I was preparing my lunch for today and feeling uninspired. "This is crazy," I thought "I wanted all this food when I bought it so there is no reason not to want it now." Eh, but I just didn't.
I dug around some more and took the dog for a walk and while I was out, I came up with a few options for things to make. Once I got thinking about it, my mind was on a roll and I thought of all sorts of ways to combine what I have into something I felt like eating.
I ended up with:
oatmeal with milk and raisins for breakfast
large salad with sunflower seeds and dried cranberries and farfalle pasta with roasted asparagus and spring onions for lunch
Miso soup and almonds for snacks
Now I'm pretty excited about the menu. But I was thinking about the whole "I don't feel like eating that today" habit." How many of us have thought about going somewhere for lunch and someone in the group said "Oh, I had Chinese yesterday." or "I'm having pizza tonight" ? In my group of friends, the former would be greeted with "What do you think the Chinese do every day?"
Really, there is no reason (apart maybe from the high sodium content) not to eat Chinese food two days in a row. Even the smallest hole in the wall place has a wide variety of dishes to suit almost any taste.
The thing is that most of us have gotten into the habit of a lot of variation and eating what we want when we want to. Some of my friends never cook more than they can eat in a single meal because they hate to have leftovers even for one extra meal.
For me, making lunch today was hard because the food has been around in my kitchen and isn't new and exciting. I feel forced into eating it and I'd rather eat something else just because.
It made me think about all the people who never get to choose what they eat: refugees, the poor who rely on soup kitchens and other charities for every meal, prisoners, many children, many of the elderly, people in nursing homes, hospitals, hospice, etc. Most of these people have lost many other freedoms in addition to the freedom to choose food which makes the vast quantity of choice I have here in the US seem like a huge luxury.
Part of eating to live and not living to eat is choosing a diet that meets the daily nutritional requirements. If you are strict about it, your freedom of choice in your food selections will be limited. Yes, you can structure a basic menu for the day but at some point, you are probably going to have to eat something you don't feel like eating. I'm not sure why we are so insistent on this variety. It's easier and more economical to cook one large batch of food and portion it out into several meals and sticking to a diet with less variation makes it much easier to control portions and nutritional intake.
Once I started playing with the options for my menu, I got excited because I started to see all the possibilities. I need to concentrate on that as a luxury and enjoy what I have rather than wishing I had something better.
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This is Julie from one of the Blog's you're following - On Food Stamps.
ReplyDeleteGreat post.
I really found this issue of lack of variety came up a lot in my project too. I truly had to make peace with left overs. There was one point where I ate the same lentil dish for 5 meals, or where I got stuck with some beans that I didn't even like but had to eat them for 4 days anyway.
Your musings on the need to have constant food variety are really interesting. To me, this relates to other consumption trends going on in our culture. In America we have gotten very into constantly having new things. Gone are the days when appliances lasted for decades and we invested in a few, high quality possessions. Hell, my iPod is pretty much dead after a year.
We love to buy cheap clothes made in China that loose their shape after 4 washes because we just want to go out and buy more new clothes anyway. And yes, we want a new type of food every meal. That intolerance for sameness makes it hard to eat local. We want mangoes in December in New York City, and God damn it, we get them. It also makes cooking a poor time investment. The only way cooking is worth the prep and cleanup time is if you cook meals in bulk. And, if you're unwilling to eat lentils for 3 dinners in a row well, then... yea. Cooking wouldn't be worth it.