Thursday, April 17, 2008

Lunchtime Confessions Of A Fat Kid

So I'm attempting, slowly but surely, to improve my eating habits. Now I'm definitely not counting calories or anything, and whenever I feel like crushing a couple chili cheese wraps and a cheeseburger from Sonic I'm not gonna stop myself; but overall, my diet is improving a bit. This is extremely difficult for me due to three very key factors: 1) I'm very picky. There's not a ton of variety in my diet, compared to your average Johnny Food Consumer. 2) I'm very lazy. If it takes longer than a couple of minutes to prepare, or if there is extensive cleanup involved, fuck it, I'm out. 3) I'm very hungry. It takes a lot of food to fill me up.

If you combine my garbage diet with my general lack of exercise (especially now since I am unable to play noonball) I should probably be pushing three bills right now. My college days were filled with fast food, Hungry Man dinners, hot pockets, and microwaveable chicken wings. One of my roommates' favorite jokes would be, in the rare occasion that I would fire up the oven for a frozen pizza, that they would freak out and ask me if I was having a girl over for dinner, or if there was some sort of special occasion going on. Just because I was using the oven.

Any kind of cooking I received was a godsend. My favorite texties ever were the ones from St. Aubyn that I would get as I was leaving class, that said "hurry up and get back, I'm making us tuna casserole." To answer your next question, yes, we were pretty gay like that most of the time. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The point within that homosexual tangent is that tuna casserole was pretty much a delicacy, a treat beyond words. Ditto for the spaghetti dinners that Lindsey would make me every once in a while. Those meals were like Christmas morning.

So now I'm all on my own, besides Alex occasionally cooking dinner for me (she can tell you how abnormally excited about spaghetti I get. What can I say, it's my weak spot.) Lunches are tough, especially during tax season, when I'm eating at my desk most days of the week. I have already become the butt of many food-related jokes within the office, but on the flip side of that coin, the M.O.M. Squad kind of treats me like one of their kids (actually it's a combo of child/garbage disposal) when it comes to food.

(Case in point: the other day our office received lunch from another business in town. It consisted of a couple of sandwiches, (one roast beef, one mystery meat) some chips, and dessert for each of us. Our receptionist noticed me hammer down my roast beef, then begin to poke around at my mystery meat sandwich, so she adeptly ate the rest of her lunch, then gave me her roast beef sandwich, even though she likes roast beef, because she "knew you wouldn't be able to make it through the afternoon without your entire lunch." Pretty typical Mom move. Another time we received a group lunch, there was an extra sandwich, and it was automatically deferred to me since "I'm the big eater." Additionally, it is a commonly-known rule that before any leftovers in the fridge get chucked, they go through my office first.)

So I've been trying to eat a little better at lunchtime. Here are some of my staples:

Turkey, cheese, and pepperoni sandwiches. My go-to lunch, whenever I need a guaranteed good one. He's like Josh Beckett, only he gets the ball more often than every five days. I'm eating one right now, actually.

Pizza rolls. These are my innings-eater. It's not always the best, but it's always solid, and if nothing else, it tides me over til the next time. Kinda like Tim Wakefield.

Lean pockets. That's right friends, the 'hot' has been replace by 'lean.' They're probably still unhealthy as shit, but that one word makes me feel better while I'm putting down three of them, and restraining myself from a fourth.

Raw tuna. To everyone who used to make fun of me in elementary school for bringing tuna almost every day in a lunchbox instead of joining you bastards in whichever glorious meal the hot lunch program was serving up that day: Yes, I still eat tuna regulary, 15 years later. Enjoy your turkey tidbits, bitches.

A 49-cent loaf of day-old Jimmy John's bread and an apple. This is the meal the M.O.M. Squad laughs at the most, for obvious reasons. I like to call this my "Aladdin Lunch" because that's the shit Aladdin and his monkey were stealing off the streets before he found the genie, got three wishes, and started nailing Princess Jasmine. "Riff raff, street trash! I don't, buy that!"

Here is something that is definitely not a staple: those bullshit lean cuisine type meals. Alex bought a few of them and decided she didn't want them, so I gave them a try. There's a reason they're supposed to be healthy: It's like 4 bites of food. Filled me up juuuuust enough so that I could destroy only half a box of E.L. Fudge immediately afterwards. Get bent, lean cuisine.


And something I would like to make more of a staple: Friday lunch buffets at the Dirty Bird. I've only been there once so far, but there's just something about enjoying fried chicken, roast beef, and mashed potatoes and gravy while naked girlies are dancing 10 feet away that puts a spring in my step for the rest of the day.