Shopping for international grocery items is sometimes like a scavenger hunt. Last week, I triumphed with two 14-oz bottles of rosewater for $2.59 each at a Persian market in Bellevue, Washington. It had been a 2-1/2 year search, and until now, I’d been unable to find anything bigger than 6 ounces at about $5.

Today, I took a bus to downtown Seattle for spent the entire day today shopping. Not at Macy’s or one of those chi-chi clothing shops in Westlake Center. I was continuing my scavenger hunt for pantry items that are absent or dear at my local grocery stores.

The challenge with this type of shopping is that there are two excellent places to get food ingredients in downtown Seattle. But unlike the QFC and Albertson’s near my home, neither one offers cheap and convenient parking.

So I armed myself with a large backpack and a canvas tote bag and took the bus.

My first stop was the Pike Place Market, well-known to tourists as “the place where they throw the fish.” Many retailers in the market target the tourists, selling them dried fruit, nuts, or jam — items that are easy to tuck into a suitcase. They’re priced like souvenirs, not like food, so I avoid them.

Instead, I head to The Souk, a middle eastern grocery with a wide array of spices, curries, and Indian foods. I picked up items you can only find in a tiny, custom grocery, like a can of stuffed grape leaves (a perfect appetizer for emergencies) and some pappadums. Earlier this year, I’d hunted through six grocery stores for pappadums and, in desperation, ended up buying them from a Pakistani restaurant. Now I’m stocked up again.

At The Souk, I also got a bag of Chickpree, roasted spicy chickpeas. Back in the early 1990’s, in Arlington, Virginia, I lived two blocks from an Indian grocery called “Indian Spices and Appliances.” The name sounded like a bad translation, but when I went inside, I fell in love with the exotic and inexpensive grocery items. I’ve been hooked on Chickpree ever since.

Other things, like pumpkin seeds and turmeric, were simply cheaper at The Souk than anyplace else. At the prices regular grocery stores charge for spices, it’s amazing that people can afford to use more than a tiny pinch.

About a block down, I made my second stop at El Mercado Latino, one of several Latin stores in the Pike Place Market. I was specifically looking for Bijol, a simple Cuban spice blend of cornflour, cumin, annato, and food coloring. It brings back childhood memories of my mother’s famous Arroz Con Pollo, and my jar is getting low. The same crisis had happened to my mother in the 1970’s, when we left the New York metropolitan area for the hinterlands of West Virginia. In those days, decades before the internet, it was a crisis when the family Bijol jar got down to the last teaspoon. Luckily, my father did find a mail-order source.

At the Mercado, I also bought Cafe Bustelo, vaccuum-packed Cuban coffee. It makes a great cup of coffee, although I have to cut it with cheap grocery store decaf in order to avoid hitting the ceiling. During a recent trip to South Florida, I was amazed to see entire aisles of this stuff in the regular grocery store — guava paste, Mexican and Cuban fruit juices, convenience foods from Goya. Down there, it costs half as much, but I don’t mind paying extra. I’m just happy to find the stuff way up here in Seattle.

A few blocks up the street, I picked up a free bus down to the south end of town. My next stops are in the International District, known to Seattle residents as “The I.D.” It’s the place to go for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese restaurants and grocery stores, and the prices are the cheapest in town.

I stopped in at Chinatown Market, on Jackson Street, for black and white sesame seeds, cheap cans of coconut milk, and tiny dried shrimp. By now, the backpack was starting to get awfully heavy, and I almost skipped the uphill walk to Rising Produce, located on the east side of the freeway on King Street.

But I wasn’t done yet, and Rising Produce has the cheapest vegetables in town. You have to pick over their produce carefully, but it’s worth the effort to save 50 to 75% over regular grocery stores. I also worked my way carefully to the back of the store (my backpack and canvas bag were bulging by now, and maneuvering was getting difficult), and bought five pounds of raw, shelled peanuts for a mere $1.25 a pound.

After using up my carrying capacity, I caught a bus back home. Now it’s time to figure out what to do with all this stuff, some kind of Cuban-Indian-Chinese fusion? Thank goodness for the Web, so I can search for recipes for all this stuff. In the meantime, I think I’ll just eat some pizza.

I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the South Beach diet when I first heard of it. I’m not much for diet fads. And the name sounds like something written for a bunch of wealthy society ladies.

