Emily, writing about my lunches and fulfilling some strange need to create. I remember lots of lunches,
As a child I was particularly fond of Campbell's chicken and rice soup with Ritz crackers and red Jello for desert. This memory often sets me off into Proustian wanderings...when I was sick and lay abed...I love this line so much (well it's not really from Proust but I do think it's Proustian).
My other favorite was Cream of Mushroom. What an excellent soup! And I had a very groovy Monkees' lunch box which if I still had today would probably be worth a lot of money.
Unfortunately, like everyone I was forced to grow up and partake in the adolescent food rituals involving most often a slice of pizza and a diet coke and various other non-healthy alternatives.
Then I went to work: we had salad bars, when did these get invented? and then we had sushi bars, and the office cafeteria too in some of those big expensive places I worked...
In 1998 I moved to Paris. I'd never lived in a real big big city before and I'd never had so many choices, it was overwhelming.
And so after all these many years, I've lunched in Tunisia, lunched in Paris, lunched in NYC, lunched in Amsterdam, lunched in London, lunched in Bangkok, lunched in Vientiane, lunched in Bombay, and what have you, lunched on planes, lunched with my kids, lunched at home, lunched after shopping, missed lunch (oh that is painful), but always made up for it, worked through lunch while lunching...how much time does an average human spend lunching?
But still, lunch...is a special moment of the day.
Let us celebrate and live well, please.
Lunch, oh yes, I love lunch