Date: 2009-11-09 21:35:05 Created: 2009-11-09 16:19:17
This is about my food, eating and cooking habits as of November 2009.
My breakfasts have rarely changed, consisting of tea and sandwiches since more or less forever, but in the past year they started migrating toward soured milk or yoghurt with large amounts of fruit. Tea has remained my standard drink though, even if coffee was a serious contender for a while. A second transition was from soured milk over to oatmeal porridge.
So right now my standard breakfast is a bowl of oatmeal porridge with chopped apples, bananas, oranges and some raisins on top for good measure. The tea is currently green or red as I have a lot of both types at home, but I am fully committed to getting one or two nice black teas the next time supplies run low.
Being a lazy morning person, I have started chopping up the fruit in advance and keeping a few mornings' worth ready in the fridge. All I need to do is cook my tea, microwave my porridge and scoop up a generous helping of block-shaped fruit bits.
I think my morning apetite has increased in the past year too, but I have no concrete evidence. The regular fruit intake also makes me very aware of the days when I do not get my dose of oranges. I do not notice myself feeling ill or anything, I just think about the fact that I missed my dose of vitamin C.
In any case, with my breakfast devoured I head off to work. There I usually have time for a cup of tea or two and/or a few cups of water (tap, no meaningless bottled water here) before lunchtime.
And lunch is boxed food from home all the way, baby. This has really increased in the past year too. Sure, I tried and wanted to eat home cooked most days of the week before too. But now it is pretty common that I have at least a week's worth of lunches in store at work (it is great to have a freezer!), so I do not have to eat last night's food again unless I feel like it.
My average lunch box is not too large, because I know I will eat everything on my plate even if it is more than I need, and I think I do better in the afternoon if I do not stuff myself too much.
As the lunch is pretty light, I start getting hungry and low on blood sugar toward the end of the day. Sometimes I remember to bring a fruit, sometimes not, but I think there is a clear trend of remembering more and more often. Some extra energy in the afternoon never hurts, especially not when I go for a run right after work (which is my normal exercise time).
For dinner, I usually cook something. All those lunch boxes have to come from somewhere after all. Things I tend to keep at home for cooking include canned tomatoes, corn, coconut milk, chicken fillets, eggs and recently also some beans of various kinds. Minced meat and bacon regularly appear in my dishes too. I have often kept a package of hamburgers and some hamburger bread as a fallback in the freezer, but I just recently realized just how ridiculously easy it is to make great burgers from scratch yourself so that might be going away (or switching to a package of home made). For quick fallback dinners there is also often a can of baked beans in tomato sauce, ready to devour with some fried eggs, a tomato and perhaps a sausage and/or some onion.
Those times I do not cook, I usually have some sandwiches or, every now and then, porridge and fruit like for breakfast. For some reason, I never eat leftovers for dinner. Perhaps subconscious priority is given to avoiding restaurant food during work days.
Pasta and rice show up a bit more frequently along my dishes than potatoes do, and my potatoes are usually simply cooked. Carrots have recently began sneaking in with the potatoes, but it is too early to tell if it is a lasting trend.
A friend of mine did not think cooking just for yourself and making lunch boxes seemed worth the effort for the money saved. But I do not see it that way (surprise). I do not have to cook, I have the opportunity to cook, bring lunch boxes and happen to save money as a side effect. Cooking makes me happy, it is quick and fun and a nice change of pace from other things I do. From my point of view, eating lunches at restaurants too often seems like a waste of time and money, plus it often makes me eat more than I really need to. I much rather save the experience so it feels special and fun when it does happen. In all, I guesstimate that I eat meals I have made myself no more than five times on an average month.
On average I easily spend less than an hour cooking, and that is never fully focused time either. I don't do food which needs babysitting, so I can do something else while things simmer away.
I am currently well into my second month with no coffee whatsoever. I got sort of fed up with drinking lots of bad coffee at work just out of habit and because it was easily available, so I decided to take a break. It is clearly going pretty well and I did not experience any serious withdrawal problems. My real goal was to get away from all those "needless" cups, but once I had stayed completely clear for a while the lure of social cups of coffee was suddenly very easy to ignore as well.
I usually, but not always, have my morning tea with milk. Other cups vary in their milk content depending on tea type and milk availability. Black, red and green also goes down with equal ease. Oh, and no sugar, thanks.
Soft drinks? Rare, they most often happen with the restaurant lunches. I just do not feel like them very often, neither along with food nor by themselves. It is strange to think, but despite my low alcohol consumption I might actually drink more beer and wine than soft drinks ...
My monthly food cost (looking at the past 15 months) is usually between 1000 and 1500 crowns, rarely lower but sometimes edging toward 1800. That gets me plenty of fresh fruit all year round (kind of outrageous really, when you think about this being Sweden) and all the things I feel like cooking. Yes, I am pretty price conscious when I shop, but I never feel that price keeps me from getting something if I feel like it.