Sharing My Food

"We should look for someone to eat and drink with

before looking for something to eat and drink."

-- Epicurus

Squirrel with nut 11-26-14

"If you really want to make a friend,

go to someone's house and eat with him ...

the people who give you their food

give you their heart."

-- Cesar Chavez

You know what makes me sad?

It makes me sad that schools now have rules prohibiting students from sharing their food in the cafeteria at lunchtime.

I even read a story recently about a kid and a friend who were both served detention for swapping lunches. 

Say I wanted to trade you my Doritos for your Moon Pie. We'd both be fucked.

Or say you forgot your lunch and I gave you half of my sandwich. Again, both of us, fucked.

Maybe you don't have money to buy a school lunch, so I treat you to a tray of hamburger gravy. Both. Fucked.

School officials say the strict rules and penalties are only an effort to protect kids with serious food allergies from unwittingly ingesting something that could kill them. You know. Foods like shellfish or peanut butter.

The rules also protect the schools' asses from lawsuits.

The USDA says the rules help ensure kids will eat lunches that comply with the National School Lunch Program's nutritional protocol.

Well, I've been in my kids' school cafeteria at lunchtime. I've seen the school lunches up close. You know where I've seen them? Uneaten, in the trash can.

Maybe the USDAs tactic for fighting childhood obesity is to serve food so disgusting that even fat kids lose their appetites.

On the other hand, I also read an article about a study that revealed how sharing food actually makes us better, less selfish, more altruistic people.

I agree.

I did it yesterday.

My incredible friend Jill stopped here on her way from Chicago to Cleveland, so I baked her a delicious, bubbly cherry crisp for us all to share. Jill's vegan, so I got some vanilla Tofutti ice cream to make it a la mode. And when she left for the next leg of her journey, I gave her an extra dish of cherry crisp to take along for her breakfast.

Giving another person some of your food is extremely intimate gesture of love. It's not quite as intimate as sex. But nevertheless, it involves one person offering another person something to put inside their body. It's about filling an emptiness.

Sharing food is absolutely essential to human togetherness and relationships. 

It's primal.

Take away that elemental urge and you take one more step toward isolating people from one another. 

If we persist in punishing kindergartners for sharing their Gogurts and Teddy Grahams, we'll create a selfish, isolated, love-starved generation.

Aren't we already selfish, isolated and starving enough?

Anyway.

All of this is by way of saying, with the Thanksgiving season upon us, I believe sharing good food is a good thing.

Go ahead.

Make extra. 

Pass it around. 

Lunch Notes

"Lunch hour is the loneliest hour of the day."

-- Charlie Brown

Lunch note 8-20-14

"At our school, the older you get, the stupider your lunch period."

-- Rebecca Stead, When You Reach Me

School sucks.

For my son Leo, the sucking started today.

It's true, school can fill a kid with lots of good things. But we all know it can also force feed him a shitload of total ass-crap.

That's where lunch notes come in.

I pack Leo's lunch every day.

On many of those days, I tuck a small note in along with his sandwiches, chips and applesauce.

The food is how I try to feed him what he needs to keep going physically. But the notes are how I try to feed him a little shot of encouragement, or humor, or understanding, or nonsense, or whatever kind of boost he might be hungry for that day.

In the middle of a long hard day packed with information, and peer pressure, and cliques, and competition, and grades, and questions, and hormones, and overheated classrooms and uncomfortable desks, a lunch note reminds a kid that someone outside the building is thinking about him and loves him.

The lunch note is a tiny thing, but it's a very good thing. On some school days it might be the only good thing that happens to a kid.

You can't eat them, and I don't think they're on Mrs. Obama's healthier school lunch agenda.

But they should be.

If you ask me, little lunch notes should be a required part of every kid's daily diet.

They're soul food.

Packing the Last Lunch Of The School Year

"What sort of lunch is in that lunchbox?"

-- Winnie the Pooh, 

The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh

Leo's full lunchbox 6-2-14

"The practice of doing more than necessary works best

 when packing lunch boxes."

-- Josh Stern,

And That's Why I'm Single: 

What Good is Having a Lucky Horseshoe Up Your Butt 

When The Horse Is Still Attached?

According to Leo, the lunches I pack for him every day are a little bit legendary in the school cafeteria.

He says I've gotten mad  props from a few of his friends who look covetously at what he brings to eat.

I should get props. I pack great lunches.

These ain't no PB&J and an apple lunches, either. You won't find any lame-ass Lunchables in there. And with all due respect to Mrs. Obama, the school's "healthier" lunch isn't anywhere near good enough to feed to my boy -- it's not tasty enough, it's not healthy enough, and most of all, it's just not big enough.

A lunch like that might feed a third grader, but it won't cut the mustard with a 6' 1", 210 lb. slab of rock-solid, hungry muscle that burns through food like a coal furnace.

Leo's typical lunch, on any given day, includes two thick sandwiches layered with lean ham, turkey and chicken with lettuce and mayo on whole wheat, a protein bar, mixed nuts, applesauce, yogurt, homemade hummus with sliced carrots, a meat stick, and fresh fruit (usually strawberry slices or 2 or 3 clementine oranges.)  I pack it in as tight as I can, filling every square inch of available space. Toss in a plastic spoon, a napkin, and a bottle of water in the outside pocket and the whole thing weighs in at about five pounds, give or take.

I can pack a lot of love into a lunchbox.

I do this routine five nights a week. I even did it when Leo missed so many days of school due to winter weather closings. I kept packing his lunches, just in case. And if school was closed, he just ate lunch out of his lunchbox at our dinner table.

I'm happy to feed my growing son a healthy lunch that he can enjoy. But there comes a time, like now, when packing a lunch just feels like one more thing I have to do. So with the long school year finally winding to a close, I'm looking forward to a much-needed reprieve from the tyranny of the lunchbox.

I'm not complaining, I'm just saying sometimes it feels really good to get a break.

Of course I'll still have to feed Leo all summer. So, of course I'll still be making his lunches. But I won't have to stuff it all into little plastic zip-bags and pack it up the night before or realize at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night that I forgot to make hummus.

And in the summer, we can eat lunch together, which is the part I like best. Lunchtime is a pretty lonely affair for me most days.

Now I get to sit at the cool kids' table with that really hot guy. The big one with all the muscles. Yeah, him.

I hope he talks to me.