Copyright 2005 Ben S. Pollock
Thursday, June 2, 2005: My wife and I have yet another similar thought process. She doesn’t see it that way. I just now did.
I brown-bag to work for three reasons. The least is cost.
The middle is that fast food all tastes alike after not too many weeks, including ethnic fast food, and I get to really noticing the extra salt and grease. (This is why I began teaching myself to cook months after college graduation.)
The top reason is lunch during the work week is its own lousy reason to eat out. I write this Brick at a fun, locally owned espresso shop. I see a professor over yonder, there’s a professor I know slightly — meaning he knows me enough to say hello and not try to remember my name — eating a sandwich.
Why buy a sandwich?
Shouldn’t restaurants be for dishes too complicated to make often at home or too unusual (ingredients you’ll likely never use again) to even try? Here’s a good reason: You eat out when you’re just too pooped to face your own kitchen — or to clean up if your spouse is only barely willing to cook. Restaurants as a celebration or a holiday, then.
On the other end of the deli scale, paying good money for someone to doll up two slices of bread with mustard, cheese, lettuce and so forth? For the same six bucks at the grocery, you could easily make 10 sandwiches: the loaf, a brick of cheddar, a package of cold cuts (even tofu-based), a head of lettuce. And with some restaurants just as fast.
At this espresso place, I go for the soups. It’ll be a style I’ve never made or an unusual set of spices. (Yes, I make soups all the time. They’re simple, just not as simple as layering things on bread.)
My wife on the other hand, takes most of her work lunches at restaurants. But what she cannot stand is the new concept in Tex-Mex eateries: ordering at a burrito counter. At these, you go up to the first station in the buffet and indicate to the preparer type of beans, salsa or pico de gallo, grilled onions, mushrooms and bell peppers, and shredded lettuce or fresh spinach.
She says, "If I want a burrito, I can do it at home."
So we really are alike, eh?
I’d disagree on the fast burrito system, however. I like that idea.
In the first place, it’s a way of getting a meal out on my ovo-lacto-vegetarian diet that includes adequate protein, the beans and cheese.
My spouse sees the burrito as easy as a sandwich.
I disagree. You end up with lots of tiny packages of leftovers. A can of turtle beans, a couple a big spoonfuls. Clean and chop a head of lettuce for a handful. Half a tomato, quarter of a bell pepper, a glug of Picante. You get the picture. -30-
