Skipping Meals

Do you ever hear people say that they forgot to eat lunch? I’ve never said that sentence in my entire life. Or, “I don’t eat breakfast.” How is that possible to forget to eat? I envy those people. Unless I just ate a Thanksgiving sized meal, I’ve never forgotten to eat the next meal….ever. That Snickers commercial where a person is hangry (a cross between hungry and angry), that’s basically me at a buffet luncheon. I’m starving and the people in front of me in line at the buffet at a banquet hall are as slow as molasses! What could they possibly be doing?! Pick a carrot, pick a tomato and move on! It’s not rocket science; do you want macaroni and cheese or not? Have you never seen a salad before? What are you staring at? I just want to tell those people pull aside, gather your thoughts, and then when you’re serious about loading your plate, only then will you be allowed back in the buffet line. Let the hungry, decisive people go first please. Let’s use both sides of the buffet table and get this line going! I hate too when the organizers of the event tell which table to go up first to the buffet, so when they pick the first table super far away, you’re painfully aware that your table will be last. That just makes me hangrier and ready to pass out! My thought process just isn’t that nice, it’s definitely the hunger talking. I try to pretend I’m at the beach and not forced to wait an hour to go up to the buffet line because the people who don’t know how to load a plate are going first. You try to be nice about it but you can’t really see straight because you’re so lightheaded. Speaking of loading plates, I really have no idea how chain buffet restaurants stay in business. People that go there are expert plate loaders. You can’t see their faces as they walk back to their tables from the buffet line because their plates are loaded so high with carbs; it’s a magical balancing act that defies the laws of gravity. That’s why most restaurants serve you the food. They determine your portion control. If they left it up to us like the buffet restaurants do, we’d have lobster balancing on steak balancing on crab cakes with a million scallops and buttered biscuits dangling off the side. That’s why gourmet restaurants with their ridiculously small portioned meals make me nervous. I’m going to walk away hungry from that because although it’s beautiful and artsy, unfortunately it’s a serving size equal to the proportions of a quarter. Sure it’s a bold burst of refreshing flavors with precise textures and sweet and salty balances to die for, but that tiny dollop you call dinner is not going to tide me over for an hour, let alone until the next meal. That’s more like an appetizer, but they charge an arm and a leg for it instead and call it dinner. No thanks. I’m not paying a lot of for what they call an amuse-bouche. Just call a spade a spade; it’s basically fancy talk for “here’s a bite” instead of an actual meal. I am starting to realize too at restaurants that if I’m noticing how people who were seated after me get their meals before me, I’m slipping into hangry mode. That’s usually a given after waiting an hour or more for my food to come out. Suddenly I’m noticing who ordered what around me and I’m mentally calculating how it is humanly possible my meal takes longer to prepare than theirs. I’m just thankful I wasn’t born in the old days when they had to hunt for their meals. That’s why life expectancy didn’t last beyond 30 years old…people were super hungry! I would’ve starved! All day you wait for your husband to find a squirrel in the dead of winter to feed your whole family that week. Nope! I’d never make it. Churn butter? Nope! You had to build your own house, fetch your own water, gather your own food without being able to run to the grocery store….they must’ve gotten nothing else done! Who has time for all that? I would’ve been the first statistic that year it snowed hard, the first to succumb to scurvy or something hideous like that. I can’t even wait patiently in a buffet line like a normal person, do you honestly think I’d make it skipping meals for days during tough times? I know I wouldn’t. So the next time you’re in a buffet line, decide if you’re the one who needs to gather your thoughts first or are you actually ready to scoop and move. Ask yourself before you get up there, do you want mac and cheese or not?