Eating Alone Part II / Feeling Like Dirt: Part I

I was thinking, as I ate a rice and chicken burrito by myself at Chipotle this evening, that the decor of the place is really, really, awful. The bad tempermant caused by the terrible design of the place quickly spawned an entire mental diatribe as I dipped my salty chips into a guacamole filled plastic cup.
For starters, this is probably the first time in my life that I have been eating out as much as this, almost on a meal to meal basis. It feels terrible, like I am inflating my innards with “non-food”. There is something strange about how you start to feel after eating out everyday. It’s as though the process of eating has turned into something of a chore, an expensive, not-so-filling chore. The food itself never has the flavor of ‘fresh’ and always takes on a very distinct aftertaste of food boredom and excessiveness. It doesn’t seem like I am eating food, as much as I am just eating some substance that quells the pains in my stomach after not eating for eight hours. Nor can I relate anything that I have consumed over the past few weeks to a product that was actually grown. The concept of a seed blossoming into a lettuce head, that gets shipped and cleaned and then shredded at Chipotle and put in my burrito, is totally forgotten. As if there isn’t ‘real’ food in any of the restaurants I’ve been going to , but rather, a plant that grows a burrito, a tree that offers greasy pizza from its limbs, a bush that grows pots of hot ramen. I feel like I am purchasing one unit of food, not several units fused into one. Not lettuce, tomato, spices, salt, pepper, rice, cilantro, lime, lemon, chicken, avocado, chili, butter, and oil, but one solid unit called a “burrito”. I am totally disillusioned with food.
I also decide to come up with a list of words that have not been included in any ingredient list in the items that I have been eating: Organic, fresh, natural, whole grain, hand-grown, hand-picked, free-range, fiber, whole-wheat, low-fat, non-fat, no preservatives, vitamins, calcium, healthy. Then I thought of some very familiar ingredients & phrases: high fructose corn syrup, sugar, salt, fat, trans fat, sodium, butter, grease, max-pack, cheap, fast, easy, quick, no-hassle, five minutes, microwavable, canned, “not a good source of…”, processed, preservatives, cream, gelatin….
Anyway, I feel like poop and I really want to extract the last months worth of food from my body and take a spin on the super hot cycle inside a washing machine with some extra soap to really scrub out my arteries.

Eating Alone Part I

I would like to briefly examine the process I went through a few days ago of trying to find a place to eat alone. The first instinct that I have when faced with the problem of hunger and the solution of eating out, is that I don’t want to eat alone. So I call around. Ten minutes later if I have come full circle, and still have no one to eat with, then I begin to rack my brain as to where to eat, if I must do it by myself. The mental battle lasts thirty minutes, involves a lot of pacing back and forth, and a few more phone calls to no avail. At first I think I want to go to a coffee shop, perhaps get a sandwich or coffee. I rule this out because I want a bigger and fuller meal, and am usually trying to appease my hunger pains at late hours, when most coffee shops are no longer open. Then I decide that I want to eat somewhat close to my house, cheaply, and without a large crowd. This rules out my favorite ramen house in Clairemont, my favorite sushi place, and most other tasty and expensive restaurants. After this round of elimination, I usually end up with Luigi’s pizza, Chipotle, Pokez, Panchos Market, and Los Panchos taco shop. Chipotle is ruled out because there are always too many loud people, and I don’t want to be outnumbered and singled out. Luigi’s pizza is too greasy for me most nights, and is usually filled to the brim with cool kids and possibly some people I know, and if I’m going to be sitting by myself I would rather be in an environment that enriches the lonely moment, not diffuses it. One must relish this opportunity to eat in silence and solitude, yes? Pokez is ruled out for the same reason, along with the decision that I would rather not have to poop ten times tomorrow. I’m left with Panchos, and Los Panchos. Funny. North park is deemed ‘too far’ and I pick Los Panchos. I order 5 rolled tacos, a side of rice and beans, and pour 4 containers of their extra delicious salsa verde sauce all over my meal. I choose the seat behind the door to corner myself into a little world, and eat until the last crunchy roll is gone. The next day my stomach is churning and I wish that I had just eaten Pokez, because if I must suffer the post-mexican-food-sickly-blues than I would rather have enjoyed a tofu potato and mushroom burrito for a buck more, with only slightly worse results.