One handful of rainbow sprinkles of unknown origin

September 13, 2021 12:37 PM

The Grub Street Diet: Leon Neyfakh Always Waits Too Long to Eat. “Not to be dramatic, but this is something I genuinely hate about myself.”
posted by carolr (15 comments total)

Sitting here eating a bowl of Dorito Chicken Casserole, wondering what this person would think of my diet, if their incredibly fancy and diverse cuisine habits laid out in this really long blog post I lost the point of around Tuesday are any indicators of their amusingly lofty baselines. Was expecting more about waiting too long to eat, I definitely do that. Rarely ever eat before noon, often skip lunch too until right around an hour or two before work ends, at which point I get a meal I struggled to pick from being too hungry, and then I eat it really fast while barely tasting it, and if I'm lucky I'm not immediately feeling way too full for an hour or two after.

Anyway, don't think it was really about the fancy food or waiting too long to eat, sorry for your loss / glad your grandma found the peace she sought in the end.
posted by GoblinHoney at 1:02 PM on September 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

Aw, single-language nursing homes, obviously we need them! But the organizational challenge is giving me the fantods already.
posted by clew at 1:08 PM on September 13, 2021

This was like a glorious poem to food itself, which is never just food, but always the thread between one thing and another in haphazard webs.

And I was pleased to remark the unexpected alcohol tolerance after the mRNA shot, which I also experienced! I felt like death on toast in every other regard but once I had rallied through the initial crud, I tossed back four whiskeys without feeling it a bit, either that day or the next. Such a strange thing!
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 1:51 PM on September 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

It is a way too common occurrence for me to reach 2 or 3 in the afternoon and say to myself, "why do I feel like garbage?" and my belly to be like, "well, the only thing you've put in me today has been coffee so...." Back before burnout mostly cured my tendency to severely overwork, I learned to keep the shelf stable Indian meals at my desk because I'd routinely work to the point that the lack of dinner would lead to executive dysfunction such that any food solution that required more than opening and heating something with protein was a challenge.
posted by Candleman at 2:59 PM on September 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

I bet he is half of one of those couples you see in the Thursday times, Sue and Fred have a million dollar budget to buy a midtown two bedroom, Sue wants a doorman, and a washer/dryer; which one will they choose?
posted by Oyéah at 6:31 PM on September 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is going to seem ungenerous, but “random seeeming essay that you think is about a mundane thing, but it’s really about a profound thing” is actually a fairly familiar trope.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:47 PM on September 13, 2021

My grandma stopped cooking food for me about two years before she died. Before that, she was constantly sending me back to New York with precariously wrapped meat pies, herring, etc., and when I was growing up she was responsible — along with my mom — for most of my diet.

My aunt told me a story about picking up a rather heavy box from her university dorm mailroom.

It had my grandmother's return address on it.

She returned to her room with the box. Her roommate and some other people were there, and watched her open it as anticipation built over the contents of the box.

"Wow, this is heavy! Gotta be good, right?"

There, in the box, sat a lone, whole cabbage.

This being in the days of a single phone bank for the dorm, may aunt wandered off in search of a free phone on which to call my grandmother.

"Mom, why did you mail me a cabbage?"

"I was worried you weren't getting enough vegetables!"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:07 PM on September 13, 2021 [7 favorites]

a million dollar budget to buy a midtown two bedroom

lol
posted by the_blizz at 7:38 PM on September 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

Alice, who got her extra shot about an hour before I got mine, was completely out of commission, and it was understood that I would be on my own journey for the day.

This is the moment I lost it!
posted by ellieBOA at 5:23 AM on September 14, 2021

WAS the food that fancy? the only thing that struck me as a bit fancypants thing was the "let's share these steaks" part, and mayyyybe the duck ragù at Bacaro? But otherwise...lamb ghallabah, tikka masala, sushi that is surprisingly good for the price, frozen pizza, cheetos, Heinekens, club sandwiches...this seems...pretty accessible mostly. I could easily reproduce this food diary and I am by no means a couple with a million dollar condo budget, nor am I even in NYC.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 6:35 AM on September 14, 2021

I wish “nutritional yeast” had a name that made it sound less like hospital food; seems like with a rebrand it could easily be an American staple.

Have I spent too long in punk / hippie circles? It's a staple for me.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:14 PM on September 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

I wish “nutritional yeast” had a name that made it sound less like hospital food; seems like with a rebrand it could easily be an American staple.

We call "nutritional yeast" Sunshine Sprinkles. My kid can't live without them... I never acquired a taste for it.
posted by skunk pig at 8:02 PM on September 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

“random seeeming essay that you think is about a mundane thing, but it’s really about a profound thing” is actually a fairly familiar trope.

And 2021 might not be the best year to deploy it.
posted by Candleman at 11:00 PM on September 14, 2021

Unclear on whether 2021 murdered the mundane or the profound or the essay, but maybe I just need to accept that this essay is Not For Metafilter in many of the same ways that I myself am not.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:56 PM on September 15, 2021

“I want my head to stop spinning. I want my back to stop hurting. I just want to disappear, and I want to be forgotten.” When I said I loved her, she said, “I love you, too, kitten” — that’s a normal term of endearment in Russian — “but there’s nothing much here left to love.”

Damn. All of that is gonna stick with me.
posted by The Card Cheat at 10:38 AM on September 16, 2021