Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity

In between bouts of dining at BBQ joints with my friend Sam, and my week-long craving for a slice of GOOD white pizza, I try to eat healthily. Mostly. Really!

So, I always have an apple a day (preferably my favorite Pinovas, as I have previously rhapsodized about), chopped for easy munching at my desk. And the perennial hunt for GOOD clementines (dried out ones are unfortunately more easily found). And probiotic dairy, LOTS of that (but more on those later).

This shot of the Westside Market location near Columbia was fun since the row of fruit seems to stretch out forever. I took it months ago, during one of those rare 60 degree days in midwinter which made everyone pop out of the woodwork, and my friend Ellen and I joined them on that day, with a walk to midtown along Riverside Park.

Remember how I mentioned death by dairy? I have been on a Greek yogurt (nonfat) and cottage cheese (lowfat) kick this winter. (I now have enough empty cottage cheese containers to start my own supply closet.) Part of the fun is mixing in a spoonful of flavor du jour of Bonne Maman preserves (only 1 WW pt!) to sweeten the yogurt / cottage cheese.

If it's cottage cheese, then it MUST be cottage cheese with fiber and healthy bacteria, such as the Friendship 2% lowfat cottage cheese with probiotics "for digestive health" (I became very conscious of the importance of your friendly neighborhood intestinal bacteria after my party with the giant antibiotic horse pills earlier this winter. Plus, as an added bonus, all that fiber lowers the points value of the cottage cheese to ONE per serving. Woohoo! Okay, 2 with the jam swirled in.)

On the other side of the spectrum, there is BEEF (although it's kind of related actually -- think about where dairy comes from, eh?) which is stored in its own cold room at the uptown Fairway. No dinky freezer cases here -- just a whole wing of the building. My friend Ellen says it is a delightful place to visit during the summer. Heh.

When we went shopping there a few months ago (has it been that long already?!) I bought some packages of oxtail for mom, since (as my sweetie puts it) now that the yuppies have discovered oxtail, the prices have skyrocketed, and Mom won't buy it for herself. So I will. :-) (I brought her some tasty clementines recently for the same reason -- too pricey for her thrifty soul. ;-P)

Speaking of meat, I could not have made this supertasty BLT sandwich (with Arnold's Sandwich Thins, another new favorite) a while ago without some decadent bacon from Nueske's, courtesy of my friend Margaret. Since I had mentioned that Chez Squirrel is literally bursting at the seams with all sorts of clutter that I really need to chuck out, her solution to the Xmas dilemma was to send me something comestible and what could ever be wrong with BACON!?