5-19-10                 1:20am

So, M- was at it again today making me think. Today’s question:

What are you having for lunch today darlings?

A simple question, I thought. However, the complexity of an answer lies not in the question itself but in who’s answering it. And the answers astounded me.

• Poached eggs
• Miso soup, edamame and green kombucha tea
• Coffee
• Leftover dim sum goodies – sticky rice, turnip cakes, a random siu mai
• Grass
• Banana cream pie yogurt
• Country stew chicken
• Fried chicken
• Kung pau chickin
• Chicken Katsu
• Wallaby raspberry yoghurt (followed by existential question about the spelling of yogurt)
• granola bar

My answer?

• Lunch? I haven’t made it to breakfast yet. I’m debating over Honey Nut Cheerios or hot dogs.

Now, I’ve thought about this on and off all day. And I pondered it as I ate the microwaved hot dogs I finally settled on for breakfast. What does the food I eat mean about me?

I don’t know what half the things those people named are. I’d like to be in the category of people who eat them, but I’m not. Grass? Really? I don’t understand why people pay lots of money for organic grass to eat like a starving child in Africa. Do they even eat grass in Africa? Animals eat grass, right? The raspberry yoghurt existential question response made me laugh and then gag. Like, really? Wow.

My main foods are hot dogs, burritos, tacos, an occasional sandwich or frozen dinner, ramen, and whatever I can find in my fridge in the middle of the night. Tonight it was milk and cheese. I eat like a bachelor, and a poor one at that. But I really don’t know any different. And I wouldn’t be caught dead eating grass.

I don’t quite understand foods that are out of my price range or out of my class. And every class has their foods. I went to a dim sum restaurant in LA once with my friend Shana. She was so excited to take me there. I told her I don’t do ethnic but she was convinced I’d love it. She and her boyfriend and I waited outside for like an hour for a table, during which time I noted the B rating from the health department displayed proudly in the window. I was compliant. I tried things. Hated them all. Left starving.

Maybe it’s in my genes to like poor-people food. I don’t know. I’d take a corn dog from 7-11 any day over dim sum. I’ve tried sushi several times trying to convince myself that eventually I’ll like it. No luck. And word to the wise – do NOT buy sushi from 7-11. ;)

It’s kind of tricky because I WANT to try new foods (even though I hate trying new things), but I don’t want to find a new food that I like and cannot afford to eat. You know? And I don’t cook. And I don’t want to cook…

(sigh) My head hurts. I can’t think anymore now.

Lunch. Such a complex thing.

© Michelle Routhieaux 2010