This spring, as we’ve been getting to know Bob Knosp, I discovered that South Beach is not just a fad. I never asked Bob how old he is. I just know that he’s got a grandchild, and he doesn’t look old enough for that. He credits South Beach for a lot of his health and vitality.

About a month ago, we went on a weekend sailing trip with Bob. I did the shopping, picking up things that would work with his dietary restrictions. Barry and I decided that we’d been hitting the sauce a bit too much lately, so we warned Bob that we were not going to bring any wine or alcohol. He said that was fine; Bob’s a very light drinker, and the diet doesn’t allow much besides a little wine, anyway.

Raftups with the Puget Sound Cruising Club are usually pretty wild floating parties. There’s often a potluck, with too many people crowding onto one boat, lots of decadent cheese- and sugar-laden dishes, and too much wine, beer, or tequila. I figured our plans to eat healthy and eschew alcohol might cause some eye-rolling among our friends.

Mike and Nita, on Odessa, tied alongside us. Nita is a fabulous cook who’s recently discovered that she’s allergic to wheat. I’d kept Nita’s allergy in mind as I planned my potluck dish, but I was totally surprised by her latest announcement.

“We just went on the South Beach diet,” she said. “We’re not allowed to drink this weekend.”

“Woo hoo!” Instead of a negative reaction, I was delighted. “Great! We’re not drinking, either!”

We ended up having two potlucks, with the five of us plus Rob and Anita from Decatur. They seemed taken aback by the South Beach dieters, but admitted that they were actually following a very low fat diet, required by Rob’s doctor after some heart trouble.

It was a wonderful weekend, with good company, great conversation, and excellent food. Who would think that giving up sugar, alcohol, and processed carbohydrates could make a party so much fun? If South Beach is the latest diet fad, please, Dr. Agatson, sign me up.

Note: The South Beach diet has recently gotten very commercial, with a subscription website and lots of commercial products in the grocery story. However, if you’re interested in learning about it, your best bet is to pick up a copy of the book at the library and read the first half. It’s only about 100 pages, and it can do wonders for your health, especially if you have a family history of diabetes or heart disease.

Summer is almost here, and soon we’ll be inundated by ripe peaches, boysenberries, blueberries, and blackberries. I love going to the farmer’s market and falling in love with a huge watermelon, a flat of apricots, or a cantaloupe. I can’t pass up a kiwi, and I love it when friends load me up with too many pears. All are perfect smoothie-fodder.

If you’ve never had a smoothie, it’s simply a fruit-based beverage prepared in a blender. They range from high-fiber and healthy to completely decadent, high-fat, and sugary.

I usually make smoothies for breakfast, since it’s a good way to get fruit, fiber, protein, and vitamins all in one easy package. When I worked in downtown Seattle, I’d go out with coworkers and order a smoothie for an afternoon pick-me-up. In the evening, a smoothie can substitute for a light dinner or be served as dessert, with or without alcohol.

Although there are thousands of published smoothie recipes and entire smoothie cookbooks, I’ve never followed a recipe to make one. Creating a smoothie is an art, not a science. I just look at the ingredient lists for ideas, and then I toss in a little of this and a little of that, blend it, and taste the result. It’s kind of like making soup.

Here are the four components of a delicious fruit smoothie.

Fruit

The old standby is the yellow Cavendish banana, which you can use at any stage of ripeness (a good way to use up over-ripe bananas). Strawberries are also common, as are other berries, such as blueberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Peaches, cantaloupe, and honeydew melon are all good, and speaking of melons, smoothies are a great way to use up excess (and there’s always excess!) watermelon. Tropical fruits are divine; consider mango, papaya, pineapple, guava, or passion fruit.

While you’re cleaning and cutting up the fruit, consider putting some in a bag in the freezer. When you’re in a hurry, you can toss a handful of the frozen pieces directly in the blender without thawing it.

In the winter, when you run out of frozen fruit, try making a smoothie with applesauce or even canned fruit.

Liquid

You’ll need some sort of liquid to turn your fruit into a beverage. Yogurt is my preference, but I’ve also tried milk, cream, soymilk, and water. You can also use tea (lemongrass tea, spiced chai, or peppermint tea add a lot of flavor) and coffee.

I keep fruit juice on hand just for smoothies — try mango nectar, orange juice, or pineapple juice. Pomegranate and grape juice are loaded with antioxidants and great for your health. If you’re trying to pack in extra calories, use coconut milk or chocolate milk.

