Friday, January 30, 2009

Eating Habits

Just wondered what everyone does about eating. I know I should eat healthier, and I try some, but could do better. Here's a sampling of my daily meals:

On weekdays, I eat cold breakfast cereal, usually Rice Chex, with white toast and butter spread.

For lunch, I usually have a large, warm meal at the bank cafeteria not far from the office - something with pasta and chicken, if that's available, along with a roll with real butter and skim milk.

For dinner, I eat piecemeal with whatever is around the house that I can fix in our microwave. That often means hamburger or chicken thighs, along with either a microwaved baked potato or microwaved french fries, with an English muffin and butter spread. Then it's on to desert, which I only indulge in at dinner. It's usually a small bag of those tiny Entenmann muffins, like blueberry or banana chocolate chip, followed sometimes by taco chips. Cafeine Free Pepsi Free at dinner is a must.

Friday nights are often carryout nights for gyros or Italian beef and fries, or maybe pizza. Once in a while, we splurge for Chinese takeout on nights other than Fridays, but not too often.

Once in a blue moon I cook something special over the weekend, like a roast or an entire chicken. Otherwise, it's my usual staples, pasta with tomato sauce, hamburger and mushrooms, or chicken thighs.

That's a sample of what I usually eat, barring special occasions when we go out to dinner, which we don't do often.

I don't pay much attention to my characters' eating habits in my books, which I should. Next time around, I'll include them.

Time to eat now. What about you? What are your eating habits? What about the characters in your books? Do they have eating foibles? Please share.

When I'm really busy over the weekend I eat peanut butter on white bread to hold me down until I can eat.

18 comments:

  1. Hi Morgan,
    Argh, I don't even want to think about my eating habits. Like you, I have staples, mostly carbs. I def. need to incorporate some fruits and veggies.

    Thanks for stopping by my blog! Have fun finishing your manuscript. :-)

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  2. Anonymous6:04 AM

    I FINALLY found the perfect diet for me just a year ago. It's not really a diet, it's a lifestyle eating habit of "grazing." I eat 6 to 8 small meals every 2 to 3 hours apart from early morning til about 1 hour before bed. I can eat anything, all kinds of variety, but I just watch the total calories. I'm never stuffed and never hungry, I get wonderful "treats" all day long, and I've lost 30 pounds cuz my metabolism is always working and my body does not hoard calories anymore cuz it knows it's getting fed within a couple hours all the time.

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  3. I'm a veggie girl! I love salads!!! Crave them. Well, salads and water. But you'd never know it from looking at me! LOL! So far, because I'm writing for teens, I try and give them somewhat healthier teen appetites, but I really limit it to saying things like "After Dinner--or During lunch" and keep away from it completely.

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  4. I'm a vegan - total vegetarian - so most people think my eating habits are strange! I go for the grazing approach, eating several small meals a day, although there are times when I just get busy and forget to eat. But we eat a lot of pastas, breads, grains, and vegetables in this house, plus a lot of soy products. I love debunking the "eat fewer carbs to lose weight" theory! 80% of my diet is carbs and I'm a size two...

    L. Diane Wolfe
    www.circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com
    www.spunkonastick.net
    www.thecircleoffriends.net

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  5. Anonymous8:30 AM

    I saw a dietician so I'm on a balanced diet higher in protein since I lift weights.

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  6. Anonymous8:38 AM

    I eat one meal a day, a cheese sandwich with a TV dinner. Before I leave for work at night I have one protein shake. Other than that it's coffee.
    bill

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  7. I do the bulk of the cooking for our blended family here -consists of my daughter, her husband and their two children, ages 5 and almost 3 -and of course, me. Three adults -not really a problem but because both the little ones are autistic and have some quirks about foods and can be down right obnoxious about eating only certain food types -mainly pasta -it can get a little difficult at times trying to figure out a supper meal that provides a decent variety for the adults and contains something the kids will most likely eat too. I try NOT to box myself in to where I am cooking one entree for the adults and a completely different meal for the kids so if I am fixing something the kids will definitely not touch with a ten foot pole, I generally try to cook that for us when I know I have some kind of leftovers in the fridge that the kids will eat. Last night, for example, we had stuffed peppers -which in the past, the kids would usually eat the rice and meat anyway but last night, neither of them would eat that. THe little guy as a matter of fact smeared his "stuffing" all over the table, tossed a lot of it on the floor too. We would have called our neighbor to bring her dog over for supper -to clean up the food on the floor -had her phone not been busy!
    It's a struggle at times but since the kids will usually eat pasta, I do fix a lot of casserole type meals. That way they do get a little bit of balance in their meals. Fruits here generally go to waste as no one is that big on them, especially not the kids as the little guy won't eat ANY fruit and his sister -grapes and raisins are it in the fruit dept. Veggies are something they aren't overly fond of either but if they are in casseroles, I figure they might manage to get a tiny bit of the veggie, mainly by accident, but there, all the same.
    Makes for a kind of boring kitchen duty at times, same old, same old. And I never thought I'd see the day that I wouldn't want to eat pasta cause I love it -just would like to have a bit of a change now and again.

