10/23/2005

Broke Ass! (tm) Cooking: When Time Is Money (continued)

Eat Healthy!!!!!!: Here's the thing, maybe you're poor, and maybe to make ends meet you might skimp on the grocery list and buy balogne and white bread and cereal to survive on. But what I've found, is that 100% of the broke ass people I've met... other then the homeless ones... spend more money on luxury items then any sane person in their position should. They go out and spend 80 dollars on pants and then they're eating Immitation Bacon Bits and Salad dressing for dinner. They spend 20 dollars every three days on beer and then they're eating cheeze wiz and crackers for lunch. OR, maybe they ARE eating, they're ordering take out, buying pizza, getting dollar burgers from the dollar menu. That's all fine and dandy as far as hunger pain is concerned, but that's about all it solves. What I'm going to talk about, is much more in your immediate future then clogged arteries and other crap like that.

Nutrients. The POINT... ladies and gentlemen... of eating, is so that your body can get (drum role please) NUTRIENTS.

Okay... are you getting your daily intake of vitamins A, C & E from your dollar burger? Of the little, if any nutrients food like this has... how much of it is absorbable? What's this? Not all nutrients present in food are actually going to be used by our bodies? AAAAHhhhhh, didn't know that did ya? Let me give you an example, now, I don't know actual numbers... and in all honestly it doesn't fuckin matter, I'm just making a point. But the amount of absorbable (otherwise stated as "useable", meaning something your body actually uses) protein that's in a nice juicy steak is like 70 percent or some shit like that. The amount of useable protein in cottage cheese however is 100 percent. Does that mean you have to run out and get cottage cheese even though you hate it? No, I'm simply making a point, just because your bowl of captain crunch says it has 30% of your daily needed vitamin A, only about 5-10% of that is actually getting used by your body.

When you don't take your diet seriously, you don't take your health seriously (not diet like "i wish I were anorexic" I mean diet like the types of food you eat on a regular basis). When your body doesn't get the nutrients it needs, it can't do what it needs to do. It's like trying to drive your car on fumes... eventually the shits gonna conk out.

That's when you get sick. Getting sick might as well be a death sentence for a Broke Ass! individual. I remember I got sick once, had to pay $75 for a doctor's visit, 80 for the medicine, missed two days work and got a 200 dollar check that week, so I walked home with 45 dollars and 400 dollars in a number of other home related bills waiting to be paid... all because I didn't take care of myself. I know broke ass individuals that almost NEVER get sick, but they are very mindful of what they put into their bodies.

Not getting sick saves you time. Eating healthy helps you to not get sick. Feeling good helps you think clearly, which saves you time, eating healthy helps you think clearly. See the pattern?

Nutrition can turn into a big complicated science, here are some rules of thumb:

1: Look at a food pyramid... eat what it tells you to. Most of the things considered "servings" are freakin small as hell anyway so you won't really be using up a lot of food anyway.

2: Stop abusing alcohol, I don't give a shit if you're an alcoholic or a social drinker, I'm not here to preach about the bad things alcohol do, think of it this way... most alcohol actually dehydrates you... spend your money on liquids that hydrate you. If you must drink, don't abuse it, do it moderately. Instead of drinking a twelve pack a day like some people who are so poor they just want to forget it all. Drink a twelve pack a week. Take a chance and maybe don't drink at all. When you go out, see if other people will buy you a drink, save your money. Be open about the fact that you're broke ass and people with sympathize, just don't milk it.

Keep yourself hydrated, healthy, fed and focused and eventually get yourself OUT of your Broke Ass situation. I mean, Broke Ass! Is wonderful, but always remember what it means: "succeeding, regardless of what the world has given you" if you don't get out of your broke ass situation, you're not being broke ass!.

3: Fine tune your diet: For the longest time I would feel like crap after eating, never knew why. Then I went to WebMD to find out. I didn't go to a doctor to confirm it or anything, but it appears I'm hypoglycemic. I eat too much sugar and I feel like shit, I dont' eat enough and I feel like shit. I eat the wrong kind and I feel like shit. I've started to pay attention to the amount of sugar I take in on a daily basis and have seen a drastic improvement in my mood, ability to focus and clarity of thought. This has improved my performance at work, which has helped me to get raises etc. Believe it or not, changing the little things in your life really does make big changes over time. Pay attention to how what you eat makes you feel. If your friendly neighborhood dollar burgers make you feel like crap, Kill The Crap... stop fuckin eating them.

