Eating at Home is Almost Always the Healthiest Choice
From the heart…
…Eating at home is (almost) always the best choice
After barely graduating high school in 1984, I spent the next two years enrolling in, then leaving at least five different junior colleges. It wasn’t until the summer of 1986 that I finally decided to transfer to a university, so I applied to California State University at Chico. That choice was easy. It was only an hour and a half from home. A lot of my high school friends were there. And, okay, it was actually the Pell Grant I received that made it possible. I was broke. My mom didn’t have anything to give me either. Though I don’t know for certain, my guess is it was hard to invest in a college fund for your kid when you earned a living as a waitress. Then, because she dropped out of high school when she was a sophomore because she had hickeys all over her neckーliterally, she had hickeys all over her neck and was too embarrassed to returnー I really don’t think she saw education as a priority.
I knew that I wanted something different, so with the Pell Grant as my inspiration, I convinced my friend Sydney to join me at CSU Chico. In the hottest part of August, we packed up my ‘76 faded green Toyota Celica--don’t forget the Conair portable curling iron--and drove 90 miles northwest. Once we got there, we scouted apartments close to campus and found the perfect two bedroom place on Nord Ave. in the low income rent area. It was complete with a living room, dining room, a bathroom, and a kitchen with nasty yellowish high-gloss paint on the walls. Its best feature though, was the free electricity. Since we couldn’t lay by her parent’s pool anymore, our only choice to survive those hot summer days was to stay inside and have the air-conditioning at full blast.
It was in that yellow-walled kitchen in Chico that I learned how to test if the spaghetti noodles were done. Sydney taught me how to reach into the boiling water, pluck out a noodle, and throw it against the wall. If it fell off, it wasn’t done. But if it stuck, it was ready to eat. Luckily, the high gloss paint in the kitchen made for easy cleaning. Even so, after a couple months’ time we had eaten more than our share of spaghetti (it was our go-to because it was so cheap), and you could still see the remnants of our noodle tests.
My friends and I have come a long way since CSU Chico and the nasty, yellowish high-gloss walls with noodle remnants. Then, eating at home was a necessity. Today, I believe eating at home is almost always the healthiest choice.
I consider myself a pretty darn good cook these days. I don’t use much butter like the restaurantsーolive oil is always my first choice. I make sure to fill my menu with lots of healthy greens and lean meats. I love showing love by making and serving my family and friends great meals. In fact, on our last girls weekend, I was the first one to Santa Barbara. After I rented a jeep, my first stop was to Whole Foods to shop for the weekend. We did go out for dinner one night, but for the rest of the weekend it was all about the love as I crafted good-for-you-and-your-tastebuds meals for everyone at home. In my opinion, it’s the healthiest way to eat.
If you loveーor want to learn to loveー to cook like I do, hop over to our Let’s Eat blog page for some craveable, healthy recipes. Make them now in your own home or pull up the blog on your next girls weekend. As I learned, it’s so much fun to create a meal together.
I love that you were with me today. See you tomorrow!
XO
Lisa A.K.A. Loopie