Dining out is often touted as a privilege. It can be nice to have someone prepare your food, bring it to you, and take care of the dishes. However, preparing meals at home also is a privilege because it allows you to have complete control over what you are putting into your body. You don’t have to worry about whether the restaurant properly stored ingredients, whether dinnerware was sanitized, how much oil, butter or salt the chef put in your dish, or whether your waiter dropped your roll on the floor before putting it on you plate. By consuming home-cooked meals, you can truly “Have it Your Way” and not worry about a thing.
A recent article by Daniel Ketchell in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s newsletter, The Pump Daily, extolled the virtues of a homemade, healthful lunch ritual. I’ll quote it and post it, here. Hopefully Daniel and Arnold won’t mind.
Hey everybody, it’s Daniel. I love to eat. Arnold actually calls me the “Fresse Machine.” Apparently, in German, Fressen is the verb for animals eating, so that gives you an idea about how much I love food. I also love to cook. That can be a bad combo for someone who is busy and also wants to stay as lean as possible, so what I’ve settled on is that lunch is my routine, boring, healthy and fast meal.
Almost every day if I am working from home, I’ll eat the same thing, and that makes it easy to stay on track. I do some variation of this, and despite the fact that it’s simple, my wife also loves it. Besides being healthy and fast, it’s also quite inexpensive. Eating the same thing for lunch every day and knowing I’ve got one very healthy meal under my belt lets me go a little more wild at dinner. You’ll also notice I only measure oil, because I don’t have much patience for measurements. But I’ve learned over the years that not measuring olive oil or butter when I’m cooking is a recipe for not being lean.
The Lean Lunch
- 5-6 handfuls of spinach
- 2 cucumbers, sliced
- 2 handfuls of cherry tomatoes, all sliced in half
- 2 pinches parmesan
- 1 avocado, halved and sliced
- 2 rotisserie chicken breasts, shredded (you can make your own, grab the store-bought rotisserie chickens and shred them the night before, or buy the pre-shredded package in the deli aisle. I’m a parent with a job, I’m not judging you)
- Tiny pour of vinegar of choice (I use a fancy pear champagne vinegar, sometimes balsamic, figure out how much you like by starting very small)
- 1 tablespoon olive oil (good olive oil makes a big, big difference. This is one place where I don’t go cheap)
- Salt and pepper to taste
Daniel’s lunch ritual reminds me of my own. My lunch ritual five days a week is basically the same as it was when I posted about it in May of 2022: “My typical lunch is a leafy salad tossed with tofu, beans, olives, and cottage cheese, dressed lightly with one tablespoon of olive oil, drenched heavily in red wine vinegar, and sprinkled with lots of tumeric and some black pepper.” I absolutely love it and look forward to eating it every time.
Ah, dining in–what a privilege!
With Love,
P. Gustav Mueller, author of The Present