get in my belly (and my head)

i was just sitting here pondering my daily diet and realized that actually i kind of have some strange patterns of food consumption which probably reveal some sort of dark yet fascinating aspects of my personality. let's explore!

first of all, every day monday through friday i start the day with a banana in the car and then a cup of coffee at work. i get stomach aches if i eat much in the morning or if i eat too soon after waking up so the banana in the car does it for me. also i am cheap/poor and cannot afford expensive breakfasts. last fall i had an addiction to those $3 mango-strawberry-carrot-wheatgrass-tofu juice things for a while and had to cut that out after i stopped being able to afford other luxuries such as electricity, toothpaste, and soap.

anyway, the banana is now such a major part of my diet that i totally crapped myself when i read this nytimes article. the thing is, i don't even particularly like bananas. i just eat them because they are cheap and filling. currently, i literally feed myself a whole week of breakfast on $1. what the hell will happen if the price of bananas skyrockets? i will have to switch to saltines or some shit.

as for the coffee, i wait until i get to work to partake of the morning's pot of coffee from my office's coffee club. this coffee club is really in some ways more trouble than it is worth since there are so damn many rules. the coffee has to be fair trade/organic/shade grown. no flavoring. no decaf. you must buy half and half. coffee must be made very strong. blah blah blah. well actually most of these rules are of my own making. moving on.

the point is that my coffee must be had from the coffee club pot. i do not make my own (no coffee pot) and i do not buy any on my way in (i'm always running too late for that). if for some reason i am not going to make it into the office first thing, i keep cans of starbucks double shot in my fridge. i have to have my caffeine and the odds of me being able to make it out of the house 10 minutes early so i can stop for some are slim to none.

on to lunch. i eat out a lot. too much. i try to bring my lunch but generally i am running too late to really have time to actually make it in the morning. i know what you are thinking, "why don't you just make it the night before?" clearly, you are not living the kind of jet setter lifestyle that i do. i simply do not have time in my action packed evenings to take that kind of time out to make a sandwich. ok who am i kidding, i just spent my entire evening sitting outside reading a book and chatting on the phone. the truth is i am just lazy.

for dinner lately i have also been eating out too much (cue the ghastly screams of my asphyxiating bank account). if i do not eat out, i usually grill since it is summer and i <3 grilling, as you know. i also almost always keep on hand one of those dole salad mixes, usually the garlic caesar, just in case i am too lazy/hot to do anything other than gnaw through plastic, dump, and mix. again, i don't especially like or dislike those, but they are cheap and filling. in the winter i eat a lot of pasta but in the summer it's too hot for me to really want that.

i am not a big snacker but one thing i have been keeping around lately in my office are those pretzel bites with peanut butter in the middle. again, cheap and filling is the main attraction. although those are actually very tasty and i highly recommend you try them. trader joe's and fresh market sell them.

finally, water. i could write a whole post about my strange water needs. first of all i must have a full water bottle with me at all times. for a while i had a nalgene until i got hassled enough about the evils of the "cancer bottle" that i switched to one of those metal ones. in addition to my water bottle, i always have several glasses of full water sitting around my house. at a minimum, there must be one in the living room and one beside my bed. these get refilled daily.

i also carry the water bottle around the house with me. before i can sleep i need to have a full glass of water and a filled water bottle next to my bed. if at any time during the night i drink all the water in the glass, i must get up and refill it, regardless of the fact that the water bottle stands full and ready. i guess i just really love water. or else there is something seriously wrong with me.

ok readers, time to pull those food skeletons out of the closet. reader poll: what kind of weird eating habits do you have?