On a Dollar a Day: One Couple's Unlikely Adventures in Eating in America

by Christopher Greenslate

  PART III

  STRIVING TO EAT HEALTHFULLY

  13

  Seventeen Tomato Plants

  Kerri

  I feel like I need to take more of an active role in fixing our meals.”

  I was stunned. It was fairly early in the morning, and we were sitting at home in front of our computers when Christopher’s comment seemed to come from nowhere. We had previously discussed the fact that I didn’t want to be the only one who did the food prep before embarking upon any of our projects, but in the other two cases, I was the one requesting help. This was a first.

  Despite the fact that the conversation had started off with a thoughtful offer, it became more intense. This was in part due to my usual knack for choosing the wrong moment to roll out my laundry list of ways I felt that I took on quite a bit of the burden in our experiments. “Great,” I said, “because I really feel like I do most of the work.”

  Oops, that didn’t come out quite as I had planned. Christopher stared at me in disbelief. Had I really just responded to his offer to help by insulting him?

  “I do make you breakfast, and I pack your lunch every day,” he offered.

  He was right, he did both of these things. This conversation was getting sticky. I needed to dance my way around this, so I took a few breaths before proceeding. It was important for me to let him know how much I appreciated that he did these things for me. I consider the fact that he packs my lunch a bragging point among my girlfriends. It solicits a “You’ve got a keeper…don’t let him get away,” or “I wish my boyfriend was that thoughtful.” I didn’t want him to think I took his efforts for granted, but there were times when I felt that mine were.

  “I know you do, and I appreciate it more than you know. But I’ve been planning the meals, making the shopping lists, and all the dinners. A lot of times when you make dinner, it’s just reheating something that took me a long time to make. And while we’re doing these projects, a lot of our lunches are leftovers that I packed into containers the night before, so all you’re doing is putting them in my lunch bag the next day.”

  “I was just offering to help,” he said, looking hurt.

  “I know you were. I didn’t mean to rant; I do want your help.” We sat at our computers in silence. Neither of us was angry, but I was simultaneously wishing I had found a better time to air my complaints, while also feeling relieved at having shared them. We didn’t have time to continue this conversation for now; I had plans to meet Christopher’s sister at my school in a few minutes. The school year was over, and she was coming to help me straighten up my classroom for the summer. Heather, like her brother, is incredibly organized, a skill I have yet to master. The last weeks of school, at times, can be more exhausting than the first. While grading stacks of portfolios and conferencing with students to explain why they might have received a B plus instead of an A minus, I also needed to complete my checkout work, turn in grade books for the year, and fulfill a number of other tasks. My classroom began to look like an explosion had gone off, and I needed to clean up so the custodians could get in and do the summer deep-cleaning. I got up from my cluttered desk and kissed Christopher good-bye, leaving him sitting alone at his neatly organized workspace.

  When I returned home several hours later, I found Christopher in the same place I had left him: in front of the computer. I walked in with the intention of motivating him to abandon whatever task he was working on so that we could make a grocery list and go shopping before it was too late in the day.

  He greeted me, pulled my desk chair next to his, and patted the seat for me to sit down. “I want to show you what I’ve been working on.”

  On the screen in front of me was a spreadsheet that outlined two weeks’ worth of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, with optional snacks included. From the looks of it, we would be starting our project by dining on lentil stew, whipped parsnips, baked tofu, and seared kale. There were stars next to three or four of the dinners each week that he planned to make—such as the Jamaican veggie patties—and a couple of empty dinners so that I could pick out what I wanted to make. Next to his computer sat a copy of Becoming Vegan by Brenda Davis, R.D., and Vesanto Melina, M.S.R.D., a book that includes a vegan food pyramid and diet plans based on calorie intake needs, as well as several cookbooks and a grocery list based on the menu he had created.

  I smiled at him and threw my arms around his neck. “Thanks!”

  “That was a lot of work,” he remarked. I couldn’t help but smile. I knew it was work; that was what I had been trying to tell him for months. I felt as if he now understood why I had been so frustrated.

  With the new menu in hand, we set out to take our food experiments in a different direction. This time, with no limited budget, we would eat a healthy diet. A question that we had in the back of our minds, but had never really discussed, was what exactly did “healthy” mean to us?

  As Christopher has previously stated, the act of eating is very personal. For example, what constitutes healthy food intake and portion sizes for Christopher, who is almost a foot taller than I am, differs for me. Likewise, what I need differs from the needs of my three-year-old nieces. In addition, people have varying tastes and cultural dietary expectations that determine what they choose to include in a healthy diet.

  For us, obviously, we maintained our vegan diets, but worked toward using the wisdom we had gained from the dollar-diet project and the Thrifty Food Plan. The dollar-diet project taught us that we could continue to incorporate whole grains into our diets inexpensively. Furthermore, we learned that we felt better when we monitored our portion sizes. We’ve both been known to eat beyond feeling full, until we’re uncomfortable. Controlling portions would prevent the food coma that can follow such a huge meal. We also tend to eat too much pasta, or too many sweets. From the Thrifty Food Plan, we learned that we wanted to work at having a better balance of foods, such as shown in the food pyramid.

