When I was nine years old I had my first experience with fast food, I was amazed.
The concept of fast food was totally new to me. I thought it was exciting that at nine years old I could go to Hardees (which was two houses down from mine) and order something, give them some of my allowance and within almost seconds receive my food. I thought to myself why did my mother never do this for me before, it was so easy! From that moment on, I was addicted to the concept of fast food. Cooking food at home was times of the past. Why would you do something that took so long when you could go to fast food, not even get out of your car, and within no time at all have food for the whole family. I even turned eating fast food at that age into a social event. I would invite all my friends there so we could hang out and eat at the same time. My favorite time to go was during the summer when it was really hot and my friends and I would get ice cream. We would order suicide cokes, which are different kinds of sodas mixed together. The employees that took our order knew exactly how we liked our cokes mixed up. This became sort of a home away from home for me. When I was eleven years old I was shot in the face by a BB gun while riding my bike home from school. My first instinct was ride my bike to Hardees, even though my house was only two more houses down. The manager at Hardees called the police and sat me down while she went to my house to get my mother. When I was twelve my mother remarried and we moved to the west side of Evansville where you cannot walk to any fast food businesses. In this marriage I acquired step siblings who were close to my age. We decided to bug our parents to buy us bikes so we were not stuck in the house all day in the summer. Our parents in turn bought us all brand new bikes. We now had a way to get to fast food. My newly acquired step siblings weren’t sure why I liked fast food as much as I did. They did not know the close relationships I had with the employees at Hardees. Fast food was more than just a place to eat for me at that age. This fast food “addiction” continued to get worse, especially after I got my drivers license. For the last three years my boyfriend and I have eaten at fast food together at least three times a day. This habits expense continued to grow. We found ourselves getting tired of the cheap stuff and we would “upgrade” our meals to a different choice on the menu. We saw how much we were spending on fast food, money which could be going somewhere productive like savings, and we were shocked. On an average day we would spend forty dollars a day just eating together.
This is when I decided to make a huge change in my life. This change has thrown me though a loop physically and mentally in the last six weeks. I decided I was no longer going to eat fast food. I was going to the grocery and cooking meals myself now. I did not know that something that seemed as simple as not wasting money on fast food and going to the grocery instead would be so difficult in so many ways. I had never been a frequent visitor of the grocery store or my kitchen, so being these two places felt very odd to me at first. The first time I went to the grocery store to get groceries I felt confused. I did not have a grocery list to go off of. I thought to myself what am I supposed to get. I walked up and down every aisle in the store looking at the food. Interesting enough, I did not walk in the produce section. I was not comfortable getting fresh fruit and vegetables. I had never had those things from fast food restaurants so I was ignorant as to what they were and how you used them to cook. After walking up and down every aisle in the store I had a cart full of food. I preceded to the check out lane……$258. I thought to myself, what am I doing this would be so much cheaper to stick with fast food. When I got home to unload all of these groceries my mother was laughing at me. As we were unpacking what seemed like thousands of groceries my mother stopped me and asked me to sit down so we could talk. My mother then told me that all of these groceries were the same concepts as fast food. Pretty much all of the food I had just gotten was microwavable or ready in less than five minutes. I did not even think of that while I was in the store, I was just looking for food that looked good. My mom’s words made perfect sense; I was sticking to what I was comfortable with. I then challenged myself. I do not know where my mother got all of her cookbooks but she has several. I dug though boxes in storage and found them. I sat down and made a grocery list from recipes that I thought might be good. After hours of this I went back to the grocery store. I did not feel confused anymore. I knew what I was there for. That trip to the grocery store was much cheaper. Being in the kitchen is still an uncomfortable feeling for me. My mother put a TV in there to make it a little easier to be in there without being bored. I have definitely stepped outside of my comfort zone with food and tried new things. I am now to the point that I do not even crave fast food or smell it when I am driving by. I am starting to enjoy cooking and trying new dishes. As hard as this transition has been for me so far I am looking forward to the new lifestyle it is sure to present.