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When I was real little, we were pretty broke, but just regular young family broke rather than desperately poor. By my teens, my family was solidly middle class. Oddly enough, my parents are the complete opposite of me, they just buy the food they want and pretty much disregard the price. They're now well enough off that it genuinely is basically irrelevant, but so am and I'll still react with a, "$8 a pound for that?" and set something down. I think a huge part of it is that I genuinely don't prefer one thing over another by all that much, so I'll just take whatever's on sale and make a meal that I'm perfectly happy with. Tonight, Buffalo wings. Why? Well, wings are on sale and they're about as good as anything else...
Yeah that's definitely a factor, and I also get a bit of enjoyment out of it - planned meals are nice and easy to do well, but when I see what's on special I often get inspired, and my meals always turn out better when I'm inspired, because I get to be creative and I am more enthusiastic. To be fair to my ex though, it can be frustrating when you are looking forward to a particular meal all day only to learn you're getting something different.
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