Gary BUTTERWORTH Online

STRATFORD, NJ, USA 

Fun fact: usually, when I don’t update my website for a few days, it’s for of one of the following reasons:

• I’m busy.
• I’m lazy.
• I have nothing worthwhile to say.

Actually, scratch that last one.  My readers know that I frequently post even when I have nothing worthwhile to say! 

But every once in a while, I will intentionally hold off on posting something new to give my previous post a little more time at the top of the page. 

I’m very happy with my last post (the one about trains and buses), so I wanted it to get as much attention as possible. 
But I think it’s had enough time at the top of page.

And I haven’t talked about my life with my grandmom in a while, so I thought I’d write a post about….

What we eat!

About 5-10% of the time, my grandmom will eat non-stop.  All day long.  She’ll eat meal after meal after meal. 
Another 5-10% of the time, my grandmom eats like most people should–2-3 meals per day, with a few small snacks scattered throughout.

But the vast majority of the time, my grandmom eats next to nothing. 

Mostly, I think this is just because she has a small appetite.  Since she doesn’t do too much, her body doesn’t need a lot of food energy.  But there are a few other reasons, too.

Despite my grandmom’s fondness for telling people that she’s not a fussy eater, she may actually be the world’s single fussiest eater.  Among the foods she doesn’t like:

• Vegetables
• Fruits (except watermellon and soft berries that are rolled in sugar)
• Most nuts
• Spicy foods (salami is sometimes dubbed “too spicy”)
• “Ethnic foods” (aside from Italian and Chinese, which aren’t considered “exotic,” but that’s a post for another day.)
• Foods she has never tried before
• Chewy foods
• Crunchy foods
• Anything containing alcohol
• Foods that are difficult to cut.
• Any foods that aren’t served at near-boiling temperatures (or, in the case of drinks, that aren’t partially iced over)

Some of those foods she genuinely doesn’t like.  Others, she doesn’t eat because she has a hard time chewing them.
(My grandmom desperately needs new dentures, along with a hearing aid, but she stubbornly refuses both outright.  I think she thinks she’s being less burdensome by refusing them, but the opposite is the case.)

If my grandmom doesn’t like something, she just won’t eat it.  She’ll either refuse it outright, or spit out bite after bite.

While I’m far from perfect, I generally try to eat healthy.  In fact, that has probably been the biggest benefit of me moving here–I eat healthier.  Not great, but better.  After a long day at work, stopping off at McDonald’s used to be so easy.  And inexpensive.  And it tasted good.  But now, with nothing but time on my hands, I feel guilty if I don’t at least attempt to eat healthy.

For my grandmom, I prefer that she eats healthy.  But it’s more important just to get her to eat.

So, what’s on the menu for an average day here at Chez Nana?

Breakfast

My grandmom is almost never up for breakfast, so that’s easy. 
She went through a phase a while back when she just HAD to have several little chocolate donuts for breakfast every day.  I’m glad that phase has ended, because now I don’t have to keep something so unhealthy on hand to tempt me.

For my breakfast, I generally have oatmeal or oat bran porridge, sweetened with honey, cinnamon, and raisins.  I’ve discovered that “instant oatmeal” is pretty much a scam–regular oatmeal is almost as “instant” and is better for you. 

When I get bored of oats, I sometimes change things up with yogurt or fruit.  Every once in a while, I’ll have a piece of toast or some cold cereal.  Kashi makes some delicious and healthy breakfast cereals.  I also like Grape Nuts and Raisin Bran.

Breakfast-time is also when I take my daily multivitamin.  One-A-Day Men’s.  I really don’t know what affect it has on my health, if any.  But if there’s even a small chance that it might improve my long-term health, I’m willing to try it.  I encourage you all to take your vitamins, too!

I usually have a couple of small squares of dark chocolate with my breakfast.  They say the antioxidants are great for your heart!

Lunch

On the local news last week, they reported that fruits, vegetables, and breads cause cancer, according to some new study.  They also added that exercise is a leading cause of obesity.  I kid you not.
(The same station also had a recent website feature about places to avoid when travelling, including The Louvre, Stonehenge, and the Taj Mahal.)

Now, I’m not some super-fundamentalist who eschews science.  I put a fair amount of faith in science.  But I just don’t buy studies like that.  At least, I hope they’re not correct.  Because, just as my breakfast contains a lot of fruit, my lunch contains a fair amount of bread and vegetables.

The most common lunch here is a grilled turkey ham and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread.    Sometimes I’ll make tuna sandwiches instead.  My grandmom will usually eat half of a sandwich.  I’ll eat a whole one.

Oftentimes, I’ll make myself a small side salad to go along with it.  Sometimes, instead of a sandwich, I’ll have a can of kippered herring.

Sometimes, I’ll just microwave a bowl of frozen vegetables.  With a little black pepper and some extra virgin olive oil, it makes for a surprisingly satisfying, and healthy, lunch or snack.

About once a week or so, I walk up to the pizza place up the street and treat myself to two slices.

Dinner

Spaghetti.

It’s easy to chew and it’s familiar, so we have spaghetti about twice a week, on average.  It’s one of the only foods my grandmom will readily eat.

