health extravaganza!

I may have been nonchalant about my freakishly high cholesterol and triglyceride levels in my last post, but the truth of the matter is I'm quite a bit bothered by it. Unfortunately, heart disease is very common in my family and in the past I always thought that as long as my blood pressure was fine (it has always been and continues to be at normal levels), I had nothing to worry about. I may be genetically inclined to have high cholesterol and it's about time I became an active participant in getting it (and keeping it) down.

The most obvious way to work at getting it down is changing the food we eat, so I've been spending the last few days scouring the interwebs for low-cholesterol recipes (I have found some really good ones here and here). Although it seems people are more interested in finding low cholesterol desserts than actual meals, I have managed to find quite a few and cooked a couple this weekend with outstanding success. The upside is that not only am I experimenting more in the kitchen, the end results are healthier and we will benefit in the long run.

The bad part is that since I've been looking at these recipes, I've been jonesing black beans and rice, and cannot for my life find black beans here, either in a can or dried. Anyone else in Franceland run across them, ever?

The other thing is that I've finally created my own recipe collection. This is something I've been meaning to for years now, because it seems everytime I go to the grocery I end up buying the same things over and over again, but if I have all the recipes collected somewhere, I can flip through them and choose things we haven't had in a while. Yesterday, when I went to the big grocery in Troyes (searching for elusive black beans), I picked up a two-ring binder and cards that fit inside. Ever since, I've been adding in recipes that we already use and new low cholesterol recipes that we will eat again (so far 2 for 2!).

The only possible bad part is that now I'm completely obsessed with finding low cholesterol recipes online. Anyone have any more cooking websites to suggest?