Canteen Tales

“Why should I care? I don’t care, what d’you have for lunch today?”
Rod ~ Avenue Q

Today, as I surveyed my lunch before starting on my first snack of the day, I realized how much my lunch-eating habits have changed after moving to Georgia. Funnily, in spite of the wide array of food available for all three meals, what I eat for breakfast and dinner is still very much the same. In all honesty, after running out of Brinta, I have been forced to eat cereal, but seeing how it’s still made with milk, put in a bowl, and eaten with a spoon, I will argue that it is fairly similar. After all, it's not as though I'm suddenly gorging myself on pancakes, eggo waffles, or hashbrowns. Dinner also hasn’t changed all that much. Thanks to the wide supply of European foods at the commissary, the grocery store on base, we can still eat “rode kool”, “zuurkool”, and other more exotic dishes such as curries, and pastas.

Lunch however, has never been the same since we moved. Maybe I was just an old-fashioned (and predictable) Dutch person, but when I lived in Holland I would always eat the pretty much same thing for lunch: a glass of milk, a few sandwiches with a variety of toppings, some fruit, and a Liga’s evergreen. When I met the love of my life, I was always amazed by his choice of lunches. I think we can honestly say that he eats anything for lunch but sandwiches. I’m not sure if this is the result a childhood spent eating too many sandwiches, or just a hearty dislike for the product, but the fact is that my husband will eat soups, leftovers, salads, quesadillas, freshly-made mini-pasta dishes, and even chili for lunch. So when we first met, he would have his, in my eyes, huge lunch, while I would “snack” (his words) on my very minimalist meal.

Then when we moved to Georgia, I was faced with a serious problem regarding my lunch preferences: the lack of good, healthy bread. Somehow on previous moves to the US, I had always managed to locate a good bakery, but so far I have had no luck here in my neck of the woods. The bread is white, tasteless, and although I’m sure it does a great job serving as fish bait, it’s obviously not made not to fit my more critical palate. Liga Evergreen is obviously also not available outside of Europe, and I have yet to locate the small bottles of milk I used to buy.

So what’s a predictable old-fashioned Dutch person to do? It’s very simple, and yet strangely familiar: I compromise. Again. From time to time I will take leftovers to work with me. Sometimes I’ll even bring some of husband-dear’s delicious quesadillas, although I don’t come near his chili or his soups. I’ve also been known to take his famous blue-cheese-walnut-raisin salad, but most of the time my lunch is an interesting mix of little bites. In the place of milk, I have taken to drinking orange juice for the vitamins, and Diet Coke for the caffeine (desperate times call for desperate measures). Then I will usually bring raisins, or maybe some carrots, a cheese rolly-polly, or some sort of cheese snack, a granola bar, an apple, a banana, and some yogurt. That’s it. My co-workers always express amazement at how little I eat, but I don’t think that that is an area where I could integrate, even if I wanted to.

So now please excuse me while I go and nibble on my raisins.