  While we didn’t outlaw any particular foods, we knew that as much as possible, we wanted to eat whole grains and fresh vegetables; also, we wanted to be able to eat out if we needed to. For example, we were going on a road trip that had been planned far in advance, but we would make healthier choices than we did before our diet adventures. We would eat treats if they were available, but we wouldn’t overdo it. Christopher, in particular, is coming to terms with his penchant for sweets. When there are sugary foods in the house, he has to deal with an internal tug-of-war to convince himself not to overindulge. There have been numerous occasions in our life together where we share some cookies, and by the time I go back to the cookie jar a day or two later, they have vanished. Our cookie jar is a relic left over from Christopher’s childhood. It is shaped like the stump of a tree, and on top sits a sly raccoon dressed as a thief, slinging a bag over his shoulder as he attempts to break into the cookie safe. This is not unlike Christopher’s clandestine nighttime trips to the cookie jar.

  As for me, I can control myself when it comes to sweet foods—my weakness is chips and salsa—but my challenge is serving sizes. I don’t know where my tendency to overserve myself comes from; perhaps my great-aunt Lily’s love of feeding people has rubbed off on me. She is the best cook in the family, and her meals are enough to feed twice as many people as she is serving. I have inherited this need to prepare an abundance of food, despite the fact that there are only two of us eating. When I first met Christopher, he was working on watching his weight. He measured out his breakfast cereal to fit the recommended serving size and ate his dinner off of smaller-sized salad plates to keep from eating too much, a concept I didn’t understand. It didn’t take long for me to break him of that habit, as I tend to pile our plates high. At times Christopher puts some back, but I usually don’t.

  Taking our own issues into consideration, we needed to come up with a plan for how to eat. We decided that we would be mindful of what we were spending, but staying under a particular dollar amount was not our goal. We would eat as healthfully as possible, and w
henever we could, we would shop in a way that embodied what we believe (i.e., fair trade and organic). Because we were free to spend what we needed to, it would be up to us, not a budget, to keep our portion sizes to reasonable servings. We would eat whole grains and make sure we had several servings of fruits and vegetables each day.

  We left the grocery store after our first trip on our new plan having spent $155.38. Our total closely resembled what it had been before we started experimenting. We were surprised that we had spent so much, but the trunk was loaded with a cornucopia of lettuce, carrots, nectarines, blueberries, and strawberries, along with several different grains. When we got home, I set to work putting groceries away while Christopher started dinner: baked tofu with mashed parsnips and a green salad. As we finished eating, he told me that he had dessert planned and took my plate to the sink for me. I was instructed not to look so that I could be surprised. He returned with a small bowl of blueberries and strawberries. The berries had the perfect amount of tartness and were just sweet enough to be a delicious end to our meal. It was nice to have dessert, and a much better choice than the chocolate we usually go for.

  It was immediately apparent to us that while food was a large part of it, being healthy came from much more than just what we ate. In terms of healthy living, we had an advantage over many people. As we learned at the Food Justice conference, zip code, stress levels, and physical exercise were key factors in obesity rates. As stated before, we live in an area where we have a plethora of health food stores, farmers markets, and grocery stores. Our stress levels were about to be greatly reduced, since the start of this new project coincided with the end of our school year. This left us enough time on our hands to plan and prepare healthy meals and to get daily exercise. We promised ourselves to go to the gym at least four times a week and to do some type of physical activity for at least thirty minutes every day.

  While the prospect of this project was far more appealing than the other two, in some ways planning it was just as difficult. Health isn’t something that can be achieved in one month, after which you’re set for life; it needs to be maintained. We decided that we didn’t want this to be a one-month deal, we wanted to make a permanent lifestyle change that we would continue indefinitely. This month would be a trial run for how we wanted to live our lives. It wasn’t a month to work on weight, but to work on feeling healthy, energized, and good about how we were nourishing our bodies. This seemed to clash with the emphasis our culture puts on weight; looking good in our “skinny” jeans is often more important than overall well-being.

  During junior high and high school, I watched my parents and parents of friends try different diets. The one that sticks out for me was when my parents made a pot of some kind of soup at the beginning of the week and divided it into serving-size portions to last the week. They would add a variety of vegetables and grains on different days, according to the diet’s plan, and that was what they had for dinner each night. (I can’t remember what my sisters and I had for dinner, but we only ate the soup once or twice.) While a soup diet may help some to lose some weight, realistically it isn’t a permanent change that anyone could make. I don’t know if either of my parents lost any weight, but I don’t think the soup diet lasted for very long.

  It’s no surprise that my parents were looking for a quick fix, rather than a lasting change in their lives. Fad diets tend to be short-lived and do little to develop healthy lifestyle choices. Before starting our healthy eating plan, we hit the bookstores in our town to see what we could learn. In the nutrition and diet section, we found a wide variety of books about how to lose weight quickly or without giving up the foods you love, but few and far between were the books that talked about making enduring changes to the way we think about food.