I often add a splash of lime or lemon juice, but only if there’s no milk. A curdled smoothie is an ugly thing.

Flavorings

I have a habit of gilding the lily, throwing in ingredients that give my smoothies a little extra zing. My favorite are ginger and lime zest prepared on the Micro-Plane grater.

Sometimes I throw in cinnamon, another powerful antioxidant, or a tiny pinch of cayenne. You can also add chocolate syrup or powder, coffee, honey, sugar, maple syrup, and any flavor of sugar syrup, the kind used to flavor lattés. If you have an herb garden, try mint, rosemary, or lemon thyme.

One class of flavorings can elevate your smoothie to a whole new plane: Extracts. The old standby is vanilla, featured in the Orange Julius: Orange juice, sugar, ice cubes, and vanilla. Other extracts can also add a huge amount of flavor without changing the texture. Try a few drops of lemon, coconut, or orange.

Additions

To turn your fruit smoothie into a meal-on-the-go, add some protein. We’ve used protein powder, cottage cheese, sour cream, tofu, and cream cheese. Toasted, ground nuts or natural peanut butter are also delicious. Boost your energy level by adding nutritional yeast, chock-full of B vitamins, flax seeds, or powdered vitamins.

If your fruit is not frozen, you can toss in a few ice cubes to give the smoothie a nice thick texture. You can even add sherbet or ice cream, although that sounds suspiciously like a milkshake instead of a smoothie.

Assembling Your Smoothie

It doesn’t get much easier than this: Clean the fruit and cut into chunks. Pour the liquid into the blender, add the fruit, flavorings, and additions, and blend. Stop and taste it, and adjust the flavorings. I often find I need to add more zing in the form of lemon juice, ginger, or a teaspoon of sugar.

If the result is too thick, add more liquid, 1/4 cup at a time. If it’s too thin, add crushed ice or more fruit and blend it some more.

You can even make a smoothie without a blender at all! Choose soft fruit, like very ripe bananas and berries, and put it in a large, deep pot or bowl. Pour in plenty of liquid, roll up your sleeves, and mash the heck out of it with a potato masher. I ran across this solution at the Oregon Country Fair, where an outfit called LuLu’s Smoothies was producing hundreds of gallons of smoothies without electricity. Their secret? Young, healthy employees with strong arm muscles!

• If you need a little more direction on what to put in the blender, see my list of Smoothie Ideas.
• A lassi is a kind of smoothie from India. I wrote about yogurt and lassis back in January. Try a Creamsicle Lassi or a Pink Lassi.
• In Brazil, you can buy a suco on many street corners. It’s their version of a smoothie, made from one of the over 75 varieties of fruits that grow in Brazil.
• If all this is too healthy for you, skip the fruit and just make a milkshake (includes recipes for vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and cookie).
• For a series of life’s lessons learned through my blender, see My Blender, My Teacher, on Adventures with Meps and Barry.

We recently had a small gathering to watch the Wallace and Gromit short films and eat cheese. Wallace is the animated character known for his love of Wensleydale and gorgonzola. “Cheese, Gromit!” he says to his dog, “We’ll go somewhere, where there’s cheese!” They build a spaceship and fly to the moon for a picnic.

The menu for our gathering was completely cheese-based. We had stilton, camembert, minted cream cheese, and something that smelled like dirty socks. There was a green salad with feta and a pan of baked macaroni and cheese. And for dessert, no-bake strawberry cheesecake tart.

As far as I’m concerned, there are two categories of cheese: The Good Stuff, and rat cheese. Not that I don’t love rat cheese! It’s a name we picked up from our friend Norm, who said that where he grew up in Texas, plain old yellow cheese was actually labeled that way.

Rat cheese can be colby, cheddar, or co-jack. We even call Monterey Jack or Mozzarella rat cheese. It’s the cheese you buy at the grocery store in large packages and use as an ingredient in macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese sandwiches (also known as cheese dreams), and cheese-and-peas salad.

When I had my own refrigerator and freezer, I’d buy rat cheese in 3-pound blocks. A pound or so would get whacked off, carefully wrapped, and kept in the fridge. The challenge was stretching plastic wrap around the cheese so that no air could get in and allow mold.

