grocery shopping.  I always intend to add more veggies to the cart.  Snap peas, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, tomatoes, carrots, green leaf & romaine lettuces.  I actually like to eat these things.  But almost every week I get them, I never cook them or eat them, and then they go bad (with the exception of the carrots, which I regularly snack on).  Then the next week at the grocery store I stand around in the produce aisle debating whether or not I should spend the money on food that is probably just going to be wasted.  Did I mention how expensive it is to feed a family of seven?

What to do?  In my fridge I had a head of green leaf lettuce.  I haven't even unwrapped yet though I bought it more than a week ago.  In fact, it's probably wilted and nasty by now.  But every day the week I had plans to break it out and make myself a yummy tossed salad with sauteed chicken and garlic.  Never happened.

Bother.

I've got to get better about eating my veggies!!