I Miss Cheese

So before I launch into my rant, I just have to note that my blog readership appears to have increased by 50% in the past week. All the new readers appear to be in Russia? I can't be bothered to run a real analysis on user stats, so who knows what this means.

But back to the rant. I miss cheese. I really, really miss it.

I am on a diet. My goal, well, I have a goal but that's not the important point. My diet, the means by which I hope to achieve that goal, is simply calorie counting. That means I examine food labels, look up things at the USDA nutritional website, and measure out every single thing that I eat.

This is not a diet that requires the excessive consumption or avoidance of any particular food. I've got a set target for the total calories I want to consume each day and I negotiate with myself how that divides up (actually, I have a spreadsheet but it's the same thing). I start with the ideal of "everything in moderation" then balance that against my daily calorie cap. Even with that optimistic start, some foods simply have to go.

The first group of rejects included pasta and rice and bread. I am not going carb-free so sometimes I eat brown rice, and I quite like potatoes because they offer additional nutrients beyond starch depending on how they are prepared. But those other things, they were far too empty of significant nutrition.

Sadly, the next to go was olive oil and cheese.

The olive oil was easy. I now cook food instead with water, fruits, and a lot of spices. It's poaching instead of frying.

The real problem was cheese. For example, a rich, aged British cheddar can have atrociously high calorie counts, as many as 400 kilocalories per 28 grams. Using around 25% of your day's allotted calories on a piddling 28g of cheese is not workable. So cheese has gone. I can't even have it in the house because I eat it all up. This makes me sad.

A small consolation is yogurt. I don't eat any of those nasty fat-free products. None of that dry "Greek" junk either. I eat full-fat, natural yogurt so it has the satisfying mouth-feel of saturated fats without the horrible calorie inflation of cheese. When I need a snack, I choose yogurt first. Still, it's not the same.

I miss cheese.