I have a love-hate relationship with lunch. I love to eat. It is the what & how of it that I hate. The deciding on what, and the prep of whatever it is, feels like drudgery to me. Yeah, I know, wah wah, first world problems. Even worse, I have a fully equipped kitchen at work, so there’s nothing to prevent me (aside from time, energy and desire) to make myself a real meal. Yet I routinely fall back on my usuals, alternating between salad (the big ugh of morning prep), and “diet” freezer meals… you know, the ones that proclaim to be low in calorie, yet are loaded with sodium, and all end up pretty much tasting the same after being microwaved. OR, devoid of any other good ideas, I might grab some carrot sticks and pre-made hummus, throw together some cheater chicken and lettuce in a tortilla shell and call it a wrap. You see why I’m bored.
The other morning I was rummaging around in my freezer trying to select my boxed fare du jour, considering if instead I should put some rotisserie chicken pieces (prepared by the grocery store) on a pre-cut bag salad, and I thought about how sad it is that I complain not only about the options I have, but about the convenience. Oh, geez, I’m going to have to go to the kitchen, follow simple instructions, and wait 7 minutes until my hot meal is ready. Or warm up some chicken someone else roasted for me. What a chore.
We are surrounded by prepared foods and time-and-energy-cutting ingredients. A few weeks ago when my hubby and I were out of town, but our 18-year old stayed home, I prepped some items to make his fairly basic meal cooking skills easier. I actually bought a packet of pre-cooked bacon. 10-seconds in the microwave, and it actually tastes not horrible. I could see, hear and feel my mother (God rest her soul) shaking her head aghast at not only the craziness of the pre-cooked and packaged item, but at the cost to have that convenience.
I thought about what mom would have done years ago when she was tight on time or energy but needed to make a meal happen. Mom did not work outside the home, but she was a busy lady. She took care of a big old farm house with three acres of land, four kids, a working and traveling hubby, and a big messy dog (along with various other animals at some points in our history). She also did volunteer work. So I’m quite sure there were nights when she had to come up with something quick to feed her herd. But of course in those days there were no already prepped by someone else, pre-cut ingredients. The only prepared frozen meals came along later – they were “TV Dinners”, and still needed to be heated in the oven. There was of course no microwave. As for our lunches we took to school, they were almost always a sandwich (Fluffernutters for me) or a combination of foods that could survive not being refrigerated and didn’t need heating. All made by mom.
There are very few fast “cheater” meals I remember from my youth. On the occasions mom and dad would be going out in the evening, before the babysitter came over mom would make what became a beloved combination of creamed corn and pieces of hotdog. It took probably less than 5 minutes to make. And sometimes on a weekend, Dad would make pancakes for supper which we all thought was fascinating and fun. But that’s about it. I guess if mom needed something quick, she would pull out a meal she’d had the foresight and time to have made previously and frozen – although it still needed to be thawed, and cooked by stove or oven. No quick zap in the nuker. And I don’t know about you other RW’s out there, but I’m happy if I can manage to make one dinner meal a day, let alone extras to store in the freezer to make my life easier in the future. As great an idea as that is, it just isn’t going to happen.
What about the earlier generations? I wonder what my grandmother must have done when prep time, and desire, were limited. Granted, in those days, people of means often had a cook or housekeeper to assist, and it was that person’s job to make sure meals were ready. How lovely would that be today? It would be heavenly to have someone else do my grocery shopping, meal planning, and food prep. No such luck. And even back then, many could not afford this luxury… so what options did they have? Sandwiches? Left overs? Soup? Things that had to be heated up on a heavy, slow to warm stove? I’m guessing “quick and easy” was not in their vocabulary regarding meals. Nor did they have the option to pick up the phone and within 30 minutes have someone deliver a meal to their doorstep. I think if I came home after a long day, and had to figure out how to reheat some mutton chops after lighting my gas oven or getting a fire going in my pot-bellied stove, I’d decide to go hungry. Just not worth the effort.
So the next time I dole out some pre-prepped food or open the door of the magic instant heating appliance to warm up leftovers in under 3 minutes, I will pause and think of the women who went before me…they toiled for hours to provide every meal for their family, rather than simply pushing a couple of buttons to make lunch happen. I will endeavor to stop my bellyaching about my food boredom and will be thankful that in our crazy, fast–paced world, I have the option of convenience.
