Red Meat

I do live in the land of churrascos. Men carrying meat around on big sticks is hardly a cave-woman fantasy around here. And I do eat red meat a couple of times a week. Beans too. Lots of milk. Spinach makes a nice appearance, as do tomatoes and hoardes of garlic.

The problem isn't in the food per se...it's in the quantity. I'm living the single nightmare. The other day, I bought a pack of frozen chicken because it was dirt cheap. But now I don't know what to do with it. Defrosting the whole thing means a week of chicken for breakfast, lunch and dinner and still throwing out a significant amount when it goes bad in the icebox that masquerades as a refrigerator. Chopping off chunks is easier said than done...and then you worry about frostbite...freezerburn...same thing.

It is much harder than it sounds to cook for one. And so I end up eating a lot of...um...bananas. Chocolate milk. Bread and butter. Small insects. (It's the tropics.) I feel bad when I waste food. And I can't seem to retrain myself to not cook for a small army, so I end up eating a lot more carry-out rice and beans than I originally expected when I moved here.

I will be trying your suggestions, especially the vitamin C part. I am beginning to develop a taste for fresh squeezed orange juice and acerola smoothies. One acerola is the size of a Bing cherry and yet contains up to 4.5% vitamin C. A peeled orange is 0.05%. So basically, the tiny fruit packs seriously more bang than a whole bag of oranges...and they say it helps with anemia. So I'll be trying it. But I still think there must be some link between rheumatoid arthritis and anemia and as soon as I'm done here, I'm going to google it...

[Google died on me at this point last night and I performed the stated search...]

Vindicated!!! I don’t know how I missed it before, but anemia is a symptom that tags along with rheumatoid arthritis...so I'm not going to be trying to combat it simply by stuffing my face with meat!!!