So it's edging up on 10:00 here at the house, and thoughts are inexorably turning breakfast-ward, because food is essential to sustaining life.
A moment ago I peered in the fridge, thinking about breakfast options, and discovered/remembered that I have a good 3/4 of a custard pie sitting there. Now opinions may differ among the readership, and I expect a certain amount of expostulation, but I kind of, in my heart of hearts, think custard pie is the perfect breakfast food.
This is not a post about my unhealthy eating habits.
Rather, close on the heels of my discovery of the pie came a certain amount of day-counting. How long, I wanted to know, had the pie been in my fridge? Not that long is the answer -- not that short would be another answer. Breakfast hangs in the balance.
This is not actually a post about how long food stays good, and whether it's better to play chicken with the contents of your fridge.
Instead it reminded me how much I hate having old food sitting in my fridge. I hate the thought of things wasting away, slowly going bad. It grosses me out. This affects my behavior on a daily basis. When I'm at the grocery store, I don't buy things that might, at least momentarily, appeal to me because I can see myself not getting around to eating them, or not eating it all. Those little packets of fresh herbs are a pretty good example. They're appealing; I'll use them at least once or twice, but then there you are with almost a full thing of mushy chives, and that makes me feel ill at ease with the world. Also, I generally refuse the doggy bag. Which makes no sense, because that food is going to be wasted anyway -- it's not like if I leave it at the restaurant it will magically be transformed into a source of light and nourishment.
I guess, at the end of the day, I'm not so comfortable with the whole death-and-decay thing or the imperfections of the world as I make out. Somewhere in the back of my head, I have an image of a shopping trip where every single thing bought is consumed in its entirety, where no bad purchases ever occur and no needs go unmet.
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3 comments:
Sounds like you should take the bus to that new Whole Foods Shangri-La in Pasadena.
the simple solution is to eat nothing that casts a shadow. Like I do.
This is where the tiny city supermarket comes into its own. The tiny city supermarket can be incredibly annoying -- in the one near my home in Toronto you can't fit past another shopper in an aisle. But since it's on the way home, you can buy exactly what you're planning to eat in the next few hours.
By the way, I couldn't help but think this would have been a great moment for a photo. Custard in the fridge, anyone?
Or, maybe not.
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