Petty Criticisms of a Nice Post by Charles

I drop by over at "of Two Minds" on a semi-regular basis.  Charles isn't in my regular string of readings, but he is solid enough to wander over at least once a week to get the lay of the land.

So, this blog is about eating and its role and and its preconditions.

Now, I heartily commend the premise of his May 19th post.  How little can you get away with for nutrition to keep the body and soul working.  $220 (yes I round) is a pretty damn fine effort for food for the month.  I have to support that.  And major karma kudos are being beamed his way from the inside of my cranium.

But I especially take umbrage at the "Costco" suggestion.  I can think of no place that deserves contempt more than that pile of steaming crap that serves as the central altar of American consumerism.  I am polite to folks who use it, hell, I even ask my ex-mother in law to pick up a sack of coffee beans on occasion, when my tightwad nature overwhelms my revulsion, but I think that almost anyplace would be worth the difference in cost.  I tend to recommend Cash and Carry or Grocery outlet as provisioners.  They are significantly less icky and filled with a lot fewer greedhead Hippie/Yuppie/Boomers.

I have been cracking away at keeping track of my food costs.  But I approach it differently.  I tend to look at food in two different models:

1. Food as fuel:  this is the day to day stuff, a proper mix of calories, fiber, and nutrients.  Has to taste decent, but definitely nothing fancy.  My go to is a mix irice and beans with a smidgen of pork and spices for flavor.  Easy and cheap    But the overall issue is cost control and getting over the fucking idea that every meal has to be a fucking work of art.  One of the things about the hippie/yuppie/boomers is that they use food to prove their superiority.
2. Food as a celebration.  By eating low on the food chain for a while, you kinda get bored, so once a week of so, spend a little coin, splurge on some goodies and make yourself some damn fine grub.  Hell, you can even go out to eat and enjoy the non-action of someone else cleaning up behind you

My feeling is that condition two pleasures have a direct relationship to how much you enjoy your celebrations.  If all you eat is fancy "worthy of a cell phone snapshot and post to your blog" food, how is it a celebration?  Now I realize that Charles eats pretty low on the food chain, but in a sense it contaminates his message.  You can each cheap, you can even even eat well, but you have to change the way you think about food.

Skinny or fat, young or old....you gotta throw some ergs at the running gear for this particular iteration of the soul.  The manufactured need for "only the best, all of the time"...even when you game it as a cost-control issue, is a way to set up to to have "needs" that will need to be ditched in a crunch.

Might as well go with the fuel idea with the occasional treat.