Dietary Habits of the Healthy Pensioner

Weird practices that may shock or amuse you

Prices adjusted for inflation - AI responsible for spelling of FOOD

For more than half of our 55 years of marriage, my wife and I operated a “Mom and Pop” type of retail store. Although not as physically challenging as farming, it is every bit as perilous financially. On days when no customers come into the shop, the rent clock keeps ticking. I continue to be grateful for the fact that we closed and retired before the COVID shutdown. If we had still been in business for that we would have gone bankrupt.

Owning a store requires constant attention, especially if you choose to be open every day. You might imagine that it would be immensely profitable, and that we could dine out daily at the finest restaurants. That was not the case. Our meals were limited to a breakfast of coffee, lunch on the run, and dinner of whatever we could microwave. If we had continued this much longer, we would almost certainly have fallen victim to the litany of ailments associated with old age.

Fortunately retirement gave us the time to learn about nutrition, which I’ve expounded on here. Preparing meals was always a major challenge for my wife, particularly when we had three sons at home. Finding food that all of them would eat greatly limited the choices. In retirement, the last thing she wanted was to return to the daily meal challenge. If you are a newly-retired husband, I would strongly suggest you never utter these three words: “What’s for dinner?” My beloved is perfectly willing to prepare a meal, just don’t ask her to create a menu. I do the menu planning, and act as a sous chef.

Now in our 14th year of retirement, we’ve evolved to eating one actual meal each day. The morning starts and ends with a cup of coffee, which I suppose could be called breakfast. Our actual meal happens between 11:30am and noon. It’s my job to decide what it will be, and I do my best to assist in preparation and cleanup. My criteria are simple. It must be easy to prepare, it must be healthy, and cleanup should be easy. In cases where there are significant leftovers, they are served every day until they are gone. We can’t afford to throw away food, which no one should do if it can be avoided. So you might ask, “What do you eat?”

Stir Fry

The most important component is our Lodge cast-iron wok, which has paid for itself over and over. Frying is done in a combination of butter and olive oil. Onions and garlic are always included. Most of the vegetables come from Costco, which is still the most economical, even with inflation. They include organic broccoli, Baby Bella mushrooms, sugar snap peas (when available), cauliflower (if available), water chestnuts (from a can), baby corn (another can), bell peppers (when available), and carrots. The veg content varies, but buying most of it from Costco means there is always enough for at least 3 days. Day one involves a lot of chopping, but we then have lots of containers in the fridge for following days. The protein also varies. For a while it was chicken, from the famous Costco $5 chicken.

We’ve kind of backed away from that for a while, because there seems to always be random streaks of blood in the meat. I didn’t know why, until Dr. Cate explained. Chickens are now raised to mature quickly and have as much meat as possible. This is done through manipulation of their feed, hormones, and other techniques. The result is a bird that can barely walk (or at walk at all if it is raised in a cage). The bird’s weight is more than its muscles can carry, and creates stresses that affect the meat. I don’t fault Costco for this. The $5 chicken deal is a loss leader, and it’s in their best interest to get the most chicken for the lowest price. You would probably see blood streaks in just about all commercially sold chicken if you could view it before it got converted into breaded nuggets or fingers.

We still use chicken from time to time, just not the $5 ones. Canadian bacon (back bacon if you’re one of our neighbors to the north) is a good choice, as is ham, which is usually left over from holidays. (Side note - the best definition of eternity is two people and a ham.) Sausage is also a popular inclusion. What we don’t use, after disappointing experiences, is turkey (Thanksgiving or other) or beef (unless in grass-fed beef sausage).

OK, so you’re probably thinking, “Well that doesn’t seem that weird.” That’s because the last ingredient does not get added until the stir fry is put into the bowls that we prefer to plates for this dish. We add a handful of dried tart cherries from Michigan. These have some sugar (???) and have been coated with sunflower oil (!!!), and should not be eaten by anyone, ever. However the amounts of sugar and seed oil are very small, and we have resigned ourselves to the fact that we will not live forever. If this addition shortens life by ten or fifteen minutes, so be it. The cherries are a delightful addition and we won’t give them up. Don’t judge until you’ve tried it!

