I was already going to go with the 8, but the addition of the simple breakfasts and lunches seals it for me. I eat my main meal midday rather than in the evening, but I doubt I have more than 8 options I eat regularly, except for little tweaks that I could easily forgo. I do like a lot of different fruit varieties, but not so much that I couldn’t pick 8 to be satisfied with for the rest of my life - especially if I can get good seasonal fruit any time I want. Let’s see: Opal apples, Comice pears, large navel oranges, Champagne mangos, green grapes, Bing cherries, Golden apriums, watermelon – yeah, I’m good.
Also, I absolutely put myself in the “live to eat” category rather than the “eat to live” category. I eat only a limited menu, but I look forward to and savor it very much. I am devastated when I’m unable to get the things that I love to eat, and the prospect of being guaranteed them for life is a big reason that the 8 option sounds so good to me.
This thread is actually turning out to be more interesting than I thought - it is truly surprising to me how many people are going without hesitation for the “8 good meals” option. I would think that, unless you are quite a picky eater, either the infinite variety would be your first choice, or it would be a little hard to decide.
Contrarian that I am, the more people choose 8 set meals, the more I feel myself moving into the never-repeating column. However, if somehow this became a real choice instead of an idle message board game, I would definitely start by creating the best 8 meals I could imagine, and make my choice from there. (Based on post #24, I might enlist lobotomyboy63 to come up with a final menu. His preferences seem similar to mine.)
This thread is actually turning out to be more interesting than I thought - it is truly surprising to me how many people are going without hesitation for the “8 good meals” option. I would think that, unless you are quite a picky eater, either the infinite variety would be your first choice, or it would be a little hard to decide.
Contrarian that I am, the more people choose 8 set meals, the more I feel myself moving into the never-repeating column. However, if somehow this became a real choice instead of an idle message board game, I would definitely start by creating the best 8 meals I could imagine, and make my choice from there. (Based on post #24, I might enlist lobotomyboy63 to come up with a final menu. His preferences seem similar to mine.)
I don’t see how I could ever settle on 8 only, even with choices of 4 items per meal of main, vegetable, salad, starch, dessert thrown in. I’d be bored to pieces in just over a week.
I have my favorite dishes that rotate regularly into a lot of variety, maybe one favorite thing per week. Probably my most predictable favorite is I like to have a grilled rare steak on Friday nights. Even that’s not written in stone.
Everything changes from day to day. I’m an adventurous cook, love to master different cuisines and techniques. I get bored if I have to eat leftovers more than once so most of my large batch mains are designed to partially prepare, then freeze and finish in a variety of ways as I like.
Also, different preferences for meals depending on season. The idea of eating a heavy casserole in July… ugh. A Caprese salad in November seems equally incongruous.
Gotta have the variety, even if the meals are simple.
If the first choice were meals including ingredients I don’t hate, I’d go with that. As stated it is tougher. We do at least 3 - 4 new recipes a week, so I like variety. I don’t mind not repeating, since there are tons of recipes built around ingredients I love.
And 8 meals is very limiting.
So the first, if I’m allowed to pick around the raspberries and yams.
8 favorite meals for me, please! I tend to prefer simple foods and get tired of restaurant food very quickly, so the first option just sounds unappealing.
I just thought of something- there used to be a sushi place under where I lived. Grew to be friends with the owner/chef. I’d walk in and say “Surprise me!”, so i guess I have to vote for variety.
As a young thing working in another country for very little pay, I ate 3 not-great meals almost every day: A farmer’s cheese and lettuce sandwich on a small roll for breakfast (when I could afford it), the same thing for lunch, and instant rice cooked in powdered chicken stock mix for dinner. On a weekend I might get a coffee and a pita with falafel and vegetables, or a handful of pistachios. So I know I could do it, but it was no pleasure.
How different would the every-dish-is-different dishes actually be? I always joke that every dish I make is unique, because (other than baking, which is chemistry), I just tend to use what I have an an agreeable manner. For example, when I make macaroni and cheese, whichever cheeses I have dictates that particular dish.
And then, is there a guarantee that I won’t be served things that are culturally abhorrent? I might be okay skipping the beetroot if I don’t like it, but I’d hate to have a string of dog-based dishes. And, wow, for our Muslim and Hindu friends, the possibilities are even worse.
That’s what I’m thinking. Both options would be pretty horrible.
Stuck with just eight meals and eating the same things over and over and over again. Not even having a variety in the order they’re served. I would quickly come to hate all of the food on my short list and I would dream about all of the foods that aren’t on my list.
Or.
Never haven’t any control over what I eat. And on the occasions when I’m served something I like, knowing I will never be able to eat it again for the rest of my life. Plus quickly running out of any normal meals and eating things which are more and more strange. (Think about it. Write down a list of a thousand different meals. You’re probably going to use every meal you can think of. That’s just your first year.)
Since it is only a silly hypothetical, you can set whatever conditions you want. But that’s not what I had in mind. You could continue to eat the same ingredients throughout your life, just not in identical preparations. So you might have grilled salmon with lemon, salmon sushi, pesto-crusted salmon, salmon teriyaki, etc. etc.
If your interpretation were what the SDMB imposed, yuck - definitely the 8 meals would be the way to go.
No, the Op made that quite clear later- you could have a thousands of variations just on a cheeseburger for example. Just for Fast food you got McD, In & out, Carls, BK, Fosters freeze, Dairy Queen, Jack in the box, white castle, Shake Shack, Fat burger,Smashburger, Wendys, A&W,Fuddruckers, and many more- and each of them have quite a few CB variations. Then, every American style restaurant in America has their own CB, and that is maybe 400K. So, just Cheeseburgers you could eat the rest of your life. Then there is bacon cheeseburger, chili CB, hamburgers…
I’d be mostly happy under plan 1. I’d miss a lot of my favorite dishes but I love variety.
If there were some bad weeks, like where the boiled caterpillars on dandelion greens came right after the raw potato / chocolate pie with eel sauce, I’d want to have a word with the chef.
No, that was talking about the 8 meal plan: " The 8 meals are EXACTLY the same every time. No different chefs, no “one day I’ll have a burger with melted cheddar, the next day melted Swiss.”
Little Nemo here "Never haven’t any control over what I eat. And on the occasions when I’m served something I like, knowing I will never be able to eat it again for the rest of my life. Plus quickly running out of any normal meals and eating things which are more and more strange. (Think about it. Write down a list of a thousand different meals. You’re probably going to use every meal you can think of. That’s just your first year.)", which I replied to- was clearly talking about the unlimited but always different plan.
See post 35 "The suppositions suggested by DrDeth and Aspenglow are consistent with what I had in mind when I posed the question. "
Yeah - if you choose the 8-meail-in-rotation plan, there is no deviation. If you selected a particular style of hamburger as part of the plan, then that’s what you’ll get each time: a sesame seed bun, 1/3 lb grass-fed beef cooked medium rare, a 1-ounce slice of Swiss cheese, a tablespoon of Heinz ketchup, and three slices of sweet pickle. No changes allowed.
On the “different meal every time” plan, you may end up eating burgers on multiple occasions, but each one will be unique. Maybe your next burger will be on a Portuguese sweet roll with pickled onions and a dab of wasabi. Who knows?
I realize that one horrible aspect of either choice is that it seems I don’t get to cook for myself at all. That would be a bummer. Maybe the magic fairy would let me cook some of my own meals under the infinite variety plan, as long as every dish was new. That I could handle.
