My note above, enough relates more to frequency than volume. Exposure to one serving (a serving is not a full glass!) two or three times a week matters more than five or six servings once or twice a month.
If you drink enough wine, and that means frequency, not quantity, you will eventually develop your own taste for what you enjoy. At the same time, you will also learn to judge good from bad. Will you be able to judge the individual grape or region? Probably not, but good from bad, yes. To the point that you will occasionally dump a bottle down the drain after taking the second or third sip. Not the first, because sometimes your first sip will be a lie, but by the second or third, you will decide, this bottle is not working, and you'll just dump it down the drain. Make sure to note the grape/vintner/vintage so you don't buy it again.
It is important to buy different bottles of the same grape to see how it varies across vintners and regions. It is also important to buy different grapes, because you may be surprised over time what vintages you settle on as your tastes develop.
I enjoy wine, I am not a connoisseur by any stretch, but I can differentiate enough that I know what I like, and what I don't.
Friends of mine have held two professionally run wine tastings over the years, and they were great fun, and very educational. The wines were all decanted, you could not see what they were, and it was interesting to see that every wine scored on a bell curve with the group. The scores were anonymous, so you didn't have to worry about how you felt about any given wine.
My favorite part is that in each of the two tasting sessions, the highest price bottle scored well, but not at the top. In each, the top white and the top red were both roughly $30 dollar bottles. Also in each, a couple roughly $10 bottles scored really well.
The other thing that I learned, and apply regularly, is that at the $20 price point, you are generally buying a good tasting bottle of wine. $16 to $24 seems to be a really safe range for my tastes
Frozen vegetables are good. Some canned vegetables retain their flavor and nutrition as well. Some canned veggies are just a hot mess (I am looking at you, canned asparagus). Canned beets are fine. Canned corn is fine in most recipes.
The beauty of canned goods is that you don't expend energy to store them.
The beauty of frozen veggies (and some frozen fruits, blueberries for example) is that they keep and work well for small quantities. I ate a lot of frozen veggies when I was single.
The problem with frozen vegetables is that they very easily loose texture. If you fry them they will in practice boil instead of being fried. The only thing that works in my experience is to throw them in boiling water and then just let the water boil again and finished. Or use them directly in a stew or soup or something like that.
> Just eat minimally processed whole foods as often as possible, diversify your plate and moderate your intake.
If you highly diversify your diet, if any one thing is 'bad' for you, you are by your actions, reducing your exposure to it.
As far as processed foods, there are different forms of 'processing'. For example, canned vegetables are pretty minimally processed. Cured sausages are more highly processed, and nacho cheese doritos are really highly processed.
As a parent of three young adult kids, all I can say is WTF.
My kids were allowed to walk, scooter, and tricycle around our block from the time they were five years old. They were allowed to walk into town, as long as they were with at least one friend, from the time they were eight.
From sixteen up, as long as they were with a group of at least three, they could take the train into NYC.
When my son was sixteen, we put him on a bus with one friend (also sixteen), for a five hour bus ride to Boston so he could go visit his sister at college, and so his friend could visit her sister at college.
And this mom got arrested because he kid walked a half mile on sidewalks to get home?
In our town, there are no busses for the middle school, the kids walk, some of them over a half mile, every school day.
