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Eating Right

I hope I am in the 10% here for eating healthy. For me that has meant shopping for produce exclusively from ethnic grocery stores - we have one here that caters to a diverse set of ethnicities and is my favorite place to browse and learn about sauces, spices and condiments. This place carries an assortment of fruit, vegetables and greens so its possible to create some variety in our meals. If my only option was the larger grocery chains, it would be a lot harder. There is not enough to work with given what I grew up eating. People stay with what they know as a baseline and add new things to it. Without my favorite grocery store I could not have established the much needed baseline where I can combine comfort with eating healthy. With that, it is possible to venture further afield and try new things that are also good for me. 

It may well be that a lot of people in this 90% set are unable to establish a baseline of healthy and comfortable with the options they have easy access to so there is tendency to veer towards convenience which may not always be the healthy option. Recently, I decided to recreate from memory a wonderful pulpo a la gallega dish I had in Barcelona a while back. It took me many hours to get to the final product having to rely on how I remembered the taste and finding a way to get close to it. This was just as rewarding an experience as cooking hilsa with mustard sauce for a friend a few months ago. 

Unlike the octopus recipe, I can cook the hilsa like my grandmother effortlessly - I have muscle memory of every step of the process. What both experiences have in common is the mental immersion into the act of preparing food that is well loved. The higher the degree of effort the less likely we are to eat mindlessly - you want to enjoy the fruit of your labor. That is a big part of eating healthy and I try to create as many opportunities to do this part right. 

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