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My eating habits have varied from good to bad. Sometimes I just stuff myself full of fat and carbs because fat and carbs are delicious. Sometimes I eat carefully and choose good for me things that are still delicious.

One problem I've sunk deeply into is monotony. It's not that I'm eating the same single meal each say like I used to, but my adventuresomeness has faded drastically. I'm trying to fix that. As well as trying to fix my poor food choices.

I have, for starters, stopped going to the gelato shop for cookies. It's not really that I don't want the cookies, but that they have successfully waged a war against customers to the point that I'm just not willing to go back. For a while, then the war was just a skirmish, I wore earplugs to go in there. But they just kept upping the volume of the music. The time I tried to eat something there the music was so loud that people were having to raise their voices to be heard talking. The last time I rode my bicycle past the building I could clearly hear the music through the front windows. And the end result is that I don't eat cookies anymore. So I guess their terrible music selection and volume knob that goes to 12 (one more than 11) worked out well for me.

I'm making a concerted effort to keep up on my fruits and vegetables again. I'm making a concerted effort not to eat french fries again. I've been trying to eat fish more.

And I'm trying to remember to cook new things that I haven't cooked before, or haven't cooked in a long time. Two nights ago I made a chicken and mushroom dish. The mushrooms were fried until they started to brown, the chicken was pounded flat, and the sauce was made from garlic, balsamic vinegar, and "dijon mustard". The dijon mustard is in quotes because I made it myself, and it wasn't really quite right in terms of the recipe. But it tasted good.

Tonight I plan to make spaghetti with tomato sauce. I have roma tomatoes from Tom Hyden. He only had a few, but the people ahead of me in line passed them over. I find it baffling, really. I'd be hard pressed to think of any tomato recipe I know that doesn't call for a roma toma as the best possible tomato to use. They are firm, meaty, and low in seeds.

Tonight my spaghetti sauce will be made from them. Though I'"m still unsure if it will be raw or cooked. Either way,. I have a pound of tomatoes to make it from.

Every Friday, for several weeks now, and continueing tomorrow, I've been making Pho. The goal is to get good at it. I use Andrea Ngyuen's recipe as written about my Jada's Steamy Kitchen website. I'm getting better. I think this week should go pretty well. I plan to cook the broth a day ahead of time (tonight) so that I can properly defat it.