I’ve just returned from my post-vacation grocery run. I wanted to follow my new rules, and actually, it wasn’t that hard in many cases, thanks to my store’s new brands. Sadly, the web site gives little information about them, but I checked labels dutifully, and many of them really do only have natural ingredients. I especially liked the Via Roma brand. The sauces have tomatoes and garlic and spices, a little sugar. Ragu, for the record, lists sugar as its first or second ingredient (haven’t bought it in years, so I can’t remember exactly). It’s not Ragu, but I do remember a brand with a lot of sugar in it. When I finally read the ingredients, I quit buying it.

What I’d like to see is grass-fed beef and reasonably-priced organic poultry. I’ve never found grass-fed beef, and the organic poultry has been removed, replaced with Green Way poultry, which says nothing about how the chickens were raised, so I didn’t buy it.

As a bonus, I only spent $80. But I did only buy about half of what I normally do. We’ll see if it lasts.