I think many people “want what they want” and will make up justifications for their behavior/eating habits.
There is NO WAY, (I could feed Sunshine and myself) if we ate takeout even once a week. The budget would be blown in no time.
Between sales and clearance items, I’m always able to find fresh vegetables and some fruit at an affordable price. We NEVER throw away any food. I’m extremely careful to use anything perishable up and will often ask other posters for suggestions and ideas.
Case in point, I have half a head of cabbage that is just starting to get old – its going into tonight’s soup.
I also have large bags of flour, rice and (dried) pinto beans. I’ve done a lot with those pinto beans – from soups to enchiladas with re-fried beans. And my homemade bread (and tortillas) are better than anything I can purchase at the store.
It is possible this “intermittent fasting” person you were communicating with, just doesn’t know how to cook anything and is ashamed to admit it. My mother starting teaching my sister & I to cook/prepare basic meals at a young age. I have many of her recipes committed to memory that I use to this day.
It’s a long-running (45 years) Sunday NYT column called “Metropolitan Diary” which are bite-sized real-life tableaux of NYC life. @TokushimaCook’s link is an open access version of it. I particularly enjoy the current illustrator’s accompanying minimal drawings which really capture the essence of the stories.
For me, It’s a must-read every Sunday in addition to the Sunday Routine column, which was getting a bit too celeb-ish but seems to have re-adjusted recently to feature everyday New Yorkers with interesting stories.
There was a studying in southwestern Ontario about 50 years ago, looking at where grocery dollars went from families that were at different social economic levels. What was interesting, is that, in general, the people who were middle class had the time to cook as well as the know how to stretch their dollar, moreso than some families who were receiving welfare. Middle class families were more likely to buy a 10 lb bag of potatoes, rather than frozen fries or chips. The
Middle Class were buying less groceries at the convenience store, and less fast food overall.
Of course, there is privilege involved. The middle class had the money to buy more groceries in bulk, had the time to plan what they would eat, and had fridges, ovens, maybe a veg garden, and maybe a stay at home parent or grandparent.
Food choices people make when they are in survival mode or under extreme stress are also going to be different than choices made by someone who is relatively comfortable.
I think what people are buying has changed a lot, across all the economic levels now, and with convenience foods being marketed to everyone.
I can see how someone could see argue dining on 2 for 1 coupons would be cheaper than making healthy food from scratch.
4 Likes
ChristinaM
(Hungry in Asheville, NC (still plenty to offer tourists post Hurricane))
70
And I can also confirm that I was MUCH more attuned to, say, frozen microwaved lunches when I was regularly going into an office 5 days a week. I was much more focused on at least semi-prepped ingredients when I was getting home at 6 and 7 pm and having to make my own dinner. Pasta with jarred sauce solved a LOT more meals than recently, where I’m willing to thaw some salmon the day before, and marinate it around 6 for cooking and serving, along with a side or salad.
Time, convenience, ability. As each has changed over my existence, they have vastly changed how I eat, shop, and cook.
I had one classmate who lived on $2 Michelina’s Italian frozen microwaveable meals in law school 22 years ago. Now he’s a 60 yo judge. I doubt he is eating $2- $6 microwaveable lunches now.
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
75
LoL, oops! I’m not sure, but I don’t even think I can blame autocorrect on that one. Maybe, but probably not.
I love the ‘Vimes’ Boots’ story, but there’s always an aspect that gets a little overlooked:
After telling that story, it’s revealed that Vimes would STILL buy and wear old, thin, shoddy boots, because they let his feet feel the streets more effectively. He claimed he could tell where in the city he was just by the feel of the cobblestones. And they kept him ‘connected’ to the old, poor (and, it’s implied, more ‘authentic’) version of himself.
I don’t know how that may or may not reinforce the theory as a whole, but I want to encourage any conversation even tangentially related to Sir Terry, who, so far as I’ve ever heard anyone speak of him, seemed like a delightful human being and who I sorely miss.
Raising Steam and The Shepherd’s Crown got me all verklempt.
2 Likes
CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
77
I find this a bit conflicted. No question about the convenience store shopping aspect, but others seem questionable.
[Edit - to be clear, what follows is not a “shoot messenger” type of response. Just saying that sometimes gov’t reports aren’t as coherent as I’d like them to be…]
Fifty years ago I was a foster kid in a dirt-poor family. Both of my foster parents worked, but there were several families in the neighborhood getting by on welfare.
How is it possible that any family with both parents working full time has “more time to cook” than families subsisting on welfare, who should (by virtue of subsisting on welfare) have significantly more time to figure out what and how to cook? Or even the more middle-class family, with only one parent working full time, as was not unusual in the 1970s? As compared to the family on welfare, with no one really working full time?
Maybe it is that “being on welfare” in ON meant something different, at the time of the study, than in the U.S. But generally, here in the 1970s, people on welfare were not working (or not very much), and could get kicked off the welfare if they worked and made too much (reportable) money on the side.
There are some charities I have been involved with in Canada that try to educate kids and adults from the lower social economic bracket with respect to cooking and healthy choices.
Here are 3 of the charities:
A middle class family may have the budget to do a big Costco shop and put it on their credit card, that they will either pay on time or not. Any time I’ve visited Baby Boomer relatives, who are mostly blue collar, farmers , or white collar in my family, their pantries, chest freezers and fridges are packed. They are not food insecure, even though they are busy and might not be meal planning.
Someone who is broke might not have any credit cards. They might be living paycheck to paycheck. They might be using food banks. Planning goes out the window if what’s for dinner depends on what was donated to the food bank. In Ontario, we have had issues with food banks running out of food mid day, so people who are working poor don’t even have the option of going to the food bank at the end of their work day, because the food bank is shut.
Someone who is busy with kids playing soccer and hockey probably can do fried egg sandwiches, Kraft Mac + Cheese or instant ramen, or whatever else, if they don’t have time to plan because of a busy schedule. Or drive thru suppers.
In London, Ontario right now, we have never had as many food insecure households as we have right now. 1 in 6 families are food insecure, in a city of 423, 000, located in the bread basket of Ontario. Much of the food for Canada is grown or raised in southwestern Ontario.
The university has a food bank on campus, as well.
‘food dessert’
