I've burned a Million Calories and I'm STARVING!

I can't understand people who work out all the time and then eat only minuscule portions of a meal. I'm damned hungry when I've been holding a pose with my left leg in the air and my stomach pulled as taunt as a drum. It hurts!

Yesterday my sister showed up with her snowshoes and we set off, pounding the snow for a few miles. She jogged ahead of me as I tried to keep up using long strides that pulled the muscles in my butt to painful limits.

The blue sky and sun were truly beautiful above the fresh snowy countryside and I enjoyed the hike. When I got home, I collapsed into a chair surrounded by wet socks and a bad case of hat-head. My hunger almost immediately kicked in and I began to pull leftovers out of the fridge. Exercising just makes me hungry.

When I do eat a large lunch I try and make a salad for later that evening. I have come to love salads that contain no dressings. I like them with lime juice and honey and perhaps some sprinkling of salt and pepper.

Oils and cream dressings seem to weight the salad down and all I taste is the glossy coating of oil or heavy mayonnaise soaked witches's brew. When I worked in Boston, I'd open the refrigerator at work where the side compartment was lined with bottles of salad dressings from mostly women employees. The bottles had little taped messages stuck to them like "please don't use"...."this belongs to Shirley"...."get your own dressing!" I'd read the ingredients off the labels and they would contain words I'd never be able to spell or pronounce. If I dared to twist off the cap and sniff the contents, there was a strange, unnatural smell that had no discernible or recognizable origin. Maybe the stuff helped Shirley stay slim but I'm not sure what it would do to her gut.

In the winter, the salads are never as good as the summer months when I can get fresh greens from the garden but I try to make them interesting. I even throw corn chips heated in the toaster on the salad for an added crunch or my Mom bakes cornbread to go along with the meal.

Foodie critics sometimes say that salads are expensive and not affordable in these hard economic times. I don't agree that they are expensive. I don't eat massive amounts of it and I don't add exotic stuff flown in from South America two weeks ago. A few romaine leaves from a package that says its from California, a carrot, some onion and cabbage with some crumbles of domestic cheese or a few nuts makes a salad a perfect evening meal.