Meglet Rambles On

I love junk food. I prefer salty junk food, particularly Pringles, but I’ll rarely turn down candy when it’s offered. In fact, Pringles and Mt Dew are pretty much my standard breakfast, and my coworkers get a little nervous when I run out of either one, because I tend to get cranky. The new guy has gotten particularly good at making emergency Pringles runs when I’m in the middle of a really nasty, involved troubleshooting issue.

In addition to loving junk food, I have a strong dislike for most items of the vegetable category, and I’m not terribly fond of a lot of fruit, either. Combine those factors with an aversion to cooking, and I’ve spent a lot of years living on Pringles, Mt Dew, and drive-thru. Sure, the drive-thru is mostly down to Taco Time and KFC mashed potatoes, but it’s still not very healthy. And while I’ll throw a package of chicken or beef in a frying pan with a bottle of marinade sauce, that’s not really cooking, either.

But today, I ran out of lunch items for work, so I had to go to the grocery store.  My final receipt contained the following items:

• Chicken - to be made this weekend with Honey Mustard sauce and rice, resulting in yummy leftovers
• Stir Fry strips - slated for dinner tomorrow night, cooked with lots of Terriyaki sauce and mixed with rice
• Terriyaki Steaks - just little ones, to go with Mom’s Oven Baked Red potatoes for dinner Friday
• the aformentioned Red Potatoes
• Russet Potatoes - one of these nuked for 5-7 minutes makes an easy baked potato for lunch
• Green Leaf Lettuce - one of the few vegetables I will eat, as a salad with very particular ingredients
• Red Leaf Lettuce - to add a little color to the salad
• Canned Pear Halves - maybe not the healthiest way to eat fruit, but really yummy with cheddar cheese
• Diced Peaches - again, not the healthiest, but a great snack or breakfast with cottage cheese
• Cottage Cheese, to go with the peaches
• Margerine - I’ve been out for a week, and need it for the baked potatoes for lunch

And that’s it. No Pringles, no Mt Dew, no goldfish crackers. I even walked past the cookie display without adding any to my cart.  Sure, there’s nothing there that’s going to create a gourmet meal, but there’s enough there to make lunches and dinners for the next week that I will actually want to eat.  And that is the key to eating real food instead of junk food. It has to be something I like, that sounds good, and tastes good, that doesn’t take too much effort, and that I actually want to eat.