What to have for lunch? Try the peaches and banana

If you’re looking for something to have for lunch, try the peaches and banana. Not only will they fill you up, but you’ll consume vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants and still not gain appreciable weight. Not bad if you’re like me, not so young and watching everything you eat.

Why not? After all, the body is no longer what it once was, the food-grinding machine of a sixteen-year-old, or a twenty-six-year-old, for that matter.

Cheeseburgers or egusi/melon soup with mashed yams are delicious foods, but you don’t always need to eat them, unless of course you’re lucky enough to be into manual labor.

But I’m not so lucky as I mostly do sedentary work. It’s not that I don’t like my job, but I wish it came with some real physical activity, enough to constantly sweat and keep the weight off, but not so much that it tires your ankles, knees, and bones. I’ll need them when I’m ninety, like my nonagenarian friend. Well that’s for sure.

For starters, peaches and bananas go together like water and cement. In combination, they will satisfy your hunger and satisfy your appetite.

If you’re wondering where to get fresh peaches and bananas, stores like Big Y, Stop and Shop are my favorites. Locate a store near you where you can easily get your supply of fresh peaches and bananas.

Until I started writing this article, I never knew that peaches could refresh the body, face, skin appearance, and could even slow down the aging process. You don’t need any more reasons to include peaches on your menu, do you?

One particular afternoon I was looking for something to have for lunch instead of almonds. I usually skip lunch because I don’t think lunch is important, especially if you’re like me with a sedentary lifestyle. I sit all day, occasionally getting up to stretch out a hand, but quickly sitting back down in a chair.

The point is that I don’t do much and therefore I don’t deserve much food. Some days, however, when she was hungry (not without a sense of guilt), she would drive to a nearby store and buy a bag or two of almonds. I’d immediately go back to the car, my finger opening the little plastic bag and decanting nuts, three or five at a time, until I was done. After that, I would face the other pack and take a hit like I did the first. Each bag contained 130 calories, so this little snack gave me 260 calories.

Most of the time my hunger would fade, allowing me to continue my sedentary lifestyle of sitting on my stool throughout the day, occasionally standing up if I need to emphasize a point when talking to parents and their children, doing the best I can. I can to alleviate, even temporarily, their physical and sometimes mental afflictions.

Do not misunderstand. There are times when I go from one consulting room to another, down the short hallway to the refrigerator to select a shot or reach out to rummage through the wall cabinets for a needle, syringe or gloves.

No one in their right mind would call any of these activities anything but sedentary, for which a heavy load of food, such as mashed yams or Garri, or rice, goat meat, soup, chips, hamburgers, or sandwiches, would be unnecessary. That’s why I tried to keep my lunch very simple and limited to walnuts and almonds.

So that afternoon, when I was looking for what to eat instead of walnuts and almonds, my mind turned to bananas and peaches. Well, not that I’ve never eaten bananas or peaches, but I never knew they could be such a great replacement for my two pack of almonds at around 260 calories. Somewhere in my brain, the banana and peaches had been hiding in plain sight ever since I saw my son Jermane bite into a slice of banana and my daughter Amy bite into a piece of peach.

“Is that all the peaches you bought?” He had asked Amy when I saw her eating a large peach. “Yes, dad, I’m sorry,” she said.

The next day at lunch, instead of buying two packets of almonds at the corner store, I went to the ‘Stop and Shop’ grocery store and selected two firm but ripe peaches and a bunch of four ripe bananas and firm.

Back in my car I reached under the seats and found a half-full bottle of water with which I washed the peaches. I placed one peach on a clean napkin on the front passenger seat and held the other, re-examining it for dents and soft spots, which I don’t like on fruit.

Satisfied, my teeth bit into it and I took a piece of juicy peach. What a delicious, refreshing and slightly spicy flavor! The velvety feel of the skin made me want to hold the fruit a little longer, but hunger was getting the best of me.

Peaches are nutritious, packed with vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants. I don’t think they are given the respect they deserve among the fruit family.

The banana is a very popular and ubiquitous fruit, so there is no need to discuss it in detail, just to say that I take the time to choose my banana as I want it exactly the right way, not overripe or underripe, just ripe. , and strong and easy to peel from the top, not soft. Like peaches, bananas contain vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants.

As usual, the plantain did not disappoint and I ate two of the four. Shortly after my hunger passed, I began to suffer from post-gluttony despair.

Perhaps I have overindulged in food, sweet food that I still remember my grandmother warning me about when I was a child. I had run away to stay with her in my village in Akokwa, because I wanted to escape the scrutiny of my parents. My mother in particular used to come to my room very often to see how she was doing and she would ask me: “Are you alright, my son?” even though all she wanted to know was who he was dating. Grandma never worried about any of that; she brought bitter leaf soup with dried fish to me, her eighteen-year-old grandson: bitter leaf soup, cooked with dried fish.

Oh, I miss grandma. Forgive me where I’ve gone astray, but I thought you should understand the kind of person I am, at least a little bit of what I was as a child.

Compelled by the kind of person I’ve become, I added up the calories and cost of two peaches and two bananas. One peach, the size I ate, was about 70 calories, two of them 140 calories. Let’s say one giant banana contains 150 calories, two would contain 300 calories. Together, two large peaches and two huge bananas add up to about 440 calories; It’s not that expensive either, all for the price of just $2.00.

Peaches and bananas fill the stomach better than two small packets of almonds. The next time you’re wondering what to have for lunch, try two peaches and two bananas. I promise you will enjoy them. If you’re a weight watcher, don’t feel guilty; you will have had a healthy meal and only consumed about 500 calories.

FINAL

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