TASK #25: YOU ARE WHAT YOU DON’T EAT
“I eat merely to put food out of my mind”. N. F. Simpson
Quick guys, what do you enjoy more, food or sex?
I know that you had to say sex, because you’re expected to. But, in your heart of hearts, it’s probably pretty god-damned close. Brother, sex is a sweet surrender, but I had this steak one time in NYC at Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, washed down with vodka that was encased in a block of ice. And boy, the memory of that evening rivals the night I spent, just a few evening’s later, with a stripper I met at the Kit Kat Klub in Time’s Square, before
Times Square became as sedate as my Aunt Ruth’s living room on Ash Wednesday.
I like food. And before you go thinking, “Joe Doe must be a fat fuck”, don’t—I’m not. I just respect a good meal.
Make a list of everything that goes in your mouth during the week. Then, for the next week, DON’T EAT ANYTHING ON THAT LIST.
|
But times being what they are, and the notion that we should be aware of what we are putting in our bodies became de rigeur, I decided to do some research on my own diet.
So, I listed everything that I ate over the course of a month. Every breakfast, lunch and dinner item. Every jelly donut, every bean and cheese burrito, every Frito, chocolate chip waffle, caprese panini and breaded pork chop. Everything. Just today I had an english muffin, egg, fat burger, fries, ketchup, and tamales with rice. Eclectic, and good…but not typical as I was to find out.
At the end of the month I looked at the list, starting with the first week. The AMOUNT of food astonished me, and so did it’s predictability. It turns out that I like chicken. I eat it several times a week. Fried chicken, b-b-qued, Mc D’s chicken nuggets, chicken fried rice, chicken sausage, and a couple of chicken sandwiches–buffalo style. What else did I have?
Well, the other 3 weeks were basically the same. A lot of chicken, a lot of eggs for breakfast, generically a lot of sandwiches; vegetables, not so much, but some–and sundry crap, like hot dogs and pasta, especially rigatoni with meatballs, and a couple of oddities, most notably a stuffed pepper concoction that gave me an epic stomach ache.
But no steak, notably.
Analyzing my list–it was BORING. Boring. Boring. Where was the Indian food or macrobiotics or veggie burgers or carrot cake or eel sushi? Where was the Larb or lentils or Brik????
I had to get out of my self-imposed food prison–I had to diversify.
TASK:
Make a list of everything that goes in your mouth during the week. Food, that is–not you fingernails or your girlfriend’s tongue. Food. At the end of the week post the list on the front of your refrigerator. Then, for the next week, DON’T EAT ANYTHING ON THAT LIST.
Trust me, you’ll find your eel as well.
Photo by Hamza Butt