The evolution of our diet
November 28, 2018
PiC and I grew up eating tv dinners, fast food from McDonald’s and the like, and all kinds of other junk food. I still have a nostalgic yearning for those Jeno’s frozen pizzas, we used to buy a huge stack of them at a time for $1 each. Or the cheap Chinese takeout from the place across the street from high school, we’d swing by there on the way home and for $5 fill up our tanks to the brim with the veggie medley, orange chicken and chow mein. (I miss chow mein.)
It was cheap easy sustenance, if not quite nutritious. We both had parents who worked away from the home and while my mom cooked hot dinners for us every night (in addition to working 15 hour days, thanks for the help Dad) we were mostly on our own during the day once we could be trusted to be home alone.
I learned to cook basics very early – rice in the rice cooker by 4 or 5, boil water for hot tea and ramen, scrambled eggs or eggs over easy on the stovetop by 6 or 7. The frozen food life started in our preteens and my addiction to boxed cake mix started right around then as well. As a teenager, my Saturday (late) morning breakfast treat to myself was a fry-up: french toast, scrambled eggs, whatever else that could be fried. The idea NOW makes my stomach turn a little bit because I remember how much grease was in there!
PiC started on a healthy food kick in his mid 20s, and my acquiesance to the whole thing started in my late 20s, so now we’re largely a healthy foods family. That’s not to say that our diet is totally boring, it’s not! At least it’s not because of choosing to be healthier. For that, I just find ways to reduce saturated fats and increase vitamins, minerals, and other good things for a balanced diet. It IS boring in that I rotate the same 20-30 recipes depending on what I can think of and what’s in season.
One tradition we’re carrying on with JB – ze is learning the basics of food prep early, but ze is learning with healthy foods. Ze cuts up roasted beets, cucumbers, and tofu for our dinner salads (always saving a 20% tax of the prepped foods on the side to eat when the 80% goes into the bowl).
Switching to a gluten free diet means that JB also eats half gluten free with me, eating half my food as ze does, and going to daycare means that ze understands that some people can’t eat everything that other people eat because of allergies. We refer to my diet as being similar to an allergy so ze now understands I’m not rejecting zir if I turn down the offer of a bite of wheat toast.
I’m now working on increasing our vegetable and protein intake, and reducing our carbs and processed sugars, to see if that helps reduce pain further. There’s a whole no or low sugar diet out there that I haven’t done a lot of research on, but a good friend and mentor whose judgement I trust has done the legwork, and I think it makes sense to try reducing our sugar intake. It’s worth a try anyway. I resisted going gluten free for so long because I didn’t want to believe I couldn’t eat everything but I don’t want to continue to be foolish on that front now that I’ve seen some results with the GF diet.
This has led to the longest running streak of serving vegetables at every dinner ever in my life. I think we’ve had a solid month of veggies for every dinner and I’m bursting with pride. For someone who just three months ago was talking about hating homemade salads, I’ve done a 180. We’ve gone entirely away from roasted vegetables and dove head first into the cold veggies. I think the real key was eliminating arugula from our salads. I hate arugula so much unless it’s smothered in a delicious crackly porchetta sandwich from Roli Roti.
Some of our salad constructions:
Bases: butter lettuce (my fav!), baby spinach, baby kale, baby chard.
Toppings will vary: standard or persian cucumbers, tomatoes, beets, tofu, bell peppers, diced tofu, toasted walnuts. If I’m getting really fancy: sliced red onion, sliced cheddar cut up into sticks, boiled eggs, tiny diced ham or turkey bits, shaved carrots. We always have POUNDS of carrots in the house but the dogs get royally offended if we eat “their” carrots š
Sometimes we run out of base greens and then I whip up a cucumber/tomato/red onion “Greek” salad with homemade dressing. JB wholeheartedly does not approve of my dressing though, roundly abuses it as “YUCKY” and eats the salad plain. Fine by me!
The side benefit to eating even fewer carbs I’m hoping for is savings, of course! We should save more money if we’re not buying quite so much gluten free carb replacements. If I can cut out the desire for croissants, malasadas, bagels, English muffins, French toast, French bread, banh mi, cookies, muffins, brownies, cake, and on and on and on, that’s a lot of money we’re not spending on delicious but ultimately painfully unhealthy foods. I wouldn’t have believed it but my cravings for most things on that list are dramatically reduced now that I haven’t had them in several months. If need be, I can make my own healthier GF baked good treats once in a while, with the expensive flour, and we’ll still come out ahead. (In theory. It costs an awful lot to feed the three of us no matter what we’re eating.)
Side note: we are beyond lucky to have a pretty good eater who eats most anything we offer. But it does mean when ze is cutting up beets, ze might try to snag a bite out of one like it’s an apple.
We’re not fully converted yet, I’m still working on a rotation of recipes that fits our lifestyle and our palates, but I am hopeful that this secondary adjustment to our diets will help us stay healthier in the long run and reduce my pain further.
It’s one thing to aim for financial freedom, it’s another to do so with some hope of actually being able to enjoy it!
I went through a similar food revolution. Used to eat CRAP.
Ate Mars Bars with Coca-Cola for breakfast kind of bad.
Now, I love eating salads, vegan, vegetarian… big 180
There is hope!
sherry @ save. spend. splurge. recently posted…How do you deal with difficult colleagues?
I’m so glad we’re changing!
I went through my own food evolution in starting in high school when I just craved soda all the time even in the morning. Instead of water or orange juice I would opt for some Pepsi along with my breakfast. Just horrible!!
Now I barely touch any type of soda. It’s mainly water and milk(for cereal and hot coco) And I look forward to eating veggies especially salads. Gimme more kale, lettuce and spinach!!
I hardly drink soda either, thank goodness. That stuff is terrible for you! I don’t know if it’s an unavoidable aspect of teenager-dom.
I had to give up dairy about six months ago. It’s really changed the way I eat. I have also been trying to track my veggie & fruit intake daily. Still hover around 4, and would like to be at 6. I go in waves. š My kids are huge fruit & veggie eaters, so we’ve definitely done that right.
The giving up dairy has been most challenging from a meal prep perspective. And, I’m not 100% dairy free, because I refuse to make separate meals. Where there are options, I skip the dairy.
During the writing of this post, my 12 year old came in, grabbed a giant bowl of carrots, and added a dollop of hummus. He did have zucchini bread before that, because. .. 12 year old boys eat a lot!
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I can imagine how much you’ve had to change your diet to eliminate dairy! I’m trying to focus on the good things we can include rather than the stuff we can’t or shouldn’t have.