The remaining pounds were grated, spread on cookie sheets, and placed in the freezer for a couple of hours. When it was frozen, we’d break it up (easy to do if you spread it out before freezing) and transfer it to large zip-lock bags. When a recipe called for a bit of cheese, we could grab a handful out of the freezer.

But living on a boat, or living without refrigeration, my cheese habits changed. Now I couldn’t keep pounds of cheese from molding, I had to buy little 8-oz packages. The price per pound difference gave me sticker shock.

As long as I was going to spend that much money on cheese and get only a small amount, why buy rat cheese? Why not buy The Good Stuff?

The Good Stuff is the kind of cheese that’s sold in wheels, not rectangles. One advantage to such cheese is that it can be rolled, as they do every year in a contest in Gloucestershire, England. Those who leave the event with broken bones and spinal injuries, however, may not consider that such an advantage. Especially since first prize is only a wheel of cheese that’s been bounced down a steep hill with hundreds of people rolling after it.

Rather than chase my gourmet cheese, I buy it, in small amounts. No longer do I buy 48 ounces of rat cheese, now I buy 4 ounces of gorgonzola. A small wedge of camembert can satiate my cheese needs for the week. I pick up small quantities of tangy feta, sweet gjetost, and creamy brie. My trusty Micro-Plane grater turns asiago into fluffy, artful shavings, and 2 ounces can last over a month.

Turning from the computer and looking into the fridge, I note that the smelly sweat sock cheese is gone, as is the goat cheese we used to stuff chicken breasts. There’s a bit of camembert left, a small bag of grated rat cheese, and a new chunk of parmesan.

What shall we do if we run out?

No problem: We’re just down the street from the Fremont Rocket. We’ll fly to the moon for some more!

In all the years I knew my good friend, Barbara deLackner, we never celebrated Easter together. We were always thousands of miles apart at Easter-time. But I knew what she was eating for breakfast.

Barbie had developed an Easter morning tradition, a special dish that her family loved and anticipated. It was called Goldenrod Eggs, and guess what? It used up a bunch of colorful hard-boiled eggs!

With a flock of chickens in the yard, you’d think that’s where the eggs would come from. But Barbie never hard-boiled her own eggs, because they were too fresh. They couldn’t be peeled; they’d have to sit in the fridge for six weeks before boiling them. Doesn’t that make you wonder how old your grocery store eggs are? And where they’ve been sitting?

So, despite a surfeit of fresh eggs, Barbie had to buy a few dozen at Easter-time, in order to make Goldenrod Eggs.

One day, when it wasn’t Easter, Barbie decided to get some store-bought eggs and make Goldenrod Eggs. Lucky me! I was the recipient of that beautiful, tasty breakfast.

Nowadays, I like to make them for Barry once in a while, even when it’s not Easter. Because everybody deserves something beautiful on their plate, first thing in the morning.

I had a funny enounter in the produce aisle of the grocery store. I was standing in front of the lettuce, trying to decide whether to get red or green leaf. The man standing next to me turned and asked politely, “Excuse me, but what do you call these?”

He was looking at the radishes, but he couldn’t figure out which sign went with them to indicate the price. I pointed to the one that said “Radishes, 49 cents” and said, with a smile, “radishes.”

“Thank you!” he said, relieved. I turned back to him as he was putting his radishes in a bag, and I asked, politely, “What do you call them?” He looked and sounded Hispanic, so I assumed he would give me the Spanish translation.

“Rábanos,” he replied. Except that with his accent, the “b” sounded much like a “v,” and it sounded like he said, “RAVENOUS!”

I started giggling, and I couldn’t stop. He looked rather puzzled, so I explained it to him. “In English, ‘ravenous’ means very, very hungry!” I patted my tummy for emphasis and repeated, “RAVENOUS!”

Now he was laughing, too. “RAVENOUS!” he said. With a shared grin, we each continued our shopping.

A few minutes later, after picking out my fruit and milk, I started down the aisle with the cat food. At the other end of the aisle, I spied my ravenous friend, and he spied me. We both shouted, “Ravenous!” and started laughing hysterically.

A couple aisles further along, I found Barry near the peanut butter. Before I could tell him what happened, along came my new friend. “Ravenous!” we shouted, in unison, laughing. Barry was completely mystified by my strange behavior, until I explained the encounter over the radishes.

The encounter took me back even further, to my first office job. There was a woman who worked in our office who used to say, when it was time for a snack break, “I’m ravished!” It was a contraction of ravenous and famished, but it got funny looks from people who didn’t know her.

