Still "having to wonder"

RM came in a few minutes after I did. I was in the process of packing my lunch for tomorrow-- I tend to cook a bunch of food on Sunday, and then apportion out into smaller tupperware throughout the week. I made a really great lunch dish for this week-- black beans, spinach, red rice, salt and pepper: easy, inexpensive, healthy and delicious. As I was apportioning it, I thought, "that's it-- it's that easy to eat well on a budget." Dry beans, frozen spinach, etc.

Then I turned to making my dinner, which was also easy, inexpensive, healthy and delicious. I cut up some grilled pepper, zucchini and broccoli that I'd roasted earlier (maybe $1.50); spooned out some baba ganoush (oh, $0.50); toasted a whole grain tortilla ($0.30), spread some goat cheese on it ($0.50), and topped it with a serving of (wild caught) smoked salmon ($2). I wasn't thinking of the nutritional value or the price as I was making it-- I was just thinking about how tasty it was going to be--until RM came back downstairs and said, "wow, that looks healthy."

Shrug.

I hadn't thought about it.

It's like that cliche: "you can make yourself happy or unhappy; it takes the same amount of work." Similarly, you can eat healthily and unhealthily; it takes the same amount of work (and almost as little money). And it tasted great.

Why am I going on about this? First of all, I found RM's comment curious. Who says that? Who remarks on the apparent health of another person's meal? Would I ever say to him, "man, that looks utterly devoid of nutritional value!" And--presentation is not always a factor in the things I prepare, but this time, the plate looked good--I was surprised to hear him say "healthy" rather than "good." When I recovered from the oddity of what he'd said, I actually responded with, "it takes as little work to eat healthily as it does to eat unhealthily."

Also, you'll have noticed, on these pages, my rants about the nation's food system. You'll have heard me say that the elitism arguments are a bunch of horseshit. I made myself a delicious dinner in less than ten minutes for less than $5 (and a similar lunch for the week for less than $1 a serving-- mind you, that would go up were I to use organic spinach). I realize that a frozen dinner will come to under $5, and takes even less time to heat up than it took me to compile my meal, but isn't it worth the extra $1.50 and five minutes of effort? Don't let the food industry sell you on the idea that real food is labor intensive or expensive.