As a young’un, my mom never let my sister and me buy lunch at school. There was the exception of Pizza Fridays where we begged to be like everyone else and buy the ticket to pizza every Friday. Or in high school, where we use the money we earned from red envelopes to buy french fries (now that I think of it, I never asked my parents directly for money until I was in college).

And so this day, I still bring lunch to work. It’s a puzzling thing to do in downtown San Francisco when there’s a diverse set of restaurants in the area. But I just couldn’t justify spending $10 a day (the average more or less) eating out. Even as much as I like my pho and tea. My freshly tossed salad with grilled chicken. The mashed potates and meatloaf, cooked homestyle. The thick MSG-laden beef stew and thai iced tea. Oh I would love it all.

But I just couldn’t justify it.

And so I am on a journey to cook better. I try not to appear cheap, but I know some people perceive me as such.

I made Vietnamese bun yesterday and pseudo fried rice today. And had a plain yogurt dumped with a scoop of strawberry ruharb jam.