  On TV there is a constant barrage of commercials about pills, or more recently, machines that can help people lose weight with no effort. When I worked at the grocery store, I had the opportunity to see the outrageous number of magazines geared toward women and teen girls that had tips for losing weight fast, or the latest abdominal workout that required only a few minutes a day to give you that six-pack stomach. My favorite was a magazine that featured on its cover each week women who had lost inordinate amounts of weight, often holding up a pair of their old pants next to their newly thin body, and the promise that readers could find out how they could do this, too. This magazine featured decadent cakes on the same cover. Men are also subject to magazine and TV images of what the ideal male looks like. There are continuous conflicting messages of “eat” or “look like a supermodel.” On several occasions during lunch at school, I have overheard teenage girls talking about not eating something or other because they want to lose weight.

  Christopher has struggled with weight issues since childhood, so we’d have to consider that while planning our new healthy eating style. I don’t have an issue with my weight, but I fight daily battles with self-image. My logical mind recognizes that I am small (five three) and relatively slim, but I still find myself looking in the mirror and dissecting every part of my body, wondering why my legs are not just a little bit longer and a little bit thinner. Countless times I have turned to Christopher to ask, “Does this make me look fat?” or “Does my butt look big in this?” He usually sighs and says, “Why do you ask me that? You know I think you look fine.” I have come to realize, though, that when I feel good, no matter what the scale may say, I feel better about myself. Taking back our health included taking control of what we eat. Instead of being bound by the supermarket, we would need to declare our independence, and one way we planned to do this was to start growing our own food.

  I have made several attempts at gardening in the five years Christopher and I have been together. In the first house we lived in, I attempted to grow tomatoes and bell peppers on our back patio, a venture that went well until we took a weeklong trip and I forgot to ask Christopher’s sister, who was staying at our house, to water the plants. When we bought our home, I was excited about the raised flower beds in the backyard. I could picture myself tending to my garden and bringing in the small harvest for our dinners. But the two curious toddlers that we call dogs crushed that fantasy.

  In early May 2009, I decided to do my gardening on our front patio, an area that the dogs are never in without supervision. This is when my ideas of growing our own food turned into an obsession. When I was younger, it seemed that the only people I knew who were gardening were “old.” My grandparents and my great-aunt Lily were the gardeners in my life, and while I loved getting to eat the results of their hard work, I had no interest in taking it up. If asked where produce comes from, I most likely would have rolled my eyes and said, “The grocery store.” My own views on where my veggies came from were probably not too far away from those of my niece Kylie, who, at the age of three, laughed at me when I told her that I eat plants. She was skeptical when I told her that some of her favorite foods, cucumbers and strawberries, were plants and they grew in the ground. But now it seems that everyone I know has at least one or two planters where they are growing tomatoes or beans. I’ve had several in-depth conversations with a student who spent a weekend building raised beds and learning how to make mulch. Even my mom is growing herbs in the backyard. Earlier this year, gardening got a celebrity endorsement when First Lady Michelle Obama started a garden.

  As I began to bring home pots and seeds on a weekly basis, Christopher commented that if he knew how much I was into plants, he would have given me a bag of potting soil for my birthday. And it is true: I do love to watch my vegetables grow. What started as a patio garden expanded with my unstoppable desire to plant every seed I could get my hands on.

  When we could afford to have a fence put up to keep the dogs out of the garden, we added a few more raised planters in the backyard. One evening I was out transplanting kale seedlings into the garden. I had on my ridiculous wide-brimmed gardening hat and sunglasses, and I was singing along to Rilo Kiley blasting from my iPod. I had been trying to figure o
ut what had been eating holes in the leaves, thinking it was the birds who had become frequent visitors to our porch. While transplanting, I discovered several small green worms enjoying my kale. Oblivious to my surroundings, I carefully picked each worm off the plants and placed them on the stone of the planter, while I examined the leaves for more intruders. I have no idea how long I was engrossed with my chore, but when I scooped up the worms to relocate them, I screamed, suddenly realizing that someone was standing next to me. It was Christopher.

  “How long have you been there?” I asked.

  He laughed. “At least five or six minutes. I thought you knew I was here; I didn’t know why you were ignoring me.”

  I relocated my worms to the other side of the fence and turned back to look at my hard day’s work. Christopher appreciates the garden, but he doesn’t share the same love for the dirt that I do. There’s something to be said for taking a tiny seed and watching it grow into a beautiful bunch of chard or bright red tomatoes. However, one of my weaknesses as a gardener is my unwillingness to thin the sprouts. You need to plant more seeds than will be able to survive, so that you can choose the strongest ones to continue growing and pick the smaller ones away. Once something has sprouted, it makes me sad to remove it. I had one starter pot where I had accidentally planted a Swiss chard and a rainbow cherry tomato together. My intention was to separate them, but by the time I was ready to transplant, they were so intertwined that I couldn’t tear them apart. Rather than sacrifice one to save the other, I planted them together and figured the strongest plant would win out in the end. As of this writing, that particular chard plant is the biggest, yet the tomato is still thriving. It’s when I share information like this that Christopher smiles at me and says, “That’s great, baby. It’s getting dark; are you going to stay out here all night?”