I've noticed something about my trips to the supermarket the last few weeks. I no longer go through the frozen food section on my way to checkout. I don't spend any time in the prepared foods aisles. I'm spending all my time in produce, except when I'm looking through the meat, dairy or deli cases.

And that's not the end of it. I don't trust anything I can't see. I don't buy canned soup any more. I might one day use up the soup I already have in the pantry, but I didn't see what Campbell's put into those cans. Tomatoes, sure, but what else? Some of the ingredients listed on the label make it seem less like food and more like a science experiment.

I don't snack, either, unless it's on grapes or cherry tomatoes. No chips, no pretzels. I even threw out a bag of potato chips yesterday. It had sat there on my counter, opened but unused, for two months. That's long enough to convince me that I'm not going to eat them at all. After that much time, I don't think anyone else is, either. Anything that has enough preservatives to keep it edible for weeks and months probably isn't healthful enough for me to add to my current diet regimen.

I'm not saying that everything I eat is totally wholesome and natural, but when I cook something myself, at least I know what's going into it. I'm controlling how much parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme goes into each dish. Not to mention pepper, salt, soy sauce and cooking sherry.

No, I'm not a real cook (yet). I have more failures than successes, and I take shortcuts whenever I have to. (Rachael says to take help where you can get it.) I still eat too many cookies, too. But they're cookies that I've baked (even though they're the kind that you slice off a roll of dough). So I'm headed in a better direction, even if I still have a long way to go.