4: Fatty Foods help: HUH!!!!!????? I thought fat was the devil? Fuck no it's not the devil. You need fat, it's an important part of your diet actually. Look, too much vitamin C makes your bones soft. Anything in excess fucks you up. Beleive it or not there is actually a sensor in your tongue that senses how much fat you've taken in, if you don't eat enough fat, you'll still feel hungry. Why do you think so many people get FATTER when they go on diets? Nutritional food can be fatty, the more usable the food is, the quicker it will get processed and "burned up". The quicker it gets burned up on a regular basis, the faster your motabolism will become. This may seem like a bad thing, because faster metabolism equals out to a bigger apetite, but combine this theory with the "lots of small meals" theory (light breakfast, brunch, lunch, linner, dinner, supper, desert, all small and light meals) and it ends up not being too bad.

The faster your motabalism, the more energy you have, the better you think, the faster you heal. Excessive alcohol and certain drugs like weed slow your motabalism down. Again, this isn't a D.A.R.E. commercial, it's just simple fact, the more healthy you are, the better you feel, quicker you heal, and over all; the more time and money you save. That's life, if you don't like it, kill yourself.

5: ENJOY your food!: It's your food isn't it? Enjoy it damnit. Why? Because you deserve to enjoy it of course. Also, enjoying your food requires you to taste it longer, which allows that sensor in your tongue to sense more fat, which forces you to chew more, which breaks down your food more, which allows your body to digest the much smaller pieces of food more completely which allows your body to use the nutrients present more effeciently, which makes you feel full sooner, which saves you money on food while getting the same ammount of nutrients etc. etc. etc. Plus, seriously, you deserve to enjoy yourself.

6: SPLURGE on multivitamins: 8-12 dollars will last you months, anytime you can't get a real complete days worth of food, take a multivitamin with your next meal. At least it will make up for some of what you missed out on. Don't worry about name brands, it's all the same shit, look at the label for percentages, the closer to 100% and more vitamins and minerals present, the better.

Being healthy saves you time in the long run, so do it.

Okay, let's see, what else saves you time...

Organize your fridge, if you can grab foods without even barely looking at what you're grabbing, you're shaving off overall cooking time.

Keep the plastic bags after you go shopping, now you've got a place to put your lunch for work.

Re-Use bottles; bought a bottle of water the other day? Buy a gallon of water now, and refill your bottle. Only refill bottles like 10-15 times, after that, chemicals from the plastic start to leach into the water.

Cook Certain Staple Foods in large batches: If you know you like fried chicken, cook a ton of it one day, that way you can take a few pieces and add whatever side dishes you like. I personally have a bag of meatballs in my fridge right now. But it's the same for chicken, not really fish, fish tends to get nasty quick if it sits too long, pastas coated in oil last a pretty long time and don't stick. Say one day you want some spaghetti and meatballs, take out the already made pasta, the already made meatballs, some sauce, stick it in the microwave (the only appliance I suggest spending money on, though mine is a hand-me-down) and you're done. Want Shrimp Scampi? Get a better job... no i'm kidding, lol, you can get shrimp from time to time as a treat and not really spend too much cash for it. Cook up the butter and so forth, toss in the shrimp, then add the premaid pasta. Want ghetto lomein? Break out the pasta. You get the drift. Rice doesn't last so good in the fridge, but if you can get your hands on a rice cooker that stores it pretty well for a couple days I think.

FREEEEEEZE... yeah I know, it takes a long time to thaw, but shopping weekly takes hours away from you, shop in bulk, freeze whatever u can. Thaw it out by leaving it out on your way to work, by the time you get back it should be ready for cooking. Me personally I just leave it in the fridge the night before, by the time I get back from work it's actually thawed out.

That's a lot of stuff to take into consideration. If you want more tips, just email me.

Midnight Sun