I felt different this morning. Not hungry, but tight and edgy. Two poached eggs, a piece of toast from the local sourdough, and a cucumber fashioned yet another satisfying breakfast. I packed up six crepes (one batch, so one cup of flour, one egg, and one cup of milk) to eat at lunch.
Before I could get to lunch, though, I had to make it through the round of coffee and donuts provided for our all-day meeting at our contractor. It would have been harder – maybe impossible – but they bought Duncan Donuts, which taste like paint and road grime. Still, they are donuts and, thus, delicious.
Lunch was cheesesteak wraps. They looked delicious. But the whole wheat and spelt additions to the white Daisy flour really make the crepes tasty. After the first bite, I didn't long for a sandwich at all. I could have used a Coke, though, instead of the cucumber I had for dessert.
But I was unable to graze today. I had to have everything at once in the standard 3-square-a-day method to fit in socially with my coworkers. It would have been very easy to explain if I was a body builder, like some I know, that eat their weight in egg whites each day. I would not be confused with a body builder. We of the Suburban Farming community are lanky and beer-fed. So it wasn't easy to explain, at ten a.m., why I was famished.
Lunch came around at noon and we spent the time talking of my odds of simply surviving. My odds of what I would call success are, of course, nil.
After work, there was a happy hour for a long-time coworker who is moving to a new job in a new location. It was at a local yuppie bar – very clean and family appropriate. It's one of those places that got very popular once Applebee's survived its birth… the bastard child of Big Boy and Musso and Franks. Or Friendly's and the Carnegie Deli, for your East-coasters. I had spent the last hour driving back in heavy traffic from the contractor's office, seeing a dozen places each for pizza, hoagies, and beer. Probably more like twenty places for beer. I was feeling very weak and left to put the challenge behind me. I didn't say goodbye, but the ladies know I love them all.
Zipping home to try and keep this feeling of satisfaction going, I hurriedly changed into my U.S.-made Roundhouse Overalls and went to the corn. An ear was ready…
…or ready enough for me. It could have matured another few days, but just because it was something different, it was perfect to me. I backed that up with a portion of spaghetti and sopped up the rest of the sauce with my last allowed piece of bread for the day.
Biting into that corn, I took a deep breath and remembered every store front that I so wanted to stop in on the way home. Just a slice or just one (huge) cheesesteak. I kept thinking, "this is easy… millions have less than this every day and are fine… if you cheat, you're only cheating yourself." It's hard to ignore those things that I know I am missing. These small entries are littered with them.
My mind turns to what I'm actually trying to accomplish here now, if anything. I realized quickly that the garden itself wouldn't cut it. Am I trying something local now? Or organic? Hmmm. Anybody out there have any idea what I should be doing now?
1 year ago
Perhaps that these past few days, you've largely attempted to (re?)connect in a fundamental way with what goes into your mouth. Few do, and it strikes me as impressive and admirable. I would say that the "rules" you choose to observe are a way of formally forcing you to think about what you consume: its origin, its history, and the journey it made to make it into your mouth. Furthermore, you've nicely managed to contextualize both the social aspects of eating (in the context of work) and with respect to your environment as a whole. So keep doing what you are doing. If you want to tweak the "rules" of what you eat, maybe try to preserve the mindset of the last few days. I've enjoyed it quite a bit.
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