I’ve always loved radishes, raw, with dip. Or sliced, thin, and marinated in light salad dressing. But now I find they’re good roasted or stir-fried, too. And I’ve stopped throwing the greens away, since they can be washed thoroughly (they are amazingly full of sand) and tossed into a stew or stir-fry as well.

I know radishes are good for my health, and not just because they’re low calorie and full of fiber. They’re good for me, because they make me laugh out loud: “RÁBANOS!”

When we moved out of our house last year, I packed up all kinds of long-lasting ingredients in a couple of boxes and stored them. They just got unpacked a couple of weeks ago.

Opening those boxes was like having another Christmas.

Some of the stuff in there came from our travels, like the wild rice. We drove across Minnesota, passing many signs advertising cheap wild rice. We kept meaning to stop, but never did. Just over the border, in Nebraska, we stopped for some groceries and found it for $2 a pound, so we bought five pounds. Then there was that can of garlic macadamia nuts — Barry’s parents brought them from Hawaii, and he’s been hoarding them ever since. Some goodies in the box were holiday gifts, like blueberry barbecue sauce and Russian chicken soup mix. There’s even a pound of smoked salmon along with the an obscene 2-foot long summer sausage.

I turned up lots of healthy foods, like cracked wheat, dried beans, and TVP. Then I found it: The Karo syrup. I’d used it to make soft-batch cookies last year, but the recipe only uses 3 tablespoons, so the bottle was nearly full.

“I wonder if I could use this stuff to sweeten my tea?” I mused to Barry, just thinking about using it up.
He was alarmed at the thought. “No! Don’t use that stuff!”
“Why not?”
“Don’t you remember that book we read? That stuff is evil!”

A few years ago, Barry and I read Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World (Critser, 2002), about how Americans have become so obese. The author talked extensively about high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS, and the sinister politics behind its introduction. In 1966, HFCS was unknown to the American diet. Today, the average American eats over 60 pounds of HFCS every year. It’s a key ingredient in soda pop, candy, and jam, but large amounts are also found in baked goods, barbecue sauce, and spaghetti sauce. A glance at the cans in the cupboard finds HFCS in cranberry sauce, while the enchilada sauce and canned soup have “corn syrup solids.”

The stuff is insidious, and it’s really bad for you. The problem is the sweetener has a mix of glucose and fructose, and our bodies have a problem metabolizing the fructose. Scientific studies have associated it with elevated triglycerides, leading to heart problems, and also found that it alters your magnesium balance, causing bone loss. Unlike glucose, which stimulates hormones that make you feel full, it bypasses those mechanisms and just gets stored, like fat.

There is one website that talks about the healthful benefits of HFCS. Who sponsors it? The Corn Refiners Association. They’ve got financial incentives to sell as much HFCS as possible. No wonder they tout it as a wonder food.

If you don’t think the politics behind HFCS are sinister, here’s an interesting story. A few years ago, a study found that Mexicans had a 158% increase in obesity, due mainly to the “Americanization” of their diets and the amount of soda pop and junk food they were consuming. This was despite a 20% tax in Mexico on beverages sweetened with HFCS.

Last month, the World Trade Organization, the WTO, determined that Mexico’s tax was discriminatory, and must be lifted. Who’s cheering? The U.S. Grains Council and the Corn Refiners Association. They say that U.S. farmers have lost $4 billion dollars because of Mexico’s tax.

So now the Mexicans get to buy all the soda pop they want, without the tax. And how much will it cost Mexico to deal with the health issues of obesity? Probably about $4 billion dollars, if not more.

In another example of the politics of sweeteners, a few years back, the World Health Organization, the WHO, published a report recommending that we all keep our sugar intake to less than 10% of daily calories. The U.S. sugar lobby went ballistic, trying to discredit the report and wanting to cut off the U.S. membership in the WHO. Like the tobacco lobby, “Big Sugar” wants to suppress news of risks associated with their product.

Given my choice, I’ll take the WHO’s recommendations and thumb my nose at the WTO. And just to be on the safe side, I should toss that bottle of Karo syrup in the trash.

When Barry and I first encountered a pressure cooker, it was in the kitchen of our very capable friend, Barbara deLackner. It was the old aluminum “jiggle-top” kind, but Barbie used it often without problems. She taught us how to use it safely while were were living with her on Hill Farm, outside Portland, Oregon.

