An inventory of my refrigerator includes the following contents:

  • Meatloaf
  • Spicy chicken tamales
  • Turkey breast
  • Wilted spinach
  • Broccoli sauté
  • String beans and nuts
  • Carrots
  • Green tea ice cream

All of these items were purchased from Central Market at Westgate. A while back, I lost the enthusiasm for cooking, but I didn't want to revert to my drive-thru/takeout ways. The Central Market restaurant serves some really tasty dishes, but they can get pretty pricey. Then I discovered the Chef's Corner, where prepared food can be bought by the pound and heated at home.

It turned out to be the perfect solution. I buy half to three-quarter pounds of dishes and spread them out over lunch and dinner for a number of days. Some dishes are more successful than others. The turkey and grilled chicken are nice and light. The flank steak — being flank steak — can be a bit chewy, and I tried some Asian BBQ pork once. A bit stiff.

The big boon are the vegetable dishes. I'm not much of a vegetable cook, so the broccoli sauté, wilted spinach and string beans add some much needed greens to my diet. I didn't list the bok choi since I already dusted it off. Nor the fresh berries. Yum.

The recent heat wave, which started the weekend I went to Hawaiʻi in freaking May, does not make a hot kitchen a welcome prospect. So I've relied on the Chef's Corner to feed me. At some point, I'm going to get tired of the menu, but at this point, I haven't exhausted it yet.

Are the dishes really all that healthy? I can't say. But they don't taste like they've been dropped into a vat of oil.

I've mostly stayed away from ice cream on this weight loss regimen, but going through July weather in freaking June without ice cream is, well, uncivilized. I saw the green tea ice cream in the Central Market freezer and was intrigued. So I checked the label and discovered 33 percent of the calories come from fat. That's 3 percent above the FDA recommended allowance, but it's close enough not to be excessively fattening. The same goes for the green tea mochi ice cream, which I didn't list because it too has been dusted off.

Other Central Market items currently a regular part of my diet is zucchini bread and bananas.

So, yes, I am Central Market's bitch. It helps that the Westgate location is literally across the highway from my apartment.