How I Feed Myself

I am obsessed with food.  I watch Top Chef religiously; I spend way too much money in restaurants; and when I am unhappy, a surefire way to make me happy again is to feed me good food.  That being said, I hate the fact that I have to feed myself regularly.  I'd far rather eat five really amazing meals per week than have to deal with the tedium of three meals a day, seven days a week.

Tonight, I was driving home late from a long Monday in my inner city clinic, when I realized that I was far too hungry (HAANGRY) to finish making the beef and barley soup I'd started yesterday.  There were a few things in my freezer, but I was not feeling virtuous enough to eat lentil soup or bean-packed chili.  I wanted something tasty.  My initial impulse was to go to McDonald's, but I haven't been back since my nieces informed me that there were 17 ingredients in their fries.  (I was under no illusion that McDonald's food was healthy, but I though that at least their fries were potatoes fried in oil and salted.  Nope.  I was 17 kinds of wrong on that one.)

So I decided to stop at the store.  And what I was really craving was pizza.  I could've just picked up a frozen pizza, but I've mostly been cooking at home lately, and as a result most processed food tastes like cardboard to me.  So I picked up some pita bread for crusts, along with pizza sauce, cheese, canned mushrooms, and pepperoni.  And 1 hour and 15 minutes after I pulled into the parking lot, I pulled six of these out of my oven:

(Only five are shown, because one was in my stomach by the time the photo was taken.)  Once again, the light is terrible (no natural light after 5:30!), but the pizza is super yummy.  Look closer...

Mmmm.  Given that I have five leftover pizzas to freeze, this works out to about 12 minutes per meal for shopping and cooking time.  And that's probably a bit of an overestimate for how long it took, as I spent the last 15 minutes or so sitting on the couch eating my pizza while the remaining pizzas baked.

So this is how I feed myself:  batch cooking.  I am absolutely not going to come home every night and cook for myself, but I am happy to cook big batches of food and freeze leftovers.  Whenever I hear someone say that they don't like leftovers (like my mother), I look at them like they've just grown a second head, because leftovers are my entire cooking strategy.  All hail leftovers!

(Yes, I recognize that pizza is not the healthiest dinner.  When I eat the leftovers, I'll probably invest a bit of extra time into making a salad or some veggies to make it healthier, which will likely stretch the pizzas even farther, as a whole pizza is a lot of food on its own.  With a big serving of veggies, I can probably get ten meals out of the rest of the pizza.  Also, I generally eat pretty healthy food, so I figure that on a day when I am tired and grouchy and just want to eat a quarter pounder washed down with liquid sugar, a homemade pizza is probably acceptable.)

What is your cooking strategy?

Financial Personalities

I am very lucky to have a few super long-term friends, the longest-term of whom is my friend L.  L and I met in kindergarten, and we have lived fairly parallel lives ever since (same elementary/junior high/high school, same university, same medical school, same residency site, and now working at the same hospital).  Although our lives have been pretty similar, we are nonetheless very different people.  Where L is outgoing, I'm a classic introvert.  Where I am uptight and neurotic, she is laid-back and has a laissez-faire attitude.  She chose to be an Emergency physician because she loves the fast pace and variety, while I chose to be an Internal Medicine sub-specialist so that I could spend lots of time thinking and pouring over medical minutiae.  We're closer-than-sister friends, but very different in many respects.

As an introvert, I cling tightly to established relationships, so I make it a priority to maintain my friendship with L.  Because we're both busy people, the easiest way for us to do this is to get together for dinner, which we try to do once a month.  (This is one of the reasons my eating out budget is ridiculously high.)  Earlier this week, we met at a local restaurant for cocktails, charcuterie, and a chance to catch up on everything that's happening in our lives.  And one of the subjects that came up was money.

Having known her for 35 years, L is one of the few people with whom I can honestly talk about money.  So I talked frankly about how I'm horribly a little bit obsessive about saving money, about how closely I monitor my net worth, and about how much I would love to have enough to retire right now, even though I probably wouldn't.  As I talked, I could see a bemused little smile form on her face.

"Oh my god, Solitary!  You're a physician.  Stop worrying about money so much!  You have enough money.  Just spend it!"

She then proceeded to tell me about her financial strategy, which is basically to meet with her financial advisor once a year to review her debt repayment strategy and investment strategy, after which she spends whatever money is left over.  She doesn't really know her net worth, and she certainly doesn't know her daily net worth like I do.  But with how little attention she pays to her money, she is vastly less stressed about finances than I am.

Now...I have no idea whether her financial strategy is a good one or not.  She might be saving only a small percentage of her earnings, thus ensuring that she will need to work til 65 or beyond, in which case her approach isn't great.  But she spends pretty reasonably for a high income earner, and she does recognize the importance of saving, so I suspect she's doing okay.  And as I just said, she is vastly less stressed about finances than I am.

Which makes me wonder:  Is a person's stress level about money inherent and inflexible, or can it be changed?  If I start paying less attention to my finances, could they be less of a source of anxiety for me, or is this just part of my innately anxious personality?  I had thought that building up a solid net worth would get rid of my financial worries altogether, but it has really only lessened them slightly.  I'm now convinced that achieving Financial Independence is the key, but I'm not certain that even that will be enough.  Maybe I'm just hard-wired to worry?

Are you anxious (reasonably or unreasonably so) about your finances?  If so, how do you deal with it?

Choices

Last night, my girlfriend took me to my favourite Ethiopian restaurant for a meal to celebrate my first day as an attending.  We ordered one vegetarian platter and one meat platter, which is too much food for two people to eat, but not quite enough food to leave a good serving of leftovers.  After my girlfriend had given up, while I was still trying to finish off every last tasty morsel, we had the following conversation.

Girlfriend:  "You know...if you stop eating now, we could share a mint Oreo Blizzard for dessert."

Me (pausing while bringing a handful of food to my mouth):  "What if I want to keep eating, but I also want to have a mint Oreo Blizzard for dessert?"

GF:  "Well...you're an adult and you can make choices for yourself.  My only request is that you not vomit in the car on the way home."
 
Me (reluctantly returning the handful of food to the plate):  "You never let me have any fun."