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  8. I forgot about stuffed peppers. I'll have to try making them some weekend. I think I can manage. (g)

    Morgan Mandel

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  9. Anonymous11:08 AM

    On New Year's day I began eating Home Depot hot dogs. I eat three or four a day. I just can't get enough! Chef Pablo and I have become great friends. We sit on the curb eating out hot dogs and talk about things like the INS and the health department. The guy's a wealth of information. - Snooks

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  10. I discovered I'm sensitive to gluten- which means, pasta, bread, pizza crust, cakes, cookies, etc...all out of my diet.

    Surprisingly-no weight has been lost.

    No gluten can mean high fat-since I'm eating more protein- I'm working on it, though. ;)

    Oh- and Morgan- One of the books I'm reading has a heroine who eats gluten free...

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  11. I am as bad as they come, although I try to avoid most the high in fat and fried foods. I give in to tiramisu cake or chocolate chip cookie often.
    I've noticed that I do a lot better on high protein and low carb diet, and I always try to avoid white breads. But then I go the local store and they have those yummy, hot, straight from the over rolls... irresistible!

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  12. EAting habits, eh? Just the thing as I sit down to a snack. It's left-over Chinese from last night!

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  13. Anonymous4:18 PM

    As much as I love food and cooking, I hate having to grocery shop and keeping the fridge stocked. I'll welcome the day when kitchen gnomes magically deliver our food on a regular basis. We eat pretty well when there is food in the house (like I said, I love to cook), but things go downhill fast when we run out of produce and meat.

    I have been thinking of going vegetarian (the kind where I could still eat diary, fish and eggs), but I'm not sure how long that would last.

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  14. Anonymous6:54 PM

    Eating habits? They're for other folks right? I sit in front of the computer until I am so hungry that I am almost faint, then I grab something quick to micro and eat, you bet - in front of the computer. Actually my fave of all is Dr. Pepper. I drink that to kill the apetite to keep me going longer. Someday I am going to write the Dr. Pepper company and tell them they owe me some publicity or something because I always have a wall of boxes of Dr. Pepper in my kitchen. I even took a picture once. ha ha
    Jo Ann Hernandez
    http://bronzeword.wordpress.com

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  15. Fortunately my husband took over the kitchen when he retired so I have a fairly healthy diet. My characters, however, eat the junk food I would eat if I had to prepare my own mels.

    Jane Kennedy Sutton
    http://janekennedysutton.blogspot.com/

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  16. I wish I could say I had a healthy, consistent diet. But I don't. About the only thing I'm consistent about is eating a banana (when I have them) about an hour or so after I wake up. If I could live without carbs, that would be good since once I start, it's hard to quit. What I should do is prepare the next day's meals the night before so all I'd have to do is eat - not stand in the kitchen trying to conjure up food.

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  17. I tend to eat a gluten/wheat free cereal for breakfast (one cup) and only use the milk to moisten it..I hate milk unless it's got chocolate in it! I love raw almonds, yogurt with agave syrup and fresh fruit... salads with roast chicken... and yup, I usually eat a healthful dinner. But when I splurge...CARBS!!!!!! And red wine. Every night it's at least one glass of the wine...I have to watch the carbs and wheat - I get tired and gain weight when I have too much. Love brown rice pasta.

    My characters eat all the things I can't eat and they enjoy them. Or, rather, all the things I could eat when my metabolism was in shape!

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  18. What a variety of eating habits and styles! It was fun to read all the comments. We eat a lot of Tex-Mex foods and almost everything is prepared from scratch by me - including the refried beans. Do you see me patting myself on the back? (lol)

    Seriously, when I discovered after about 8 years of marriage that Mexican food was my husband's favorite, I learned how to cook it!

    Snacks we avoid are soft drinks and chips. What else is left, you ask?

    As for the main character in our book, our son John, he ate super well. When he was young we copied a food target with the best foods in the middle on our refrigerator and if he wasn't sure whether he liked something he would check the target and if it was near the middle, he would chow down with no questions asked. His downfall was pickles. Because his grandfather would take him down to the store and buy him a pickle and they would eat pickles together, they were his absolute favorite food even though they were on the outer rim of the food target!

    Sharon
    http://grandmaisawriter.blogspot.com

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