With no plug-ins, this can be easier without using as much jQuery, instead going slightly more old-school:
var myOptions = {
val1 : 'text1',
val2 : 'text2'
};
$.each(myOptions, function(val, text) {
$('#mySelect').append( new Option(text,val) );
});
If you want to specify whether or not the option a) is the default selected value, and b) should be selected now, you can pass in two more parameters:
var defaultSelected = false;
var nowSelected = true;
$('#mySelect').append( new Option(text,val,defaultSelected,nowSelected) );