The Aria Begins . . .

"Once upon a time, there was an ugly duckling—."

STOP—Scrrrr-rrrr-rrrr!

Now let's get one thing straight: The popular story, as handed down to us, is based on a false premise, a lie, if you will. The creature we keep calling an ugly duckling, as we are taught to perceive him, didn't exist.

"But the story said he was an ugly duckling, and I repeated the story faithfully, so it can't be wrong, 'cause the stories are always right!"

Listen, I don't really care how you passed it on to you ma, who passed it on to her great grandma, who got it from the butcher, who taught it to the cat. This creature was never ugly, and that is the truth.

"Blasphemy! Heresy! Lunacy! Break out the tar and feathers!"

This is the truth, and I'm sticking to it: This creature was never a duckling at all, so it is impossible that he could have ever been an ugly one!

Or didn't you pay attention to the end of the story?

Now that I got that rant off my chest, let's get down to what I'm really doing here.

I'm about to embark upon an experiment. I got the idea from the several-times repeated mentionings of my chiro, a lovely person who loves Jesus and loves to encourage me.

This worthy being is convinced that if I give up breads and sugars, I'll rid myself of a considerable amount of the pain for the attempted management of which I go and pay good money for spinal adjustments. I don't know that I subscribe to this theory, but I don't see that I have anything to lose, beyond a bit of my good humor and a few brain cells to culinary creativity preparing meals around the loss of these soon-to-be absent items. So starting July 5, 2009, I'm going to do it, and you're going to watch me.

The experience will go thus: Beginning on the specified date and for the next four weeks, I will eliminate all forms of bread from my diet. This will certainly include cereals, pasta, crackers, cookies and other baked sweets, and breaded foods. I suppose I should also include starchy vegetables such as corn, rice, and other grains, as well as potatoes, but we'll see. The eliminated sugars will include white sugar, brown sugar, my beloved "organic" raw sugar, molasses, and I'll have to decide about honey. I will not use artificial sweeteners, because I do not like their taste in most foods that contain them, and they intensify my sugar cravings. Nor will I use stevia, because I have yet to find any that isn't mixed with maltodextrin or some other equally noxious substance, and every taste I've ever had of it was the ruination of whatever I put it in. So my only exposure to sweet will be in foods in which it occurs naturally, such as fruit. The one exception to my sweetener ban will be agave nectar, because its impact on blood sugar is mild enough that some doctors will allow their diabetic patients to eat it if their disease is not too bad.

I don't promise to post every day, but when I do, you will see what I ate on that day, at least. I will tell you how I'm feeling and what I observe. At the end of the four weeks, I will summarize my experience and draw a conclusion.

Now it doesn't make sense that I'd post a blog for something that I'm only going to do for four weeks, so I'll also be posting about other things in my life. I've a whole flock of beautiful cygnets that are displaced, and you get to watch them all find home.

Ya ready :-)?