How To Stay Healthy and Live Longer

One of my goals is to stay healthy and live longer.  I listen to advice and cherry pick the advice I prefer and implement changes in my life style. I thought I was doing pretty well. One piece of advice is to eat locally and seasonally. I joined a CSA (consumer supported agriculture) and I pick up my food from farmer Becky (due to give birth at any moment) and farmer Ryan. My farmers live in Nowthen which is the next town north of me. This week I got a huge red cabbage (so good!), two apples, two golden beets, 5 stalks of Swiss chard (great with eggs easy over), 3 onions, 3 jalapenos, 3 banana peppers, acorn cup squash, some cilantro, two potatoes and 4 radishes (not my favorite). I paid extra to get a quart of organic strawberries every week. These strawberries are to die for. These strawberries are small and misshapen and so full of flavor my mouth fills with saliva just looking at them. These strawberries are so good I don't want to make jam. I don't want to freeze these strawberries. I want to gobble them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Isn't eating them fresh and plain the healthier option? Another suggestion to stay healthy is to avoid white sugar. I reduced my sugar intake but to be honest, cookies made with stevia do not taste as good as cookies with cane sugar. I even investigate which sugar is better - cane or beet?  I investigated but I don't know the answer. I decide to try honey. Honey has a strong taste that I don't like. But I have maple syrup in my fridge from my very own maple trees.  I try that instead of sugar. I like maple syrup as a sweetener as long as it's thin syrup. I like thin syrup better than thick. Gradually my tastes change and I don't like sweet anymore.Now I like sour. I like sauerkraut and balsamic vinegar. I will eat a cookie with real sugar but only if it's a really good cookie such as a homemade cookie, a cookie from a local bakery, or a pecan sandie. My family in  Sicily prepare vegies for me that are so delicious that I start cooking Italian style. Soda pop isn't good for you. Seriously? Two diet Pepsi's are not good for me? Why not? It's pop not whiskey. After consuming a lot of pop over the years (in chronological order orange/tab/diet coke/diet pepsi), I quit my sinful diet pepsi. That was hard. Drinking coffee helped. I never liked the taste of coffee so I started to like coffee by sucking on sugar free coffee hard candy. Yuck. After a couple month of unsuccessful attempts to quit soda I bite the bullet and drink a cup of coffee. Sonofagun! Caffeine is my new friend! My face is hot and tingly. My arms are swelling and my clothes are stretched like the Incredible Hulk. I have energy! I feel happy! Now I love coffee. Coffee is made from beans. Basically coffee is dirty bean water so that has to be better than pop. I also come to like herbal tea brewed in a teapot and poured into a glass with a stick of cinnamon and a slice of lime. My favorite right now is a tea that combines cardamom with cinnamon and ginger. Delicious! When I went to Sicily I was in charge of the fermenting for a day when grandgirl #2 was coming into life.  Grandgirl #1 and I fermented milk kefir and water kefir while keeping an eye on the sauerkraut and komboucha. Now I love water kefir. I smuggled some water kefir grains into the country (in my sock, please don't tell on me) and I ferment water kefir at home. Strawberry ginger and strawberry cinnamon are my favorite flavors although strawberry basil is good too. I love water kefir. My body seems to love it too. Despite all these healthy habits I suspected I was not doing something right. I came to this conclusion after not the first, not the second, but after the third mouth sore.Where I used to not snack between meals, I was snacking between meals (but only on quality snacks such as a ginger/rhubarb oat scone sold at the Nowthen Farmer's Market and made my Offspring #2's friend). My weight is good but I am exercising less.  So I asked for advice. My dentist gave me some mouthwash samples and some xylitol tablets and told me not to eat candy. I listened. I went to the doc. She said eat candy. I like her advice better. I went to the pharmacy and found some sour candy sweetened with, of all things, xylitol.  Perfect! She also told me she has no opinion on organic versus non-organic. How strange! I didn't ask for her opinion. Then I had another doc appointment and she gave me nutritional advice. Stop with  the citrus she says. I think of the five  green limes nesting together in the drawer of my fridge and control my eyes because they really want to roll. Stop with the coffee she says. I weakly protest reminding her she told me to quit soda pop. Try vitamin water she says.  Yuck. I'm not going to spend my money on vitamin water which is full of who knows what. She goes on with more advice. Stop with the strawberries she says. Sonofagun! My precious quart of strawberries that I pick up every Thursday? I guess I can make jam. I ask about the water kefir.  She says the water kefir is fine but make it peach or blueberry. I buy some peaches at the store. The season for Colorado peaches has past. I buy four peaches. The chickens eat three and 3/4 peaches because I couldn't eat them myself. These peaches had no taste. I make kefir from apricot nectar now. My doc goes on and this is where I get upset with her. Stop with the tomatoes she said. Livid with anger I insist she cannot tell me this now which is the height of the homegrown tomato season. I inform her that tomatoes are my favorite food. Sonofagun. Maybe I'll feel better if I just eat a Hostess cupcake and a bag of Doritoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.