Happy Eat Day!!

What do you get when you take the r and h out of earth?

Eat

That's why, in correlation with the recent Earth Day celebration, I have announced that the first Tuesday after Earth Day will be National Eat Day!

So, Happy Eat Day to all. To celebrate Eat Day, let's do what we do best - talk about food.

Thursday I had one of those eat anything you can days, for some reason. I missed breakfast (been hitting the Coccoa Puffs, Coccoa Pebbles and Crunch Berries lately, all you health freaks, back off, you can only eat so many bananas, hard-boiled eggs, yogurt cups and toast before it gets stale).

So, I didn't get a chance to eat until 10 a.m., and had an asiago cheese bagel with sun dried tomato cream cheese and washed it down with an ice cold Diet Coke. It was good, but a little late to eat a bagel. After 10 a.m. I am looking forward to lunch. But, it worked for the time being and since I missed breakfast, anything would have sufficed.

But here's where it went for a loop. When I was back getting my 25 cent Diet Coke from the pop machine at work, I checked out the company fridge. In it I saw a bunch of left over box lunches from a company function (on a related note, there were plain cheese subs available in one box, who the heck just gets a plain cheese sub? The funny part was, I didn't really believe it was just cheese, so I opened it, opened the sub and sure enough, it was just cheese. I put it back in the box. I wonder if anyone ever ate that, or if they would like to know my hands were on it before they ate it). So, I checked the rest of the box lunches out, and noticed one chicken sandwich with chips and a cookie in it. This was on Foccacia bread, which I am not a fan of unless I want to hurt my mouth chewing and risk chipping a tooth with the hard bread. Bread should not be hard.

So, I wasn't sure if these boxed lunches were for a company function for later, so I had to be sneaky. I quickly took the food out of the box lunch - the sandwich, cookie and chips, and stuffed it into my Panera bag, so when I walked the long hallway back to my desk, or if someone came into the lunch room while I was transferring food people would just think "oh, Panera, huh?" They would have no suspicion that I was possibly eating someone else's lunch. However, when I tried the sandwich later (shortly after I ate my bagel), I realized this sandwich was leftover, possibly even a couple days. I had two bites and tossed it. All the discretionary food plot was for not.

Anyway, around 12:39 I went out for a stroll with a goal of getting food in mind. I stopped at an Au Bon Pain and was impressed with the pic of the cajun shrimp wrap outside the restaurant. I am a big fan of cajun flavors, and of shrimp. It was wrapped in a tortilla with rice and a cajun sauce, some peppers - seemed fantastic. But, again, I was disappointed, as there were only two pieces of shrimp, and hardly any seasoning/peppers as indicated on the picture. It was basically a tortilla stuffed with white rice. I immediately went to the Au Bon Pain corporate web site, got on the feedback section and told them there sandwich was terrible. Weak

About two hours later I heard someone walk by and say to another person "Did you goget some food?"

That meant one thing - head to the lunch room. Sure enough, there was leftover chinese sitting out. While it was pretty picked through, I did find one leftover egg roll and some fried rice. It was one of those deals where I wasn't hungry, but I ate it because it was there. I clearly didn't need it, and it wasn't that good, but I ate it. The worst part was, I ate the egg roll with no dipping sauce, such as sweet and sour. Dipping sauce is key to egg rolls, which can be rather plain if not dipped in sauce, especially after sitting out for a few hours. I tried dipping it in the salad dressing that was left over from the chinese spread, but that just didn't cut it. I searched my famous top left drawer and found plenty of other items and condiments, but no egg roll sauce. Very disappointing.

I got home from work and wasn't really hungry, and Food Gal and Little Food Gal and I had to be off in a hurry. We had an event until about 9 p.m. so I was good on food for the day- or so I thought.

After the event, Little Food Gal was konked out, and sleeping hard, but Food Gal and I went on a mission for.......Wendy's! We wanted to go somewhere and sit down but it was late, LFG was sleeping, and we knew after eating late we wanted to be close to home.

So we did one of the worst things one can do - we ate fast food after 9 p.m.. There should be an unwritten rule that if you ever go to a fast food restaurant after 9 p.m. and there are fewer than three cars in the parking lot, you should leave immediately. Why? Because you end up with stale and old french fries. There were two cars in the lot when we got there. If no one is ordering anything they can't run out, and they can't make fresh food. I wasn't overly concerned about the fries though, but it would have been a plus if they tasted better. I ordered a classic cheeseburger, junior cheeseburger and 5 piece chicken nugget with a diet coke.

We ate while driving, and if you've ever ate a Wendy's hamburger, it's tough to eat while driving. With the lettuce, tomato, onions, and sauce, it can get messy. So, I pulled over before driving, and took a couple of bites of the burger before driving. That way, it allowed me to see where the potential trouble spots where - like where ketchup and mustard could squeeze out onto my hand or steering wheel while driving - potential hazards indeed. So, by identifying trouble spots it helped me drive safer. And then, it also helped me get a better handle on the burger. It wasn't as big and hard to hold, it was smaller, and I could control it more while I drove. I could move it around without worrying about sauce falling out, or the tomato squishing out, etc. Food Gal then took out the dipping sauce (I like saying that - dipping sauce - say it a few times, and imagine dipping your favorite app into your favorite sauce - nice ring to it) - and placed one nugget in the sauce for me to pick at at my convenience, such as when we were at a stop light. I thought it was a nice gesture by FG. I ate, and she repeated.

We had a short ride home but I polished off the cheeseburger, junior cheeseburger (note: junior cheeseburgers from Wendy's are about the perfect driving size, you are pretty safe taking a bite into it if you forget to do your burger/driving prep out of the drive through) and nuggets.

I got home...and immediately felt like crap.

I looked back at the food choices I made that day, and knew they weren't the best, but it was just one of those days. It happens, and when it does, you have to go all out, no in-between.

And, I was thinking, it will soon be Eat Day, and in honor of Eat day, I just celebrated a bit earlier than most people.

So, this Tuesday, grab your favorite food and celebrate one of the greatest things in this world - food and eating!

Happy Eat Day!

- TFG

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"Without Food, We Fail as a Society"

- The Food Guy