Cooking

And Eating


August 13, 2010 (Friday)
”picWanda learned to cook after we were married, and through the years she always had excellent meals on the table three times a day. I never did learn how to cook. Didn’t think I could do that. Seemed too hard.
After I became a widower, I had to learn how to prepare meals. To my surprise, I could do it. At least well enough for myself. After a few years, however, I discovered that a person can’t eat anything and everything he likes. My stomach grew in proportion to my appetite, and I finally had to change my ways and try to cut down on calories. I lost about 25 pounds over the course of a year.
I try to eat reasonably healthy meals, although I could do better. Every once in a while, I just start cooking something without knowing how it’s going to look or taste when ready. Yesterday’s lunch was an example of that. I started with a chicken breast which I cut into small chunks. I put a little sunflower oil (on sale at the dollar store) in the skillet and stirred the chicken chunks until the pink was gone. Then I added a can of mixed vegetables and stirred them with the chicken. When mixed well, I put half a can of Cream of Chicken soup into the mixture. I kept stirring it until it was uniformly heated, adding minced onions and seasoned salt, and finally emptying it into a dinner plate. I then topped it with parsley flakes. Tasted good. Don’t know what it could have been called. Must have been low in calories because I got hungry pretty soon after eating it.
I don’t always cook. I eat out several times each week, and I like stuff like weiners, baloney and sausage. But I weigh every day and try to keep that big stomach from making a comeback. And I walk 40 minutes three times a week. That helps a lot. Took my blood pressure today and it was 90 over 59 with a pulse of 78. If my little wrist device is working right, that’s not bad for an old coot.