I buy whole wheat pasta and low-sodium Healthy Choice tomato sauce.  The sauce I buy is one of the few ready-made sauces that’s not terrible for you (SO many pre-packaged foods are ridiculously high in salt, which is terrible for your heart).  But it’s BLAND.  So, what do I do?  I spice it up with seasonings: black pepper, oregano, dried onions, and garlic!  It’s surprisingly tasty!

(A couple days a week, usually spaghetti days, I try to keep vegetarian.  I like meat, but I think American culture and cuisine puts too much emphasis on the meat.)

Once or twice a week, my mom comes over and cooks for us. 

I have a George Foreman grill.  I like seasoning chicken breasts and salmon and then grilling them on there.  Unfortunately, my grandmom almost never eats any sides I make with it, but it’s still a good, healthy meal. 

I used to make a lot of sausages, but I’ve cut down on them.

On my lazy nights (which have been far too frequent for the past month or so), I’ll just microwave something.  But before you stick up your nose, please hear me out.

Not all microwave meals are created equal.
When I was in college, I’d buy the cheapest ones and actually enjoy them.  But, since then, I think my tastes have matured.  Lots of times, the ultra-cheap, ultra-salty microwave meals just gross me out.  I think I have gotten better at appreciating higher-quality ingredients.

And, believe it or not, you CAN find high quality microwave dinners!

Stoeffer’s make some absolutely delicious microwave dinners.  They aren’t cheap, and they don’t taste cheap.  I honestly think that some of their casseroles could pass as restaurant items.  They aren’t super-healthy, but neither are most restaurant foods.

Lean Cuisine is another of our favorites.  Believe it or not, Lean Cuisine was just featured on Oprah for being healthy, tasty, and convenient!  Apparently they do a lot of work behind-the-scenes to forumlate their products with chefs and dieticians.  I don’t think Oprah personally endorses many products, especially non-commercially.  So, I don’t feel too bad when we have Lean Cuisine dinners.

There are a few lower-end microwave meals we still have occasionally (chicken pot pies and microwave pizzas, namely), but I’m getting better.  I’ve almost entirely cut out canned foods, which is a huge improvement. 

Snacks

Snacks are one area where my grandmom and I have similar tastes.  The snacks I generally keep on hand are:

• pretzels
• peanuts
• cashews
• baby carrots (for me and Forrest the guinea pig–Nan doesn’t like veggies).
• ice cream (more often than not, my grandmom probably gets more than half of her daily calories from plain vanilla or chocolate ice cream.  Ice cream is the only food that she will eat actually eat a full portion of more than 75% of the time.  She likes it, and “it slides right down.”  As long as you don’t buy chocolate chips.  She spits them out.  She spits A LOT out.)
• cookies (very occasionally)
• popcorn (but we don’t eat this very often)
• fruit (fresh, canned, AND dried!  I like variety, so I keep all three on hand.)

Drinks 

Whenever I go to the store, my grandmom always, without fail, tells me that she needs orange juice, ice cream, and toilet paper.  Nothing else.  I really think this is all my grandmom thinks she requires for survival. 

She drinks a lot of orange juice.  I try to get her to drink cranberry juice, too, since that is good for the urinary tract, especially in the elderly.  I only buy 100% juice.  Never that Ocean Spray crap. 

My grandmom and I both drink a lot of water.

I keep a variety of teas on hand (black, green, white, herbals, and oolong).  I drink about 2 cups a day.  Again, they say it’s healthy.
(For a while, I was drinking 6-8 cups a day, but that was just too much.  It gave me jitters and stained my teeth.)

I usually have either a beer or a half-glass of red wine at night.
I have become a tiny bit of a beer snob.  Not so with wine.  I’m not particularly fond of wine, especially reds, so I don’t need to go top-of-the-line.  I think more mediocre reds should have the same antioxidants as the ritzy wines, anyway. 
I buy four-packs of those little single-serving wine bottles, because I wouldn’t want to polish off a full bottle on my own.

Eating out

About every other Saturday or so, we take my grandmom to a local driv- in called Weber’s, where we get pork roll sandwiches.  It’s a New Jersey thing. 
It’s her favorite place to eat, probably because she doesn’t have to get out of the car.

We all also like the Olive Garden, but my grandmom doesn’t get around so well, so we rarely go there anymore.

Occasionally, I’ll borrow my mom’s car and go to Taco Bell.  I like the 7-layer burrito and the bean burrito.  I’ve really grown to like Mexican vegitarian food.  It’s high sodium, but it’s a treat.

You almost never get healthy food when you eat out anywhere.  But you’ve got to live a little. 

Aside from Weber’s and Taco Bell, I hardly ever eat out anymore.  It’s hard to believe I was eating out a dozen or so times a week just a year ago!

***

So, that’s our average menu.

Vitamins, dark chocolate, red wine, green tea, whole wheat, antioxidants,….
I really am following most of the health food fads, aren’t I?!

All I can say is, if you spent as much time with my grandmom as I do, you’d also want to do just about anything to keep your own health from ending up that way.  But you wouldn’t want to sacrifice too much, either.  After all, food is one of the few pleasures I can get on a regular basis.