If I could eat just sweets and breads and drink just coffee and not be, you know, dead within a year, I probably would. My sweet tooth is frightening. When I stopped eating sugar, I ended up transferring to lots and lots and lots of fresh fruit. Invariably if they add sugar to something, I will like it more. I thought my love for Wheat Thins was a little too pronounced over something like Triscuits and sure enough a big diff? Sugar.

When we visited California, it was like a completely foreign country.
Oh yes. One of the reasons I totally love Vancouver is that ~10% of the population is vegetarian and that's a large enough percentage to have a major effect on eateries. I'm still enthralled at going to a cheap, fast food Chinese joint and seeing the vegetarian kitchen was separated from all the others and nothing was being cross-contaminated on the cooking surfaces, the utensils were separate, the plates, etc. I suddenly grokked what it meant to keep kosher. That really appealed to me.

I'm a pest, I'll admit. At Subway, I often make the preparer change gloves before making my food. I order the 6" and they slice it with the bread knife but it isn't cut again afterwards so the knife hasn't gone through meat. At least, not that I've seen. Traveling used to be so much harder before Subway so I'm grateful for their success. I used to have to go to local grocery stores while on the road if I wanted to eat.

I'll cop to loving to go out to eat. I love not having to prep and, most importantly, not having to clean up. I can concentrate on visiting with friends rather than playing host and we're all just having fun rather than working. Mind you, that's how I socialize. I don't throw parties and we very rarely go to them.

I ended up transferring to lots and lots and lots of fresh fruit.

Unfortunately, I can't eat a lot of fresh fruit because it upsets my stomach. Sometimes even bananas upset my stomach, but pretty much everything does a lot of the time. I can eat canned fruit most of the time, but, yeah...more sugar, which sucks. It really is weird, but I can eat a cookie no problem, but eat an apple and I suffer for hours--sometimes days. :-(

I'm still enthralled at going to a cheap, fast food Chinese joint and seeing the vegetarian kitchen was separated from all the others and nothing was being cross-contaminated on the cooking surfaces, the utensils were separate, the plates, etc. I suddenly grokked what it meant to keep kosher. That really appealed to me.

OMG! Really? 10% of the population is vegetarian? Wow!! Can I move there? I want to live there! *g*

At Subway, I often make the preparer change gloves before making my food. I order the 6" and they slice it with the bread knife but it isn't cut again afterwards so the knife hasn't gone through meat. At least, not that I've seen.

I'm pretty sure they use a separate knife to slice the bread, though they probably use the same knife to slice through the non-vegan breads as the other breads.

I don't like to ask for special things. That's more stressful for me than not going at all. *g*

Traveling used to be so much harder before Subway so I'm grateful for their success. I used to have to go to local grocery stores while on the road if I wanted to eat.

Exactly. Me too! I still do, sometimes. Subway isn't the greatest, but at least I can get a sandwich there.

I'll cop to loving to go out to eat. I love not having to prep and, most importantly, not having to clean up. I can concentrate on visiting with friends rather than playing host and we're all just having fun rather than working. Mind you, that's how I socialize. I don't throw parties and we very rarely go to them.

I'm perfectly happy not socializing at all, really. *g* My husband is more social and it's easier for me to have people here than to go out, so we have people here sometimes--usually just friends over for dinner. Toolman cooks for the most part. If I'm up for it, I'll bake fresh bread or rolls or something that goes with the dinner. Sometimes I have made pasta with homemade sauce and toolman makes something with meat to go with it. When we have kids over, I'll make pizza for everyone sometimes--vegan pizza for us, and regular pizza for everyone else. I make really good pizza. Of course, the last time we did that was before we moved here--and probably a year before that, so...a long time. *g* I think my son is going to invite some friends over soon, though, and I'll either make pizza or get some out.

We don't really do any of that all that often. Since living here, we've had people over for dinner less than once a year, I think, but we did have our friends over for Thanksgiving every year but this last one. I have to host an activity for the teen group every year and I suck at planning and organizing. If I have it here, toolman can do most of it and I don't really have to plan anything. *g*

Because of his job, it was a sort of obligation to host something at the holidays when we were in Alaska, so we did that pretty much every year, but this year was the first time in four years that we did that. It's a lot of work to clean the whole house. *g*

We don't really go to parties either--or at least, it's not my thing at all. In Alaska, we usually had to put in an appearance at the work parties, though. If I didn't go, toolman had to go alone, so a lot of the time I'd go with the kids (if it was a family thing) and then leave early and he'd stay a while. At the captain's house, we'd go together and leave the kids at home, but not stay too long. If they organize such things here, I never even hear about it. It's different here. People have lives outside of the base, and there aren't the same sort of expectations of us.