I went to the grocery store yesterday afternoon. It was so good to have food back in the house again. It was even better, after three busy days, to have time to cook.

My daughter had requested salmon for dinner, so I stopped at the fish counter. They had farm raised salmon for $5.99 a pound and two kinds of wild caught salmon. One was $14.99 and the other was $19.99. I prefer wild caught fish, and buy it - unless the price differential is too great. This wild caught salmon did not fit into my budget, so I asked the butcher for a large piece of farm raised.

She said that most people didn't buy the large fillets, and that the day before her manager had cut some $19.99 wild caught salmon into smaller pieces. It hadn't sold, and he had just told her to sell the wild caught salmon at the farm raised price.

I did some quick thinking. If I had shopped late in the day yesterday and cooked the fish today it would have been exactly the same as buying yesterday's fish today and cooking it right away. This salmon had never been frozen, so I could cook some for dinner and freeze the rest.

I told her I would take all four pieces. When she weighed it, the original price was more than $70. I paid about $20. There are two morals to this story. First, - it always helps to be in the right place at the right time.

Second, unless you are independently wealthy, you are constantly making choices about how to spend your food budget. There are some things that I buy at the health food store, and I accept that I will pay more. There are other things that I buy at the grocery store. I don't have a problem with anyone who pays top dollar for the highest quality or the latest food fad.

However, from time to time, I feel the need to reassure, those of you on a tight food budget that you can follow the Blood Type Diet buying all your food on sale from a regular grocery store. As long as you can find meat, vegetables, and fruit, you can benefit from the Type O diet.

I don't believe I am much better off today for having eaten $19.99 wild caught salmon last night than I would have been if I had eaten the farm raised. Perhaps the cumulative effect over 100 years would be measurable, but it would be hard to prove. However I know with absolute certainty that I am healthier eating salmon and vegetables for dinner than I would have been if I had eaten pizza or a hot dog and fries.

So make the best choices you can with the food budget you have, and don't let anyone make you feel guilty!