I made hot pork roast sandwiches for supper tonight. You know the ones? You take leftover pork roast, slice it
thinly. You chop some more pork into small pieces and fry it and make a nice
pork gravy out of the fried pork, chicken stock, and corn starch to thicken.
Then you serve it by layering a slice of bread, a piece of pork, and hot pork
gravy. It’s yummy and easy and comfort
food.
If I’d really been doing it right, I would have made
homemade mashed potatoes, but I was running late on time. So just fresh sliced apples and steamed
broccoli with lemon pepper on the side and some pickles.
It’s funny how everyone has their own system for
eating. Some people eat out all the
time. Some people only eat homemade. Some people favor lots of cheese and
cream. Some people favor veggies. I lean
toward unprocessed homemade food. Sure, on a week when we’re running late to
everything, we’ll grab something at Wendy’s or nuke a frozen dinner, but in
general I try to make something homemade.
I have lots of shortcuts.
For breakfast, I buy sausages and cook them all slightly underdone and
then freeze them so that they can be nuked to warm for breakfast. They’re better than the ones you buy already
cooked. I make a parfait by layering
fruit and yogurt and cereal or chocolate chips. We have bagels and cream cheese
or toast with butter and toppings.
Dinners, I try to have all 4 or 5 food groups: a protein, a
veg, a fruit, a grain, and milk. So I’ll roast or crockpot or time-bake some
meat of some kind, I’ll steam some veggies, we’ll have bread and butter or I’ll
timer some rice, and I’ll chop up some fresh fruit.
I guess my yen is for unprocessed stuff. I used
to go way in for strange diets when it was just myself, and it wasn’t until we
had kids that I got serious about trying to balance everything. It seems to be
working. The kids, so far, have maintained a healthy weight, fights about food
are fairly minimal, and they try new stuff.
Things that surprise me. My son loves blue cheese and
tomatoes. My daughter loves corned beef and cabbage.
One of the things that got me thinking about this is that I’m
much more thoughtful about my kids food than my own. It’s easier for me to help them be healthy
than it is to make myself healthy, due to the half-hazard way I was
raised. I was thinking recently that I
should think of myself as a third
person. That way, I might be able to treat myself better than I would
otherwise. Think of myself in the third
person.
And all this is a metaphor for my writing. I can’t seem to convince myself I’m worth it,
either in food or writing. Something to work on, for sure.
As Robert Goolrick says, “If you don’t receive love from the
ones who are meant to love you, you will never stop looking for it.”
