2006-02-17 - 8:09 a.m.

Fancy a Bit of Wensleydale...?

Just this week, I've become a bit worried about my cheese intake. Yes, my cheese intake.

I've always loved me the pressed, aged, rennety curds, but the truth is, a block of Manchego or 3-year Canadian cheddar can often sit in my fridge for a good month or more. I may take a nibble here and there, but it's not like I down a quarter pound in a sitting. Often mold-encrusted remnants end up in the trash. Sounds like moderation, yeah?

However, one of the perks of my job is $3.50 meals at the UCSB dining commons, and this isn't your mother's creamed chipped beef�serving cafeteria. We have pasta stations, pizza stations, taco stations, a grill, a fancy salad bar, and desserts par excellence.

So I review my typical lunch choices: patty melt, pizza, chile relleno, enchiladas, grilled ham and cheese, grilled turkey and cheese, grilled cheese and cheese. Always with a nice healthy salad on the side, but still, look at the primary ingredient of my noontime nosh.

Maybe I shouldn't worry. I've never been the dietary nazi type, in a sea of neurotic women people who study and speculate: "How many 'fats' does this have?" Of course I consider my idea of moderation (dietary, political, alcoholic, etc.) to be the benchmark, the baseline, the mother of all concepts of moderation. As it should be...

My cholesterol and blood lipid levels are fine (believe me, they're monitored enough). Still, I wonder what's going on in them there arteries sometimes.

Does it sound like I'm skipping the chicken quesadilla that's on the menu today at De La Guerra Commons? Uh. Right.