Bad Choices Make Good Eating
I always begin my lunch break with the best intentions. Today, I thought to myself, “I’m hungry for something fresh and light. I think I’ll just get some pasta salad and that’s all.”
As I’ve written somewhere in this thicket of words called a blog, there is a restaurant near where I work on Capitol Hill that serves a lunch buffet. The offerings on one of the buffets are healthy–vegetable, fruit, and pasta salads. The offerings on the other are, let’s just say, “traditional.” There is General Tso’s and white rice, the sauce so thick and spicy-sweet it must be made with pure honey. Roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy. Spaghetti and meatballs. Fried cod. Cajun-style catfish. There is also a deli bar where the cooks will make you a sandwich to your specifications.
I almost left the restaurant with my good intentions intact. I took a small container and filled it with a bowtie pasta salad, mixed veggies, and fresh mozarella. It looked so clean and fresh, the cherry tomatoes like bright, red vitamins on top of the white pasta and cheese. Then I had the thought, “Gee, is that going to be enough for my lunch?”
I wandered over to the traditional bar, the rich, steamy smell of burbling fat tempting me to add something a little more filling to my container.
In the end, I split the difference and ordered a BLT with mayo from the deli. Still, when I got to the cash register it was clear this meal was a bad choice for other reasons. The sandwich by itself was 4.50. With a diet Coke and the pasta salad, my lunch came to 10.45.
I’m going to make myself feel better by only eating the pasta salad for lunch, saving the sandwich for my long commute home this evening. Or perhaps I’ll eat only half the sandwich now and save the other half for later. That’s my intention, anyway.
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I ate at a place today that is primarily, allegedly a salad bar, called Sweet Tomatoes. I love it, but I know I’m not eating healthily there.
The primary part of the meal is supposed to be a big salad you heap up on your plate. I always end up with a ton of salad, which I maintain covers my vegetable requirements for the next three days. I wish it worked that way.
So then you heap up all sorts of crap on it and then there’s the secondary part of the salad bar. The soup, the pizza bread, the macaroni, the muffins and ice cream.
I always get the pizza bread and soup. And usually follow it up with a chocolate muffin. I leave stuffed and know that I didn’t eat very well, even if I started with the basics of a good meal: lots of spinach and non-iceburg lettuce.
It always amazes me the kind of people that go there too. Often people as big or bigger than me. They too are lying to themselves by pretending they are eating well.
Comment by Mel B — Friday, 26 September 2008 @ 6:16 pm
I’ve noticed much the same thing about larger people eating at health food places. Men in particular seem to overcompensate for the healthiness of a salad by heaping their container full and drizzling a gallon of dressing over it. I’m going to eat lunch at the same place today, so hopefully I’ll eat a little better than last week, if only cost-wise. By the time I tried to eat my sandwich around five o’clock Thursday, it was mushy from either the bacon grease or mayo.
Comment by greypilgrim — Tuesday, 30 September 2008 @ 6:52 am