I'm pretty ruthless while grocery shopping. In fact, I make an effort to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible. Hey, walking really fast while pushing a cart full of canned beans and a whole watermelon is resistance training, right? And sometimes this method fails me because I don't take the time to do the math and identify whether or not I'm making a good decision with my grocery dollar. I end up buying a lot of precut stuff, which is just wasteful because we all know it's cheaper if you do the chopping yourself. And we all know that many of the store brands are the exact same product as the one with the fancy label (and catchy commercial jingle) but in some cases, spending a little bit more can make a big difference in the quality of your groceries. Cheap Healthy Good breaks down some items where spending just a little bit more will pay off when it comes to taste, texture or general edibility (is that a word?) of your chow. Her list:

• Coffee
• Pickles
• Premade pasta sauce and salad dressing
• Lemon juice
• Garlic
• Pasta
• Beer
• Chocolate
• Fish
• Cheese

We all love lists of good foods (bonus: it's like someone wrote your grocery list for you) and the thing that struck me about Self's recent "20 superfoods for weight loss" is that the foods on them aren't just a good idea for dieters, they're a good idea for just about anyone.

• Steak. Do you really need to be convinced to eat a big juicy steak? Vegetarians obvs get a pass, but order that tenderloin or New York strip...no guilt allowed.
  
  
• Eggs. I find I'm much happier if I have an egg every morning, because I'm not cranky or chewing on a stack of Post-It notes during my daily 10:30 conference call. A super simple thing to do would be to boil up a dozen eggs and then grab one on the way out the door. And have you seen these adorable Bento supplies that allow you to make your hardboiled eggs into shapes, even into Hello Kitty? Squee!
  
  
• Kale. Wendy McClure convinced me that I could actually eat this typical garnish and whaddya know, it's actually pretty good mixed with black beans and brown rice.
  
  
• Oats. Anyone who has had to feed themselves off a college scholarship living allowance knows that you eat oatmeal and stay full for approximately two years. It's seriously impossible to eat too many calories of oatmeal, because it's coming out of your ears before you get to the 500 mark. But unlike other simple fillers, oatmeal stays with you even longer than eggs, which means that if you, like me, have a busy schedule, you can put off lunch until later in the day, which is just about when you needed a break from work anyway.
  
  
• Lentils. I was always afraid of lentils, but then I kept staring at Heidi Swanson's amazing lentil soup with saffron yogurt and I hooked myself up. Dayam! You'll never go back to bean soup, folks, and apparently it's good for you too. Shhh...don't ruin my illusion that I'm eating high-end super-rich French food, mmmkay?
  
  
• Goji Berries. Er, I'm sorry, Self, but these things are naaaaasty. I'd honestly rather eat a raw cranberry without any sugar. Next!

One of the reasons I love cheesecake is because it combines the two foods that are closest to my heart: cheese, and also cake. And then, it is bound with a graham cracker crust, which makes it somewhat pie-like, and that's just adding another layer of exactly how to win my eternal love. The only problem with cheesecake is that, despite the fact that I am a pretty decent baker, every time I bake one it cracks and crumbles and while it is tasty, its ugliness breaks my heart. A no-cook blueberry cheesecake bar recipe sounds like the thing to paste it back together again, and then fill my belly with deliciousness, and then all my organs are in good shape! And that is a good way to have your organs be. I also love that it's so easy to throw together and will impress your guests, but doesn't involve instant pudding and store-bought crusts. Take that, Sandra Lee.

Whenever I visit California, I always find myself thinking, "Man, I would lose SOOO much weight if I lived here." And I wholeheartedly believe that, because even with all of the vodka drinks and cha siu baau buns, I still find myself walking much more and opting for the vegetarian fare and delicious, perfectly ripe fruit over fatty and carby options. When I get home, my jeans are loose. But the simple fact is that in California, it's just much easier to find excruciatingly healthy food as you go through your day than it is if you're living in Wisconsin (particularly in the non-summer months), when the only place you're going to find edible vegetation is at one of the grocery stores in the suburbs.

A group of scientists at the California Center of Public Health Advocacy have quantified my own observation and put it into a measurable statistic. God, I love those folks in the white coats! Check it: they calculated the proportion of fast-food restaurants and convenience stores near each adult's home compared to grocery stores and produce vendors. From our bffs at Slashfood:

Based on their analysis of 40,000 people, the study's authors determined that the average California neighborhood has an RFEI of 4.5. According to their data, adults who live in an area with an RFEI of 5 or higher have a 23% higher chance of developing diabetes and a 20% higher chance of being obese than those who live in an area with an RFEI of 3 or less.

All right, nothing is better than sex, but in my current romantic state, yogurt is certainly more accessible. In the absence of a special man friend, I will express my love of yogurt and why it's the best thing since, well, sex.

1. Yogurt helps prevent and treat yeast infections. Sex can cause yeast infections, ooh. Yogurt-1, Sex-0.

2. The white stuff boosts immune function. If you're prone to colds, flus and all sorts of phlegm-producing ailments, the frequent appearance of all that probiotic goodness in your diet can be a boon to your body.

