Back-to-Basics

Part of our grand “simplify life” experiment has been tackling our eating habits—which, let’s be honest, were often atrocious. We are, after all, the generation that drank the Kool-Aid. Not figuratively. Literally. I mean the neon powder parents stirred into water, supercharged with sugar, and proudly served to us as if it were the nectar of the gods instead of diabetes in a cup. If antifreeze and Jell-O had a baby, that’s what we were drinking by the gallon.

Then came the snack cakes. Twinkies, Ding Dongs, Moon Pies—names that sound less like food and more like clown aliases. And Tang? Nothing says “nutritious breakfast” like a powdered orange drink designed in a lab with the same attention to flavor as cough syrup.

Willie, being from the Midwest, brought his own brand of culinary wisdom: meat, potatoes, repeat. Vegetables were treated the way the government treats UFOs—“We’re not saying they don’t exist, but let’s not make it official.” His mother insisted he ate them in his youth. I remain unconvinced.

We eventually ditched the snack cakes, but fast food stuck around like that one high school friend who still wants to party on Tuesdays. My love of MickyD’s continued well into adulthood, mostly because it meant some familiarity as I travelled to various places around the world. But in the past few years, I’ve found whenever I indulge, I end up with a stuffy nose. I’ll occasionally suffer through it for the fries, but the visits have become more and more rare.

Now we cook. Cereal languishes in the pantry while our “casual” Tuesday breakfast is a lemon Pfannkuchen with blueberry compote, Canadian bacon, and yogurt. It sounds like we’re running an overpriced B&B, but nope—just two aging weirdos with too much time and a decent set of cookware. Slowly, the boxed-and-bagged convenience foods are disappearing, replaced by salads, meat, and—gasp—vegetables. Real ones.

The farmer’s market was the next logical step. We worried about the prices, but it balances out because real food fills you up before you’ve inhaled the whole box. We recently tried a farm-to-table restaurant and the meat was so good I considered applying for a small loan to buy their freezer packets. We will see where that goes. Getting healthy is one thing, going broke is another.

Look, we all know I’ll never quit chai lattes, and Willie would sooner renounce his last name than give up Reese’s Cups. But other than that, we’re aiming for this “healthy, real food” lifestyle. You know, as part of the back-to-basics, simplified kind of lifestyle at TRR.

Because if we survived Kool-Aid, Tang, and a childhood powered by snack cakes, then broccoli is not going to kill us.