Soapbox Alert!

Focaccia with Red Onion and Rosemary

     Why is everything so bad for you so good?  I've been craving focaccia bread.  It's so versatile and it tastes so good...but unfortunately, I know how it's made.  The amount of oil is absolutely sinful.  But it's so good.

     I had quinoa the other day.  It's very good for you, and it does taste good, but I think part of it's charm was that my crazy Hawaiian brother-in-law added two sticks of butter to the pan.  Yes, two sticks.  Of real butter.  To about 4 cups of quinoa.  Of course it was good.

     I really do try to eat right.  Well, maybe not perfectly, but at least as naturally as I can.  I even put down my glass of wine now and then to give my liver a break.  I'm practically Gandhi.  But for the life of me, I can't convince myself to make my mashed potatoes with milk instead of heavy cream, or to serve brown instead of white rice.  I make just about everything from scratch, and that counts for a lot, but I also want it to taste good.

     Everybody knows that the skin on the chicken is the best part, that bacon added to just about anything makes it better, that the food you get when you eat out is so good because they add butter and salt to it in staggering amounts you would never try at home.  Besides, what if we deny ourselves something because the nutritionists have come out with a study saying it's bad for you and then, after a bland, soulless existence they say, years later....never mind!  We were mistaken.  (Think eggs...it happens.)  I, quite frankly, give up.

     I've decided that, as long as I know exactly what's in it, it's good for me.  I believe in moderation, of course, but I'm done trying to separate good carbs from bad, and trans fat from unsaturated fat and high fructose corn syrup from sugar.  I'm exhausted by it all.  I read labels, and I'll continue to, but I'm SO over carrying a calculator and the latest edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association with me when I go shopping.

     I hereby declare....I will no longer be held prisoner by the health food mafia!  And vegetarians?  Forget it.  (I sat next to one the other day and, in addition to her unhealthy pallor, she had some problems associated with too much broccoli that made the atmosphere extremely unpleasant.  Thanks, but I'd rather be fat.)  I refuse to worry about every calorie and every gram of this, that, and the other I put in my mouth.  I will not eat things I can't pronounce, or that taste like cardboard.  This is my new diet plan.  All natural and all tasty.  And it will be good!