What do you usually eat, drink and cook?
Since the recurring thread here is about recent changes you make to your diet or events where you eat things you usually don't eat these threads tend to be kinda empty so I made this post.
(Bonus question: When you first began buying your own food did you try new stuff or stuck to the diet you already had?)
Anyway:
The breakfast is usually "Hokkaido milk bread" (this loaf but less tall which we just call "Pão de leite" or "Milk bread" here) with mayonnaise and a slice of bologna.
The lunch and dinner are the 2 Brazilian staples of Rice and Beans with the "mix" (at least that's the translation of what my parents call it) which is just the third food, usually either meat, eggs or chicken, the meat and chicken being in a more often flattened or less often more cubical shape. (I'm not sure how to describe this.) and more occasionally sausage and nuggets, and strogonoff. Sometimes there's also usually screw noodles. I cook the eggs and nuggets myself and basically try to get them to be crunchy without them getting burnt.
Often around 5 PM I will eat a few guava barrinhas.
On Saturday the dinner is instead either Sfihas (That's what they're called in English? That's the weirdest anglicization I've heard of. If you don't know, it's just a smaller pizza that's usually not eaten in slices.) from which I usually pick the ones of chicken with catupiry but increasingly more pepperoni with catupiry or Whoppers, which I prefer without Pickles or tomatoes.
After a meal I'll usually drink either juice in they sell in sachets or cartons or I'll drink guaraná soft drinks if they're there. After a snack I'll drink strawberry yogurt.
If I bought my own food I would try a lot of different vegetables to see if any of them are any good and I would try to see if there's a healthier replacement for basically putting the oil you use to cook on my plate, since I've heard consuming that oil is quite unhealthy.
I often buy tomatoes at the grocery store. Regular, Italian when I get a chance. Ripe to very ripe. They're usually pretty good. Canned tomato sauce is much cheaper but the real thing taste so much better it's almost as if they're two different things. I cut each tomato in four pieces, removing only the bulbous part with the stem. Everything else goes in the blender with some onions, a bunch of fresh garlic, and water. Blend everything and put it in a large pot.
I add salt, olive oil and black pepper, tasting along the way. I let it boil and add water as needed to achieve the right color and consistency. Tomato sauce gets naturally red, no need to add colorant or anything artificial.
If I'm feeling fancy, I can add some mushrooms, ground beef, textured soy protein, or braised collard greens. Whatever there's in the kitchen.
While that happens I boil the water and cook the pasta, mentally timed to be done at the same time as the sauce. When I feel that it is done, I turn it off, add some oregano and put the lid on.
Any pasta goes. Again, whatever I have in the kitchen. It varies. I store the remaining sauce in the fridge, sometimes I freeze some. We eat pasta in most of our meals until it is over.
Simple and delicious, just the way I like it.
Almost no change at all. But I cook a lot more myself, of course.
When we're not meal prepping, my go to meals are more like snacks.
Breakfast: Either a protein bar or yogurt with fresh fruit (strawberries and blueberries)
Lunch: Cheese, whole wheat crackers (usually Triscuits), apple, and almonds
Dinner: Salad - lettuce, spinach, cucumber, roasted turkey, sunflower seeds, avocado, feta cheese, balsamic vinegar
Snacks: Pork rinds, frozen blueberries with salt, peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
For some reason I can eat that everyday for long periods of time. If I lived alone, I most likely would rarely cook.
For the bonus question: I had no cooking skills when I was first on my own, so I mostly ate like crap. I think I got most of my nutrition from drinking milk. Since I was never really allowed snack foods growing up, I tried all kinds of things from the television that I had always wanted, but never got - name brand chips were my first culinary adventure lol, followed by sugared cereals and candies of all sorts. The very first things I bought though were wonderbread and smuckers jelly, both of which were a total letdown. I checked out a desert cookbook from the library, and tried my hand at that, but even though I liked the taste of some of what I made, the effort was more than I cared for. So the answer to your question is I tried new things. Even now, the only food I make that comes from my family is meatloaf, fried chicken, and biscuits and gravy, and I didn't get those recipes until I was in my thirties.