Short answer: no. Unless it's low-fat cheese, because I'm on a mission to lower my cholesterol. This is karma for telling my father-in-law (OBM) not to worry, but to just eat the damn onion ring, because, trust me, something OTHER than his cholesterol was going to kill him first. For the record, I was right, and also for the record, he started enjoying his food again after I told him that. And he did eat the onion rings. But for the first however many years I knew him, his mantra was "Cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol." He worried about that like politicians worry about approval ratings. If I used a tablespoon of butter in a recipe that made 12 servings, he got on my case that I was trying to kill him. So I'd break it down: one tablespoon is three teaspoons and that means each serving has only a quarter of a teaspoon of butter in it. Give it a rest. He wouldn't. But there were things he couldn't identify in my cooking, and I never told him that the reason he loved my matzoh balls was because I used freshly rendered goose fat in them. Bwa-ha-ha.

Right. Now, despite the fact that I only make goose-fat laden matzoh balls once a year, and then only eat one, I have been told I have high cholesterol. Since wagging fingers at my gene pool won't do me any good, my doctor has determined that I need to change my diet and exercise more. The biggest change in the old diet is that I have to eat constantly, or so it seems to me.

My idea of a big breakfast is three cups of coffee. I now start each day with a bowl of McCann's oatmeal and a cup of fresh fruit. Then there's a midmorning snack, a protein-rich lunch, a midafternoon snack, dinner and a little something to tide me over until the next day. This is to keep my metabolism busy. It's keeping me crazy. I don't snack. I don't eat lunch. Except, well, now I do. And you know what? It's working. At least, I'm losing weight. I hope that my cholesterol levels are dropping as well as my jean size, but I won't know for another two months.

Wish me luck.