WIAW 166 – Salad Days
Rich is home, and the cats are glad to see him… (So am I, mind you… but I don’t climb all over him and sit on his suitcase to let him know. I use my words, as we used to tell the three year olds.)
The visit was both pleasant and productive. On the food front, they now have both meatloaf muffins and burger crumbles in the freezer for later. And there has been some discussion, with both his parents and the woman who comes in a few times a week to help, about cutting up salad vegetables in bulk, for instance, and purchasing more prepared food.
See – I’m not adamantly against prepared food. In fact, I think it’s one of the signs of civilization. There has never been a time in any culture in which most people cooked for themselves. (When we say that, we mean one or two cooked for a household – which could be as many as a dozen people!) But options vary widely in quality. I have friends who live on takeout – but they can both get and afford food from good restaurants in the area, so they do eat vegetables, and whole grain, and various delicious specialties from different cultures, and… on the whole, they eat pretty well. But most people don’t have as many options, and for many of us, financial or dietary issues limit us further. So much prepared food is terribly high in sodium, sugar, or fat, and not really fresh at all… even before we add my gluten issues… and I have other things to do with that money, anyway.
Prepared food sections in supermarkets are stepping up, here. If a bag of prewashed lettuce and a clamshell of crudites means you’ll have a good, reasonably fresh salad without wearing yourself out, go for it. We discovered that the store near the parents sells roasted pork loin. Well, that was one of the foods I made them two years ago – if they can buy it already cooked, all the better! They’ve bought rotisserie chicken for years…
I continue to cook our food from scratch – but we do have both financial and dietary constraints. And I’m not 90 years old… when I am, I’ll be delighted to take any help I can get!
And on that note… at merely 60 years, I happily make my own corn muffins. Commercial ones, after all, have wheat flour… mine do not, so I can eat them. Together with cheesy eggs, which has to be one of the easiest meals ever. I’m considering making the cold brew coffee again this year – and wondering where I put my noted (if any – oops) about my ratio of coffee to water… but on the whole it has been remarkably chilly, so I’m still glad to drink it hot.
Chilly or not, now that I have lettuce, I eat salad. Lettuce and arugula, radish, green onion and a bit of supermarket yellow squash, ham and cheese. (I need to cook and marinate some chick peas!) I took the picture before I added dressing, but the Pepper Parmesan really is delicious. Then rice cakes with a dab of peanut butter to complete the meal.
Sometimes I really don’t feel up to much cooking, though. I did have a migraine in late afternoon, and so, did not… I had some fresh asparagus (yay!) and pork chops – so I just grilled the chops, instead of cooking them with broth or sauce, and steamed the asparagus with a little butter. Still pretty good, though sauce would have been nice for the rice. Oh, well – it was dinner (and a good one, too.)
Jenn’s WIAW party has settled down, for the moment, at least, at Laura’s Sprint 2 the Table. Come over and see what everyone else is eating!
