Lady Who Lunches

Yeah, like I need another blog to read. Like I need another distraction. Well, at least this way, I can claim that I'm well-rounded.

Anyway, I've added this blog to my feed: Fed Up: The School Lunch Project. It's another one of those annual "stunt" blogs, wherein the person does something completely out of the ordinary for a year, blogs about it, and then gets a book deal. I don't mean to sound overly cynical... I think many of the stunts are very interesting, I read a lot of them, and I would love to discuss, over coffee, how this is becoming performance art for the technology age (but I fear that most of you would zone out after the first cup). Plus, this one is an actual school teacher eating the lunches fed to her students, so right there, that gets my attention.

Luckily, I found this blog in January, so I didn't have too much catching up to do. I've read through the whole site, and two things are glaringly apparent:

1. Why are all of those lunches covered in plastic? Back in the day, when I was a kid, all of our lunches were served on plates or in bowls, with real silverware on actual trays. Sure, the plates and bowls were plastic, but they were the washable, reusable kind. It was institutionalized fare: probably mostly from cans, boxes, and mixes, but still required someone to assemble or cook. This crap looks like vending machine food. The pizza we got was equivalent to what you could by in the frozen food section of the grocery store. Which is to say, probably not the healthiest for you, but at least recognizable as pizza. I'm utterly appalled at what passes for student lunch these days, so I will watch this blog with keen interest.

2. The author interjects with posts about her own upbringing. Though her family was not wealthy, she had a mom at home, who reviewed the school lunch menu with her, and packed lunches for her on days she didn't want to buy. These lunches were nutritious, and filled with the encouraging love notes that parenting magazines like to suggest. This is completely foreign to me. No one packed me lunch, no one wrote me notes. Lunch money was given to me at the beginning of the week. It was my responsibility to make it last until Friday.  Fortunately, this was not looked on with pity in my school: buying lunch was cool, packing lunch was not. We were a middle-class district with a very small reduced lunch program, very different I think from the school where the blog-teacher works. I'm curious to see how her background will influence her project. Already, she is anti-fast food and soda (which seems a little sad to me...  I feel like the moderate use of McDonalds and Burger King is a fun rite of passage for children and teens, the youthful versions of a local bar or coffee shop).

So, lunch on, Mrs. Q. Can't wait to read your book next year!

Half or 3/4?

I love Whole Foods. Where else can I get prepared food that's actually made out of vegetables? And then arrange them as I desire? For example, last week, I layered organic baby spinach, carrot ginger salad, gingered beets, and lime-marinated tofu in a small brown cardboard box. It was delightful! Finally a meal I could eat without worrying what was in it, how much fat, how many calories, what kinds of processing, etc.  I could have actual iced tea that was just tea, chilled. No corn syrups, funny coloring, or fake flavoring. Not that I'm a crazy health nut, but my body really does prefer being treated well.

The problem is that I also sort of hate Whole Foods. Does it really need to be so frickin' expensive? Do they understand that just because their lasagna is made with organic cheese that it's still something likely to cause a coronary? Do they really think we're all a bunch of yoga-studying, liberal hipsters? In fact, here in South Florida, Whole Foods is one of the only places you'll see urban-style "hipsters." So actually, there's sort of a comfort in that. Also, I can buy mint-herb body wash (a la Aveda's ridiculously costly Rosemary Mint line) for about $3. Oh, right, we're talking about why I hate Whole Foods. It's so easy to blur the line.

Whole Foods in NYC was my kitchen and fully-stocked pantry. I didn't cook; I'd just stop at Whole Foods on my way home. In the mornings, they offered breakfast. At lunch time, they were a destination for me and my weary co-workers. And for dinner, well, no matter what neighborhood I was in, there was always one nearby. My ex-boyfriend lived around the corner from one, and refused to set foot inside it, preferring instead the cheap, scary steaks from the regular grocery store. I took my mother there once, and she nearly went ballistic over the complicated queuing system. But they had so many good things, plus my $8 dates. Again, the love/hate gets stirred together (like the Emergen-C I could get in a big box for $11... way cheaper than anywhere else).

The Whole Foods(es) of Chicago were adequate. The Gold Coast store was actually kind of small and crappy, given the neighborhood. In general, I preferred the one closest to my apartment, though simply because of geography. They did have organic sesame sticks and plenty of fresh fruit. But their prepared food selection sucked. All of the stores had pitiful prepared food sections. The salad bars were weak, and mostly their entrees were cleaned-up versions of traditional heavy midwestern fare: casseroles, cheesy pastas, and pot roasts. There was no hot Indian bar, so I had to content myself with vegetarian sushi wrapped in brown rice, which was pretty ok. Chicago was clearly a city where people cooked for themselves. And with winter being what it was, why wouldn't you?

The Whole Foods here is in Boca. Last week, it contained an odd mixture of senior citizens, yuppie business workers on their lunch breaks, polished housewives straight out of a Talbots catalog, college students just rolling out of bed, and some random beach-bound girls in designer sunglasses. I guess that's what bothers me the most... that this food should only be for the elite. That Gucci handbags and men in clothes so clearly expensive that they look like girls would be the norm. Why did my tiny cube of tofu and gingered vegetables need to cost $8?

Why can't everyone have access to food that is good for them? I love an Egg McMuffin as much as the next person, but I eat them because they're a special treat (great for hangovers), not because it's all I can get. It doesn't seem right, and if Whole Foods were actually so concerned about the planet, maybe they would want to do something to ensure that ALL of its inhabitants had access to quality produce and hormone-free dairy.