Something else about diet

   I hate this word 'diet'. When people tell me about diet, I immediately imagine pieces of sour grapefruit and a bland vegetable soup with nothing in it but fresh cabbage or sauerkraut, that's what we ate at my time in my old country. I remember when my husband told me that he was going on a diet and asked me to cook a vegetable soup for him. I tried to make it taste better so I put some hot pepper in it. Very little, just to flavor it. My husband was so angry at me. He told me that I ruined his diet soup, so I had to cook it again without hot pepper in it. My husband was eating this soup for a whole day and no matter how often he ate it, he still felt hungry, so at the end of the day he told me he could not do it any more and fried himself two eggs with butter, as he could not stand this diet.
   In my country I tried to starve myself in order not to gain weight. It was easy as we did not have a lot of food and people knew how to maximize what they had and stretch food so it lasted longer.
  I know my mom did that too just differently. If she did not have enough food she would drink some tea with sugar and a piece of bread with margarine. Not the best diet. I did not like margarine and I eliminated sugar from my drinks after my first son was born though I did not know that sugar is bad for you at that time. I just felt it 's better to put less empty calories into my food.
   Here in Canada I see another problem. If you do not have a lot of money, cheapest food is not the best in quality and has lots of preservatives and just dubious chemicals that do not do anything for your nutritional requirement. Some people I know just go and buy some pizza for lunch and leftover of it might serve as a dinner.
    I do not spent a lot of energy now as I am not working and do not have to jump from my bed and run to catch the bus. But I still want to eat good affordable food and not to feel malnourished and not to gain extra weight. I am used to eating small portions but I still need those portions though here in London, Ontario I have to walk quite a distance in order to get some affordable food as close to my place on Dundas street there is nothing but pizza places on every corner and I cannot treat pizza as a regular meal. There is a small grocery store close to Adelaide St on Dundas but it's not cheap at all. I still don't know if butter is really bad for you as olive oil is expensive, nuts are not cheap either. My friend in Toronto (where you can find a lot of cheap food places by the way), she does not eat meat or fish, just vegetables and fruits and nuts. but for me such diet does not feel right and I think that counting calories is the stupidest thing that was invented by food industry to distract us from food quality and prices. I don't know anything about organic food but prices on that are overwhelming. Best I can do is to buy organic eggs sometimes, not often.
   Market in London is not cheap but sometimes you can buy some groceries on discount or some fruit salads that you can eat as it's easy for me to buy a ready made salad than regular fruits separately and make my own with one hand in use. Other salads I just do not like, though I eat tomatoes when I manage to buy the good ones.
   Right now it's the right season to have tomatoes and prices are not bad. In winter they will be more expensive and rather tasteless. In winter I prefer cabbage salad or may be some salads from a jar. Though those from a jar are not cheap either. They started to sell boiled peeled beats in a vacuumed package in Dollarama. I find it very convenient for a beat salad and it costs one dollar and 25 cents for a half-kilo of ready for anything product. Very nice.