I can’t eat all the delicious, healthy food that costs almost nothing fast enough to keep up this spring. And losing fat and gaining muscle.

June 19, 2017 by Joshua
in Nature

I’ve started calling my diet unamerican.

What I eat is

  • Delicious
  • Convenient
  • Cheap
  • Nutritious
  • Local
  • Community building (many guests come over instead of meeting at bars and restaurants)
  • Non-polluting
  • Seasonal
  • Home made

This seems the opposite of how most Americans eat. They go out, spend a lot on stuff reheated after being manufactured in a factory.

This spring, I can’t keep up with how much food I’m getting for so little money, especially with free add-ons I can’t say no to, like the windowsill garden that is exploding with greens and flavor, more than I expected.

My Community Supported Agriculture (aka farm share) weekly pickup

After my first farm share pick up, my fridge was full. I mean completely full. I volunteered that evening so got the leftovers from people who didn’t show up, which included

  • Lettuce, maybe five or six heads
  • Radishes, dozens, in packs of maybe a dozen each
  • Cabbage, maybe five or six heads
  • Bok choy, maybe five or six heads
  • Rhubarb, dozens of stalks
  • Mushrooms, maybe a pound
  • More, but I forget what

I expected a certain amount, but volunteering led to more than double my expectations.

I can’t believe people call eating healthy expensive. I mean, I can because I used to think it might be, except that I didn’t know because I didn’t eat this healthy. In my case, I was wrong. I didn’t know what I was talking about.

Healthy food isn’t expensive. Ignorance of how to shop, prepare, and eat it is.

I think others look at food packaging and believe the packaging that what’s in it is healthy. One, it’s not, not compared to the list above. Two, it’s more expensive, less filling, and less nutritious per calorie.

You can’t beat lots and lots green, leafy vegetables and experience preparing them into mouth-wateringly delicious meals. In my case, that means prepared with lentils, split peas, or other legumes, plus nutritional yeast, herbs, and spices, in the pressure cooker.

What I already had

That added to what I already had, which included

  • Collard greens, several pounds
  • Berries, from local trees
  • Split pea soup
  • Cherries
  • Habaneros

I forget what else. The collard greens were three dollars for several meals worth. Three dollars! For what looks like enough to feed a brontosaurus!

And it’s delicious in my famous vegetable stews. It’s also delicious in salads, as I’ve learned through experiment.

My windowsill garden

Meanwhile, my windowsill garden is growing faster than I can eat from it, including

  • Spicy greens like arugula and mustard greens
  • Mint
  • Basil, about ten plants that people didn’t pick up from the farm share

I’m growing a fig tree from a sapling my sister gave me from her tree. It’s less than a foot tall, so no fruit from it yet.

Eating it all

Eating it all is nearly impossible. I’m inviting people over as much as I have time for to help me eat it. Everyone describes it as surprisingly delicious.

I’m eating to stuffed nearly every meal. I doubt I spend one hundred dollars a week on food.

I’m still losing fat and gaining muscle.

As best I can tell, the ratio of fiber, protein, and other nutrition to calories is low. I have to remind myself to eat enough nuts to make sure I’m getting some fat in my diet. There’s other stuff I didn’t mention, like potatoes, spices, herbs, vinegar, nutritional yeast, and other things that stay in the cupboard longer so I don’t notice them as much.

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