When you were a kid, your mom put a dinner plate in front of you with what she thought was a well-balanced meal. There might be some chicken, maybe a potato or rice, perhaps a bit of broccoli or green beans. It's not necessarily what you would have picked had it been up to you, but, well, mom was the boss and the nutritionist. And if you wanted any shot of getting to the ice cream, you had to eat it all.
As you got older, you were able to pick and choose what you wanted. You passed on the spinach, had an extra helping of steak, added a stick of butter to that baked potato. It might have led to an extra pound or two, maybe some complexion issues, but you were young and invincible, and no one was going to tell you what you could eat. Besides, what difference did it make in the long run anyways?
Well, welcome to the long run. And now you recognize that, to paraphrase a popular refrain these days, eating has consequences. And so maybe you cut back that serving to a single portion, switched to low fat yogurt or learned to like salad. But you still didn't like beets, and damn it, no one was gonna make you eat them.
That's usually not a problem. Whether you are eating healthy or not, watching your weight or not, binging or not, if you are making your own meals at home or ordering in a restaurant, you can select the things you like and ignore the things you don't. Hate cauliflower but like zucchini? Partial to lemony things but not big on spicy? Like berries but not peaches? A fish man/woman vs a pork chop person? Yours to prepare/order/eat as you see fit, no explanation or excuse needed.
But not always. As we slowly return to some semblance of regular life, or more correctly, learn to navigate the changed landscape that will stand in for normal for the foreseeable future, we are going to have to make adjustments. There are several situations where before we took for granted our God-given right not to have radishes on our plate. Not anymore. In the interest of public health, you don't have to like it, but you may have to look at it.
All those instances where you got to select what you liked off of a common table are likely gone for a while. No more buffets, no more salad bars, no more dessert tables. Likewise, no more platters of hors d'oeuvres, bowls of chips and guac, or plates of fully loaded nachos. If double dipping was simply unsanitary before, now it is positively life threatening. Whether your group event is capped at 10 or 20 or 50, there will be no wait staff passing trays of mini quiches. Rather everyone is likely to get their own little assortment: a single meatball, a single stuffed mushroom, a single garlic shrimp. It will look less like a party, and more like a still life, though I don't recall Caravaggio painting "Pig-In-Blanket with Carved Carrot Flower."
And swapping with your buddies is probably also a thing of the past. If you were on a flight or at a meeting or working a project, you might have been able to select the headline act of a boxed meal that also contained an assortment of other courses. If you were like most, the first thing you did was take out all the different little containers, and examine them, a process that recalled lining up your baseball cards or Barbies.
Depending on the lead the supporting cast would vary: the chicken came with pasta salad, while the roast beef was accompanied by a tomato and pepper medley. But what if you weren't partial to peppers? No worry, you could trade with a friend. But no more. The old saw was "you break it, you bought it." The new one is "you touched it with your unsterile fingers, it's yours, no sharesies." Mom may not be watching if you eat it or not, but that container of eggplant with drizzled tahini sauce will be staring at you as you pass over it to wolf down the strawberry cobbler next to it. The bottom line is that we no longer live in an ala carte world: now it's ala can't.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford eats most things on his plate. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
As you got older, you were able to pick and choose what you wanted. You passed on the spinach, had an extra helping of steak, added a stick of butter to that baked potato. It might have led to an extra pound or two, maybe some complexion issues, but you were young and invincible, and no one was going to tell you what you could eat. Besides, what difference did it make in the long run anyways?
Well, welcome to the long run. And now you recognize that, to paraphrase a popular refrain these days, eating has consequences. And so maybe you cut back that serving to a single portion, switched to low fat yogurt or learned to like salad. But you still didn't like beets, and damn it, no one was gonna make you eat them.
That's usually not a problem. Whether you are eating healthy or not, watching your weight or not, binging or not, if you are making your own meals at home or ordering in a restaurant, you can select the things you like and ignore the things you don't. Hate cauliflower but like zucchini? Partial to lemony things but not big on spicy? Like berries but not peaches? A fish man/woman vs a pork chop person? Yours to prepare/order/eat as you see fit, no explanation or excuse needed.
But not always. As we slowly return to some semblance of regular life, or more correctly, learn to navigate the changed landscape that will stand in for normal for the foreseeable future, we are going to have to make adjustments. There are several situations where before we took for granted our God-given right not to have radishes on our plate. Not anymore. In the interest of public health, you don't have to like it, but you may have to look at it.
All those instances where you got to select what you liked off of a common table are likely gone for a while. No more buffets, no more salad bars, no more dessert tables. Likewise, no more platters of hors d'oeuvres, bowls of chips and guac, or plates of fully loaded nachos. If double dipping was simply unsanitary before, now it is positively life threatening. Whether your group event is capped at 10 or 20 or 50, there will be no wait staff passing trays of mini quiches. Rather everyone is likely to get their own little assortment: a single meatball, a single stuffed mushroom, a single garlic shrimp. It will look less like a party, and more like a still life, though I don't recall Caravaggio painting "Pig-In-Blanket with Carved Carrot Flower."
And swapping with your buddies is probably also a thing of the past. If you were on a flight or at a meeting or working a project, you might have been able to select the headline act of a boxed meal that also contained an assortment of other courses. If you were like most, the first thing you did was take out all the different little containers, and examine them, a process that recalled lining up your baseball cards or Barbies.
Depending on the lead the supporting cast would vary: the chicken came with pasta salad, while the roast beef was accompanied by a tomato and pepper medley. But what if you weren't partial to peppers? No worry, you could trade with a friend. But no more. The old saw was "you break it, you bought it." The new one is "you touched it with your unsterile fingers, it's yours, no sharesies." Mom may not be watching if you eat it or not, but that container of eggplant with drizzled tahini sauce will be staring at you as you pass over it to wolf down the strawberry cobbler next to it. The bottom line is that we no longer live in an ala carte world: now it's ala can't.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford eats most things on his plate. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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