But accidents can still happen, and pressure cookers are notorious for them.

A few years after Barbie passed away, her pressure cooker was still in use. A friend of the family, Ras, had moved into her house and was taking care of it for her children. He kept it much as Barbie had, all the way down to her books, dishes, linens — and that pressure cooker.

One evening, Ras pulled out rabbit out of the freezer, placed it in the pressure cooker, then discovered the lid wouldn’t quite go on. So he left the pot on the burner, simmering, with the lid ajar, and went outside to do some farm chores.

While he was away, the rabbit thawed and the lid dropped down — just enough to almost lock in place. It began to build up pressure. When he came back, thinking the pan was just simmering, he touched the handle, and the lid exploded off the cooker. Ras was severely burned all over his torso and arms, and lucky that it missed his face.

Around that time, Barry and I had moved to Seattle, where I read about the new “second generation” pressure cookers. After years of exploding pots, designers came up with models that employ failsafes to keep them from exploding. The pressure valve is one steam vent. There’s a second vent in the handle by the latch. And if both of those were to get plugged, there’s a slot in the lid, where the gasket would blow out before the pot would explode.

I bought my own pressure cooker in 1995, because Barbie had taught me not to fear them and because I could get one of the new models, a Spanish Magefesa. A company called North American Promotions imports them. The cooker got so much use, we bought a second one to keep on our boat. It cooks real food — whole grains, dried beans, cheap cuts of meat — fast, and I love the fact that it is efficient and saves energy.

Our friend Cindy knows that we’re big fans of the pressure cooker. We’d invited her to come by for dinner this week, and when Barry called to finalize plans, she had an interesting proposition for us. “I just picked up a pressure cooker at the thrift store. Can you show me how to use it?”

That evening, we’d planned to cook Sesame Brown and Wild Rice. So we told Cindy to bring her pressure cooker — and we’d show her how to cook the rice. It was a lot of fun, sharing stories and making dinner together. Cindy also brought the ingredients for an Indian Dhal Dip that she wanted to try, so we made that as well. Or rather, Barry and I supervised and let her practice with her new cooker.

Cindy went home with new confidence about her pressure cooker, recipes, and leftovers. Barry and I got a kick out of sharing our pressure cooker knowledge, and we got recipes and leftovers, too. It was a great exchange, a skill we learned from a friend and then passed along to another friend — like sailing.

I called a couple of friends last week to invite them for dinner. “Come on over tonight,” I said. “Barry’s making curried chicken with apples and mango chutney.” They arrived promptly that evening, anticipating some gourmet chow. Then I almost blew it. “It’s a new recipe from that cookbook, over there,” I said, blithely. “The Weight Watchers one.”

Oops. I should have waited until after they’d tasted it. They looked at each other, alarmed. Now they were probably expecting something like cardboard.

Instead, we all enjoyed a delicious meal, and no one was disappointed.

When I’d first come into Anne’s kitchen, my eye was drawn to her cookbooks. They took up a shelf and a half, and three of them are in my own collection — the Joy of Cooking, Molly Katzen’s Vegetable Heaven, and Laurel’s Kitchen, which I jokingly call the vegetarian Joy. I knew right away, even before we shared a meal, that Anne’s style of cooking is a lot like mine.

When we moved in and started house-sitting, I immediately started reading the rest of her cookbooks, the ones I don’t have at home. There are lots of vegetarian options, including a couple of intriguing Almost Vegetarian titles by Diana Shaw. I found several gourmet cookbooks, along with a big pile of Cook’s Illustrated magazines. Those should be good for dinner parties. A busy, hectic life is addressed by Recipes to the Rescue, The Quick Recipe, and One-Dish Meals.

But what captivated me first were the three Weight Watchers (TM) cookbooks. Not that Anne looks like someone who needs Weight Watcher’s. She’s very trim and fit.

I’ve read lots of diet cookbooks before, and they usually call for lots of artificial ingredients — aspartame, nonfat mayonnaise, Pam spray. So I was surprised and pleased to find almost none of that. The cookbooks focus on flavorful ingredients, like fresh herbs, lemon juice, olives, and ginger, and one key thing: Portion control. A recipe that serves four in another cookbook will say, “Serves 6.”

In addition to the curry, we’ve also made our version of their grilled chicken with diced beets and yellow pepper. I’m planning to try the goat cheese and herb-stuffed chicken breasts next. There’s a Caribbean callaloo pork stew and a simple-looking pork adobo that are also on the future menu.