There are some questions in life to which we will never really know, or understand, the answers. We real women hate that. We like to be in control, know why things happen, and have everything move smoothly. We can learn to live with not knowing some of the big answers, like the meaning of life, the reason for loss, or why we’ll never be happy with our weight. But it’s those little things that drive us batty. It would be easy to say the answers lie in a simple truth of sheer laziness. But I really don’t think that’s quite right. It seems to be more an inability to take just one more step. Let’s look at a few examples.
When I was a young girl, I liked to watch reruns of The Jetsons with my brother. At the time, the space-age futuristic inventions and contraptions fascinated me and seemed impossibly cool. I thought they could never happen. While I watched flying cars, a conveyor belt George rode on to get dressed in the morning, and Rosie, the robot maid, I thought life would be so much easier with these nifty innovations.
There is a new robot at my local Stop & Shop supermarket. It roams the aisles, beeping, apparently looking for spills and hazards in the aisles. It will supposedly eventually be upgraded to be able to check inventory and place orders for missing product, but it can’t do that yet. I have no idea if it has a name. My name for it is Useless. The other day I rounded the corner to aisle 7 and there it was, stopped in the middle of the aisle. Its lights had changed from blue to blinking white. It announced, over and over again, in both English and Spanish “Caution, hazard detected.” Whenever this metal beast detects a perceived threat like spilled produce, not only does it repeat that phrase, but it automatically starts an announcement in the store PA system to say “Clean up needed in Aisle 7.” I looked down the aisle, and the only issue I saw was one cereal box that was on the floor leaning up against the bottom shelf. I picked it up and put it back on the shelf, and like an idiot, started talking to the robot. “It’s ok, you can shut up now and keep going.” But of course, that doesn’t work. A store employee must come to the robot and push appropriate buttons to reset it and send it on its way.
I was fortunate to take a mini-vacation this past week. Four and a half days of fun, sun, sand and surf in Florida. It was lovely and restorative. I could use this post to go on a diatribe about how too many of us don’t take enough time off to refresh and reboot, and how important it is to occasionally unwind. But I’ll hold off until I’m successful in taking my own advice and manage to take any further days off in coming months.
We all know that food memories are surprisingly strong. The smell of something cooking can transport us to a past moment in time. A mention of an ingredient can make us remember a special meal at a great restaurant, and we can all probably name our top three favorite foods from our childhood. (For me, that would be fluffernutter sandwiches, chicken in a basket, and chocolate covered graham crackers)
At the risk of sounding like a Debbie Downer and having many of you avoid reading this full post (but I hope you will hang in here with me), I’m going to state the obvious: Death, rather unfortunately, is an inevitable part of life. No matter how you slice it, it is going to happen. None of us will live forever. But we all want to live as long as possible, and even more so, we want those we love to live for as long as possible right alongside us.
During my usual morning routine today, with my brain running through my classic million or so worries, ponderings and plannings, I paused to flip open a lovely little book given to me by one of my RW BFFs last year: The Promise of a New Day by Karen Casey. Today’s WOW (Words of Wisdom) was an entry about living in present moments. “We love to fantasize about the past and the future… But we get into trouble when we forget that “the past” and “the future” are inventions; the only reality is the present. Yes, past events contribute to our now; yes, the present will help to determine the future. But we can’t do anything about them; the past and the future are out of our reach.” Appropriately enough, this caused my muddled head to pause a moment and say “huh.”
It is just over a week until Christmas. Like most R.W.’s, I’ve been hurtling towards the big day on Warp 10 Overdrive for several weeks. I haven’t had any available time to write, and for someone who finds sanity in words, that’s not a good thing. But here I am, spending several hours on a Sunday evening on a plane (more about that in a moment), with some forced sit and breath time, and it is making me consider what a wacky time of year this can be, and allowing me some time at the keyboard. I feel my heart rate calming already. It’s funny how such a magical, lovely season can be so filled with stress and exhaustion. Every year many of us RW’s vow that “next year will be different” that we “will simplify”, we will “start prepping earlier” and have “more relax time.” Hee hee, we make me giggle.
We all know that a woman’s brain is wired like a super highway system with dangerous corners and intersections, where the minimum speed limit is somewhere around 90mph. We are supposed to have off-ramps and rest stops that allow us to do that re-fueling thing called sleep. But most of us seem to have a challenge with taking those exits successfully on a regular basis – even if we manage to get off the highway, we somehow mess up and hop right back on again.
“Thanksgiving dinners take eighteen hours to prepare. They are consumed in twelve minutes. Half-times take twelve minutes. This is not coincidence.” – Erma Bombeck
Real Women 