When I packed her lunch I put aside a couple of things in a sack for my own, but I didn’t really think through the day. Then, after a busy morning at home I needed to get out the door fast. I looked in the sack I’d sort-of-packed. There was protein. There was fruit. There was a hearty evening snack to eat during a rehearsal break. But no vegetables. There was only time to grab the first green thing in the crisper and hope it would work out.
Thus it was that, at lunchtime, I found myself with pizza and asparagus. The former was leftover from a few evenings ago; the latter hadn’t been cooked yet, but were only few hours shy of their sell-by date. The pizza reheated nicely enough in the toaster oven. The asparagus, wrapped in a moist paper towel, steamed in the microwave. I ate standing up, while filing choir music and watching a liturgical-music documentary. It was not a fine dining experience, but it could have been worse. The pizza was nearly as good as it had been when it was first baked. The asparagus had enough crispness left to satisfy my craving for greens. It was an odd combination, but not unpalatably weird.
Keep your Tex-Mex. Your French-Chinese. Your eel, lettuce, and tomato hand roll. I’ll take a slice of pizza and something green. Maybe I’ll even put the green thing on the pizza.
Unless it’s okra. Or canned peas. That would just be wrong.
Pizza and asparagus look prettier as a watercolor.
Dinner at the Country House 