In the next couple of months, I’ll see what else is in those shelves of cookbooks. In the meantime, the three Weight Watchers titles are full of great recipes to try, and photos that make “diet food” look more appetizing than “regular food.” I have nothing to lose — only a few pounds.
=====
The three Weight Watchers cookbooks:

• Simply Delicious
• Cook It Quick!
• Best of Weight Watchers Magazine

Our local paper just published an interesting piece from the Associated Press about fast-food drive-through service, and how they are using technology to increase speed and improve service. It made me smile, since I am a drive-through operator’s worst nightmare.

For one thing, my van is too tall for most of the overhangs. I could do more damage to them they could do to me.

For another, my husband and I almost never go to a fast food restaurant. With no advance knowledge of the menu, we are unable to make the super-fast decision they expect. Besides, since we do it so rarely, we want to read every word of the menu, experience the gestalt, savor it. At least in the regular line, inside, we can step back and let people go in front of us.

The article did, however, make me think of some of my favorite drive-through stories. Like the time we were coming back from a pizza joint in New Orleans, and we decided to stop at a drive-through daiquiri shop. A week earlier, we had walked into one of these ubiquitous joints and discovered that we could order an alcoholic drink in a “go cup” and drive off with it. The driver isn’t supposed to actually drink it (wink, wink), but the passengers are free to imbibe.

We had that “I can’t believe we’re doing this” feeling as we pulled up to the window and asked what the specials were. Since gallons were on sale, we ordered a gallon of frozen “white Russian” daiquiri.

“How many cups?” the attendant asked us. Brian, the driver, looked puzzled. Isn’t a gallon 16 cups? We took the plastic jug, similar to a milk jug, back to the boat, where we had our own cups, and proceeded to get plastered.

When I lived in Ohio, I had another strange drive-through experience. I once took a whimsical overnight bicycle trip, packing nothing but a tent, a bathing suit, and a towel. I didn’t carry any food, figuring I’d just buy it as I went along. When I arrived at Alum Creek, the state park with the campground, I discovered that the only thing nearby was a drive-through beer store.

Ohio must have an interesting loophole in their beer sales law, because these places are always enclosed buildings, styled like garages with doors on both ends, rather than just drive-up windows. You drive in, roll down your window, and an attendant walks around the garage, picking up your case of beer, bag of chips, and Slim Jim and passing them in your window. I had three problems with the place: One, I was shopping for dinner, not beer; two, I was a vegetarian, so Slim Jims were out of the question; and three, I was on a bicycle. I grabbed a bag of cookies and got out of there fast, wondering how the attendants could tolerate that much exhaust.

I was an impressionable teen-ager when my brother Dave got married in Seymour, Indiana. His fiancé, Jeanie, dressed for the wedding in the motel room I was sharing with my sister, Julie. With Jeanie in the driver’s seat, we piled into her car to go to the wedding. On the way there, she suddenly decided to stop at Wendy’s. We pulled up to the microphone, and she place her order for a medium Frosty. “That will be $1.01,” said the disembodied voice. “Please pull up to the window.”

When Jeanie pulled up to the window, dressed in her wedding gown and veil, the attendant was completely flabbergasted. “Oh my god! That’s a wedding gown!” she said. When she heard Jeanie was on the way to her own wedding, she handed back the money, along with the Frosty. “I can’t charge you for this!” said the flustered Wendy’s employee.

Since I grew up with the concept of drive-through or drive-up windows, I’ve always had a soft spot for drive-in restaurants, the kind where the waitress brings a tray to your car and hangs it on the window. In the late 80’s, I drove along the shore of Lake Michigan with a couple of friends on a weekend trip. The Holland tulip festival was a bust, so the highlight of the trip was a stop in Ludington, where we ate supper at an A&W drive-in.

About seven years later, I was chatting on the phone with my sister Julie, who was driving cross-country from North Carolina to Oregon with her bicycle and camping gear. She’d was lamenting the expensive and major repairs she’d just had made to the bike, because she forgot it was on top of the car.

“What did you hit?” I asked, sympathetically.

“The roof of an A&W drive-in,” she admitted, “along the shore of Lake Michigan.”

Laughing, I admitted I knew exactly which one.

To this day, I don’t think she has the same soft spot for drive-ins that I do.