3. It makes colons happy and protects against colorectal cancer. All that jazz about yogurt helping you to, uh, well, regulate yourself is true, but you don't need to buy specially branded yogurts for that. All yogurts that have "Live Active Cultures" are good for your colon.

4. Fresh-kissable breath. About 6 oz. of yogurt a day lowers the body's levels of hydrogen sulfide, a chemical that can lead to some pretty unkissable mouths (usually kissing precedes sex, if my memory suits, so yeah fresh breath is hot). Yogurt also gives the boot to bacteria that live on your tongue and reduces plaque levels, cavities, and your risk for gingivitis.

5. Maintain your big-boned status. That's not a fat euphemism: the calcium and vitamin D levels in yogurt ward off osteoporosis. The stronger your bones, the longer you'll be able to re-enact the Kama Sutra.

Image via angrychicken

Alton Brown says that everything in the kitchen should be a multitasker--every gadget that takes up counter space or drawer space should pay for its real estate and then some, in many useful ways. I say forget that; if it's a gadget that you use all the time, and it makes your kitchen time easier, faster, better, more fun, then that sucker should take up just as much room as it needs to take up. It becomes not clutter, but indispensable.

Amy, from Angry Chicken, is a woman after my own heart. She provides a roundup of her very favorite little stuff, the gadgets she can't live without, that soothe her soul, improve her life, and would be impossible to live without--everything from the amazing apple corer/peeler I didn't know existed to the salad spinner, which wins an award for item that sounds most useless but turns out to be surprisingly awesome.  The list is inspiring--maybe it really is time to get a mandolin, because oh, how I hate cutting onions. And the apple pies that I can make, now that I know I don't have to bloody up my hands and spend three hours coring and peeling three pounds of fruit.

What are your favorite non-multitasking kitchen gadgets that have proved surprisingly, wonderfully essential? Inspire us all!

It wasn't until college, when I asked one of the cafeteria staff for sour cream at breakfast time, that I realized other people did not eat sour cream in their oatmeal. Oatmeal with sour cream and salt has been a tried and true breakfast tradition in my family for generations. I once told this to a Russian teacher of mine, she said "Ju are Russian; Russianz put zour cream on evertying." I'm not sure I'm ready to lay blame on the former Soviet Union for my strange eating behaviors, but I will consider that perhaps everyone has some strange eating skeleton in their closet.  An eating habit that they thought was completely normal until one day, WHAM, they're getting dirty looks from the guy at the omelet stand.

After yesterday's Starbucks scuttlebutt, I found myself craving a tasty unsweetened black iced tea this morning and swung by my local on the way to work. The cool (and sometimes painful) thing about the 'Bucks is that they are always changing things up, and the new kid on the block is the Vivanno. Available in either chocolate banana or a fruity orange mango banana, the stats on this frappuccino-like tasty bev seem impossible--250 calories, 16 grams of protein, 1 gram of fat and a somewhat mind-boggling 6 grams of fiber. Even the densest bread made from whole grains, twigs and perhaps a little sawdust only have 4 grams per slice, but a single grande cup of chocolate-y sweetness has all that goodness?

Esteban has been surprising me recently when he treks out to the grocery store on his own: instead of the disgusting squishy white breads (which I only touch if I'm sick and therefore delirious), he's been returning with Sara Lee's Whole Grain White breads, that promise that they are just like whole wheat bread, only they're passing as white. I was skeptical about the whole enterprise, because the fiber content on the nutritional label sure didn't look like whole grain anything, but he seemed excited and I was pleased that at least he was making an attempt to try pseudo-healthy foods. Except, whoops, looks like I was right to be skeptical.

It turns out that Sara Lee's Whole Grain White Bread is really just "White Bread For People Who Hate Whole Wheat Bread And Like Lying To Themselves That White Bread Is Healthy" and Sara Lee has recently been sued by the Center for Science in the Public Interest. The two parties have reached a settlement and Sara Lee has agreed to disclose that the bread is really only 30 percent whole grain flour, and the rest is white flour, water and other ingredients. From the CSPI website:

photo via Eating Out Loud

Every time the boyfriend makes tacos, which is never often enough because he does such a fine, fine job, he asks me what beans I would like. And I think he is hoping someday I will say "red!" or "black!" or "jelly!" Anything in the world but refried beans, which he appreciates as much as I do, in flavor and goodness, but is convinced to eat them is like pouring pure canola oil down your throat. So we don't have them as often as I'd like, either. When I ran across Allen's post on Eating Out Loud about healthy refried beans--right there in the title! healthy!--I was perhaps more excited than I should have been. Low in fat, with flavors that sound unusual to me (cumin! cayenne! maybe I have been living under a rock?), vegetarian as all get-out, and I bet I can taco them up every night and my heart will even thank me. But the boyfriend might not.