I had lunch recently at a vegetarian restaurant that offers awesomely inventive meatless dishes. I could never go without meat in some form during any given week, but I have learned to cut my consumption by preparing more things Indian, like curry sauces using a lite coconut cream base or Oriental which offers me the chance to do my stir fry

routine for the admiring crowd…primarily my sidekick who admires the fact that she doesn’t have to cook

The particular day I dined at that vegetarian palace I started with a silky butternut squash soup perfumed with nutmeg and for my main course I hunkered down over an order of the stir fry veggies with firm pieces of crisp tofu done in a slightly sweet sauce served with brown rice. The sauce itself had just enough heat to satisfy my taste buds.

There have been times in Thai restaurants where the cook takes those three red chilies next to the dish on the menu very seriously or pseudo Mexican cantinas where they pile on the jalapenos. But my most harrowing “3 alarm” experience was in Durban, South Africa where I dug into a plate of curry and instantly realized what life in Hell would be like. That stuff would turn you away from sin in a heartbeat.

Hot and spicy aside, choosing to eat vegetarian is part and parcel of the need to pay more attention to our diets and since the start of the new year you cannot turn on the TV without some talking heads working themselves up into a frenzy about starting a diet, joining a weight watchers group and exercising.

Also there is always a Bowflex commercial running somewhere with smiling models displaying 6-pack abs. My guess is that these are lifelike dummies from the planet Avatar because no sane individual would spend endless hours performing crunches on that incline bench much less smiling about it.

I’m not sure why we have to be constantly reminded about good eating habits or the advantages of exercise but apparently lots of folks are still not getting the message. Over at the gym the neophytes have begun to arrive. They are like eager beavers, which means you could bet your lottery money that they would be out-of-there by March 1.

It’s boom time for personal trainers and agony for those folks who have once again resolved to loose the weight and return to their former high school or college physique.

Have some of those people taken a good look at their yearbooks? Yuk!

Me personally I’ve fought hard to never look like the chubby little guy in that picture.

Not a chance. I want to be reminded that my payoff for hitting the gym four or five times a week for the last half century is a combination of good genes and relative good health for not slacking off on those four or five times-a-week workouts.

Eating right of course it half the battle and because I shop for food as well as cook I have an advantage over others. And because of my wife’s food allergies we don’t keep a lot of

the good stuff like breads, pastries and lot of sugar saturated products in the house, grandchildren’s visits excepted.

It’s up to their parents to reorient them once they return home. Our job is to be the Willy Wonkas of their ice cream and candy eating fantasies. I’m pretty sure that’s in the

Grandparenting Hand Book.

We really do eat fresh everything as much as possible at our house, especially fruits and veggies. And even though I’ve tried to maneuver tofu onto my wife’s plate she has a deft way of pushing it aside

After my inspiring veggie lunch I made one of my daily visits to the local supermarket to see what was being offered up to the masses in the uber cold wintertime. Root vegetables

are always around but I passed on the sun chokes and picked out instead a beautiful firm green cabbage.

I use cabbage year round but in the winter I like to steam it then finish it off with some sweet onions that have been sliced and sweated in olive oil or a butter substitute then toss with fat free sour cream. Add a good grind of black pepper and it makes a hearty side dish

Additionally try adding some lean chicken and apple sausages for a great main course. Actually apples sautéed with the onions and combined with the cabbage is pretty great as well.

Apples are another great winter choice. Because my father was a diabetic and the choice of dietetic products available at the store was limited especially on deserts, my mother tried to make desserts that were suitable for him as well as the two of us.

She would core apples and fill the inside with raisins and walnuts, sprinkle with cinnamon fill the bottom of the baking dish with water, since apples produce their own sugar baking in a slow oven helped produce a sweet syrup and if not sweet enough she would sprinkle a bit of sugar substitute into the syrup as well.

Served warm my mother would sometimes include a couple of spoons of dietetic ice cream which in those early years was nothing like the sugar free-fat free stuff we get nowadays but it felt like a guilty pleasure for my father.

It was tough being a diabetic sixty years ago. There were no food options like there are

today. No advances, no breakthroughs and no doctor to advise that exercise along with diet can help to control the disease. In fact exercise along with diet can control a lot health problem so onward to the gym soldiers of the New Years Resolutions and try not to be a March dropout in this battle of the bulge!

(Charles Siskin is a former Chattanoogan now living on the Florida coast with his wife, Cookie. He can be reached at cater1@embarqmail.com)