Sarnies

A sarnie is something that most Americans will not recognize. We are hard core fans of British television, especially murder mysteries. Our first encounter with sarnies was in the series Frost, starring David Jason. His character is an irascible detective with a love of sandwiches, which he calls sarnies. This meal is our Sunday dinner, as well as Monday lunch with the leftovers. It starts with grass-fed beef, from Costco, pre-cooked sous-vide. We brown it in a skillet, then make a sandwich using Ezekiel sprouted-grain bread. After toasting, the bread is spread very liberally with grass-fed Kerry Gold butter from Ireland. We may also add a bit of avocado if we have a ripe one. A side dish of something fermented is always included. This can be dill pickles, sauerkraut, or kimchi. We also include Siete grain-free tortilla chips fried in avocado oil. While the Sunday meal does require the meat to be browned a bit, there is enough left over so that Monday’s meal can be prepared with a couple of minutes in the microwave. Hands down, this is our favorite of the week and it never gets old.

A small variation on this is made with the aforementioned eternal ham. Slicing it and using the same bread makes for a fantastic grilled ham and cheese. The same side dishes and chips are included. The cheese is whatever we have on hand, usually cheddar/jack or mozzarella. If made with Canadian (back) bacon, sans cheese, this becomes a bacon sarnie, a British favorite. If you happen to be of the Kiwi persuasion, it’s a bacon butty. Our main departure from tradition is the use of sprouted whole grain bread, as true sarnies use white bread. Most of our American white bread is so free from any sort of nutrition that it’s out of the question.

Hot Dogs

I know what you’re thinking. Hot dogs? The very essence of terrible food! What a hypocrite! Rest easy, that’s just what we call them, but not what they actually are. We start with grass-fed beef sausage (Yes, Costco), but don’t use a bun. Instead we wrap the sausage in a tortilla from La Banderita, which is fully Keto compatible. Instead of wheat flour, these tortillas are made using resistant wheat starch. Resistant starch does not break down to glucose when digested, as white flour would. It’s basically a pass-through ingredient, if you’ll excuse the pun. Before rolling up the sausage in the tortilla, we apply mustard or ketchup. Both condiments are sugar-free using only healthy ingredients.

This may not sound like much of a meal, but these sausages are pretty substantial. With the addition of Siete chips, and perhaps an apple or orange, it’s enough.

Black Beans and Rice

This is yet another quick-to-fix meal. It starts with a can of black beans. We have tried making our own beans, but even with overnight soaking and the use of an Instant Pot, the result was far inferior to the can. We are careful to buy the beans that have no extra ingredients with names that sound like a chemistry class. The current stock in our pantry contains only black beans, water, and sea salt. The organic cilantro and lime rice is a microwave-ready version that is nearly identical to that of the legendary fast food emporium. It does have organic sunflower oil as one of the ingredients, but we treat that in the same way as the oil in the cherries mentioned above. It’s a small amount, probably there to keep the rice from sticking together.

Preparation is simple. Open the can, rinse the beans under running water, cook the rice (90 seconds), and dump into bowls. The rinsing is probably optional, but my better half likes it. One package of rice makes two bowls, and one can of beans is good for two servings and a touch more. Heat the beans and add to the bowl. But that’s only the beginning. Next comes the shredded cheese (cheddar or cheddar/jack), the salsa, and the sour cream. This combination is amazing, and we return to it often.

More Traditional Fare

Once or twice a year we may purchase a package of pork chops, a beef roast, or other something similar. These are split into separate packages, freezing what we won’t eat on the day we bought them. The Instant Pot is great for cooking them, as you can put the food in frozen. Again the preparation time is minimal. In addition to the meat we will have mixed vegetables, peas, or even potatoes. While potatoes are high in carbohydrates, when cooked and then cooled, the starch in them becomes resistant starch. Heating them back up does not change that. This allows us to enjoy favorites from our childhood, without creating a glucose spike.

Burgers

As with hot dogs, we do not use a bun. Instead we cut the burger in half and put it in a taco-sized flour tortilla, folded over. As previously mentioned, we use La Banderita tortillas, a staple in our favorite store. However virtually every company that makes tortillas now offers a Keto-friendly version.

Financial Considerations

A pensioners, living on a constrained income, we don’t have much left over to invest. Instead we invest in food, buying when it’s on sale and freezing it, or storing as canned goods. While we are not end-of-the-world prep fanatics, we do have enough to see us through a protracted period of shortage. I accept that our way of living is weird to most, but we are healthy, happy, and never hungry.

Note: We have no affiliation with any of the products mentioned, and receive no compensation from the companies. Our Costco membership does pay us a small rebate at year-end, but that’s based only on what we spend.