Food Inventory: meal or mirror?

The task was to keep track everything I ingested for a week, and to then look back & theorize on what I eat 'says' about me. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?

Here's what went down:

• Day one (Friday 6/3): Vitamin, strawberry pop tart & coffee. Tuna salad, crackers, coleslaw & water. Jalapeño potato chips. Mandoo soup, bulgogi & Hite (beer). Black pepper & caper cheese. Brownie with caramel. Many Bell's Oberon beers.

• Day two (Saturday 6/4): Vitamin, coffee & grapefruit juice. Grilled cheese with chipotle on sourdough, coleslaw, fries & Scrimshaw (pilsner). Clam chowder, chicken and broccoli pizza & Alpha King. Pabst Blue Ribbon.

• Day three (Sunday 6/5): Vitamin, coffee & leftover pizza. Spring roll. Mushroom & Swiss bratwurst with grilled onions & peppers and spicy mustard, grilled corn with mayonnaise & Riesling wine. A variety of microbrew beers.

• Day four (Monday 6/6): Vitamin, strawberry pop tart & coffee. Miso soup. Subway seafood sensation (footlong on wheat with lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, black olives & banana peppers), harvest cheddar sun chips & coca cola. The rest of the microbrews.

• Day five (Tuesday 6/7): Vitamin, strawberry pop tart & coffee. Falafel, tahini, hummus, tabbouleh & pita. Bologna, American cheese and mustard sandwich & water. Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. Frozen white castle cheeseburgers (with BBQ sauce - we were out of ketchup), frozen French fries & Miller Lite.

• Day six (Wednesday 6/8): Vitamin, strawberry pop tart & coffee. Hummus sandwich & Miller Lite. Black pepper and caper cheese on crackers. Grilled mahi mahi burgers with red onion, tomato, avocado, American cheese, mayonnaise and mustard, shrimp fried rice & Miller Lite.

...and somewhere through there, a bag of Anis Gebäck (anisette cookies) was consumed.

What a boring food week. Except for a trip to a Korean restaurant and a couple of meals prepared at home on the grill, this list makes me look like I lead a very unexciting life. But what this list doesn't tell you - in black and white - is that I am auditing a college level course that meets for three hours twice per week in the evening. It's the first time in fourteen years that I have been in a classroom, and have homework assignments. We are currently in our second week. This, along with my normal, Monday through Friday, full-time job, has not left a lot of time for experiments in the kitchen. So while the week did not contain any special events (no birthdays, no holidays, etc.), it did include a huge lifestyle change.

Regardless, I am clearly a creature of habit when it comes to my first meal of the day. Every single breakfast included a vitamin & coffee, and every weekday included a strawberry pop tart. I think this is a reflection of my views on a.m. dining - it's merely a meal to carb up and get caffeinated to get the energy to start my day. Sure, there are the occasional bacon & eggs breakfasts, but for the most part, this hits the nail on the head.

Weekday lunches were also fairly predictable, usually consisting of a prepackaged, often microwavable meal. This week's mid-day meals had more of function to suppress hunger than anything. I'm usually pretty busy in the afternoons at work. I do not take a traditional meal break, and so the quickest, easiest way to satiate that hunger is to pop something in the microwave that I brought from home, and inhale whatever comes out, while trying not to burn the roof of my mouth. The same applied to meals/snacks consumed before and after class - quick bites to fend off hunger. Unfortunately this may have the appearance of laziness, but in reality, it was just means for survival.

Dinners and weekend meals tended to be a bit more exciting this week (except for class nights), which I think is a reflection of having more spare time in these day parts. I also think I enjoy food more when I am not in a hurry to get out the door or eating on my feet at work. Of course I get hungry on the weekends, but trips to restaurants were also a great opportunity to try new things, have great conversations, and relax a bit after a busy week.

Sure when one looks over my food inventory, he may able to defend the argument that I am lazy and uncreative, but this week I would have to argue that my lack of free time beat out the ability to be explorative and/or creative. Function beat fashion.