Organic Dementia #2: Foodstuffs

Everything comes with traps and switching over to organic food has been chock full of them. In my case pulling this off was going to mean more then few changes in philosophy and most them have to with when and what I eat. Keep in mind that this little project has nothing to do with losing weight. I’m in decent shape. Not outstanding but my weight is right where it should be and I don’t worry about it much. Should I be able to keep this up, I doubt it will ever be any real concern again.

I had written this big long explanation of just how bad my food habits have been over the years but I decided nobody needs to know that. You’ll gain weight just thinking about it. The bottom line is that I tended to eat very little throughout the day then gorge at dinner, which was usually either take out or something quick and void of any nutrition. A few years ago at a family dinner I sat down with a pile of something green on my plate and my cousin’s wife made a crack about seeing me eat something that might have once contained a vitamin or two. That one statement pretty much sums it all up.

The trap lay in my job. My hours are a little different from most everyone else’s. They’re server hours so when the bulk of society is heading home from work, I’m on my way there. When you cats are snuggled up in bed watching Conan, I’m driving back to my apartment starving because we don’t get lunch breaks. Five days a week I go at least six hours without the possibility of stopping to eat so much as a peanut. The fact that I never used to eat much before work only made it worse.

I had convinced myself that there was no way I would have time to cook when I don’t get home until after nine or ten. I also labored under the delusion that it would be retarded expensive to cook enough food so that I wouldn’t go to bed hungry. That part at least was true because after work, when you’ve barely eaten a thing and its ten o’clock at night, you pull up to the drive thru thinking, “Okay gimme two of everything!”

The solution of course was to eat more during the day and have enough items available so that I could throw something together at home for dinner in less then fifteen minutes. I also had to do it without spending too much money because, contrary to popular belief, I am not independently wealthy. Oh yeah and I gotta keep it organic. Possible? How the hell would I have known? I’d never tried.

First off, here’s what’s available in my area. There are several grocery stores nearby but the best two are Kroger’s and Publix. The produce sections are large and well kept up. Kroger’s is twenty four hours and has a small organic living section. I figured I would start there and work my way up to Publix. I could also go to Kroger’s a little later in the evening when there wouldn’t be much of a crowd and I could take my time.

At the time my kitchen was stocked just enough so that I could put off buying the basics such as milk, butter, olive oil, vegetable oil, flour, spices, etc. Granted none of these were organic but like I said, I’m not throwing out and replacing. I can’t afford that and besides it’s wasteful. I’ll work my way through what I’ve got then replace it with organic items.

One key to this is to buy things that you know you’re going to use. The rub with fresh foods is that they come with short life-spans. You have to keep up with what’s in your fridge and try not to throw anything out. This may seem basic to some and I’ve always known it, I just never paid much attention to it. Occasionally I’d get a bug up my ass and buy what I needed to cook something healthy but I wouldn’t use everything I bought. It would just sit in my fridge and grow fun new life forms that I could assign names like “Buckley the Wonder Spore” or “Agnes”.

Pasta’s my friend and I eat a ton of it. It keeps well, it reheats quick and if I make a ton of it on Monday, I won’t finish it all off until Wednesday. Knowing that, I went to Kroger’s ready to hang out in the organic section for a while until I had the supplies to fix quick tomato sauces from scratch for the next couple days. I also needed to make certain that I came away with things like dried fruit, real granola (not that Quaker Oats crap with chocolate chips and more sugar then a state fair) and yogurt to get me through the day.

What happened? That would be telling. You’ll just have to come back tomorrow! ‘Til then.


Addendum:

The update schedule’s been thrown off a little bit so until I get things back on track, I won’t be putting these up until after I get off work.


“And I know what the silence on the wire is, in the waking hours of a nameless day. And I know you can’t do your lovin’ from phone booth on the highway, nine hundred miles or so away.” - Jackopierce