As I walked out of the post office early this afternoon, I checked my watch. I knew it was between 12:30 and 1:00 pm, and I was supposed to be at Suzanne’s house by 1:00, so I wanted to see how much time I had. My watch told me it was 2:15 pm. It also said it was Tuesday, October 31. I hope I still have the receipt for the battery I bought two months ago. The one with the one-year warranty? Yeah, that one. This shows you how often I look at my watch, though. Not very often, apparently, since I didn’t even know it stopped four days ago.

As you know, I’m not much for parties, but this was different. This was a tasting party, for easy gourmet cooking ingredients. I went not knowing what to expect, just that I wasn’t going to buy anything. I left loving everything I tasted and ordering such things as Vidalia onion dip and savory wheat beer bread mix. Not long ago I didn’t even know there were such things, and now I’m planning on expanding my repertoire to include them.

After eating so many treats (including desserts) at the party, I wasn’t sure I’d need to fix myself dinner after I got home. I have three different kinds of leftovers in the refrigerator, but I didn’t feel like any of them. When I finally got hungry, I heated a frozen pizza. It’s not something I do very often (and not something I’m proud of), but every once in a while it feels good to indulge in the kind of food I used to gorge myself on, back before I started trying so hard to eat well.

But I’m also excited about trying new, healthier recipes. I spent so much of my life eating the same thing every day, and shying away from trying anything that I already thought I didn’t like, that I have a lot of ground to make up. I can’t believe how many years I wasted not eating tomatoes. Now I’m cooking with eggplant and zucchini, and all kinds of other foods that I wouldn’t even pronounce the names of in the past. I think it’s a good trend. A healthy trend.

One thing I have to keep working on is how to cook for one person. You never see any of the chefs on the cooking shows cooking for fewer than four people, and when there’s only one eater in the house, that leaves way too many leftovers. You should see the two-week-old chili I still have in my fridge, and the chicken breasts I cooked last Monday. It’s not that they won’t keep this long, but it would be more fun to cook something different every night, even if it is more work that way. I just have to try a little harder.