Skip the Pills, Eat Real Food: A Mom's Perspective on Healthy & Affordable Eating

What did you make for dinner at 22?

My daughters’ have been asking me for healthy and affordable grocery lists and recipe ideas over the past few years. They are all in their early 20s, and cook for themselves. They get stuck in ruts like we all do and want new ideas from an old kitchen hand, like their mom.

I don’t remember grocery shopping in my 20s all that well. Though I do remember aiming for nutrition that was easy to make and not overly fattening and expensive. I had some favorites that my family continues to remind me about: tofu, cottage cheese, lentils, melba crackers, frozen veggies. In college I loved Campbell’s Chunky Soup with little hamburgers. How gross.

Back in the 90s Vs. Right now

When we were kids in our twenties we ate food. We either bought a sub or ordered Chinese or we made something simple. I find these days the Internet machine is pushing powders and pills on our kids to “supplement” the nutrition they somehow cannot get by eating normal food. I’ll tell you what those supplements are doing….robbing kids of their ability to feed themselves properly and with confidence, AND of their money (our money). It’s not good.

As college students and then as new graduates my friends and I were very frugal. We had rent to pay, clothing to acquire for work and play, food to buy, and we wanted to go out. We also saved money, something I think is hard to do now, and doesn’t seem to be encouraged in the media.

What we did not have back then was: a cel phone bill, a computer, apps, eyelash lifts, lip filler, hair (of the $300+ type salon), subscriptions of all kinds: streaming, gaming, fitness, expensive coffees/matchas, food deliver services (are far more expensive), digital storage, supplements, organic food, the ease of ordering anything you want online (attached to a parent credit card?)…and the biggest thing we did not have? Our parent’s credit card to use at will. We used cash for every single purchase.

Nifty fact! The 50 cent coffee (was it 25 cents?) we bought on the way to work in New York would cost $1.25 in today’s dollars. What do you pay for a coffee today? I pay about $5.00 for a medium Pike at Starbucks and that includes a tip.

Let’s give our kids a good, affordable nutritious grocery list.

Shall I share my go-to recipe when I was in college? Friends made fun of it…and as well they should! Cottage Cheese and Spinach Soufflé!

Ingredients:

1 package of frozen chopped spinach, thawed

1 tub of 2 percent cottage cheese

3-4 tablespoons of Dijon Mustard

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a mixing bowl, add the ingredients, thawed spinach, cottage cheese, dijon mustard and mix together.

Place ingredients into an oven safe casserole and onto a rack in the middle of the oven

Bake for 40 minutes, serve with Melba crackers and Tabasco…yum!

Do you have any recipes from back in your 20s? What did you eat at night? I’d love to know!!

Let’s start with the pantry

• Olive oil, red wine vinegar, curry powder, chili powder, kosher salt, black pepper, thyme, tabasco, soy sauce, ketchup, what else should they have already that you bought them when you came to visit?

• Beans, canned and dried

• Tuna, anchovies

• Broth, jarred, or liquid

• Peanut butter, jam

• Rice, pasta, farrow, quinoa

• Tomato paste, sauce, whole pealed tomatoes

• Flour, sugar

• nuts

• coffee/tea

• What else?

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xo

K

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