It’s only a slight exaggeration when I describe lunch as my favorite seven minutes of the day.
After more than 30 years of work, I’m still learning to pad my calendar with time between meetings, and I often find myself squeezing in lunch while responding to emails, drafting content or catching up on breaking news.
In case it’s not obvious, I am not a role model for mental or digestive health.
My lunchtime habits do satisfy one deep-seated need: finishing what I start.
I am an unrepentant and unapologetic completionist. I was one of seven people in America who stuck with ER for all 15 seasons, even after they had mangled, traumatized or killed all of their doctors and nurses. When I discover a new podcast, I am compelled to go back and listen to all of the previous episodes, even if it stretches back to the dawn of podcasting itself in 2003.
I was so proud of Harris this week when he joined Carla and me in watching the series finale of The Crown on Netflix. Without prompting he repeated my television viewing mantra: “Well, that’s over with. Entertainment is not meant to be enjoyed. It is meant to be completed.”
My compulsion applies to everything in my life – books I don’t really like, a run I develop an injury in the middle of, a song playing in the car when I reach my destination, and a meal lovingly prepared by my talented and creative spouse. It’s that last one that I’ve been thinking about lately as I seek to know myself and my patterns better as my early 50s begin to edge toward my mid-50s.
I’m a brown bagger for lunch and have been for years. There were about 10 years there where I probably shortened my life by bringing Hot Pockets every day, but some time in the last 10 or 15 years, my daily lunches, including on weekends, began to exclusively consist of recycled content from weeknight meals.
I think I get this Depression-era food conservatism impulse from my mom. She is the queen of leftovers, even now that her empty nest prevents her from being able to offload all of the leftovers in a timely manner. The labeling system for her epic collection of Lock and Lock food storage containers is an organizational marvel. You may recall that in my single days I once consumed leftover Thanksgiving turkey until March, thanks to Mom neatly storing it in single-serving-sized freezer bags for me.
Leftovers for lunch not only serve my need to finish what I start, they’re also tasty… mostly. I must confess that I do encounter some odd combinations. For example, one day this week, I had a grilled chicken thigh with roasted asparagus, hashbrown casserole and baked beans. I got some side eye from my coworker, Heather, whose office is next to the microwave, but those baked beans weren’t going to eat themselves!
There are limits. I wouldn’t bring something smelly into the office to reheat for lunch. No fish. Limited broccoli. Never stinky cheese. My aromatic leftovers often draw mouthwatering envy from my colleague Pete who only brings boring salads for lunch.
Deciding my lunch menu is super easy in this system: What is the oldest food in my fridge that is about to spoil? What is the food no one else will eat? What dish currently containing leftovers in the fridge does Carla need to prepare dinner for that night?
At no point would I ever ask “What do I want to eat?” That is completely irrelevant.
Like my mother, I have a hard time bringing myself to throw something out. That would be a failure, and I am committed to winning lunch every day.
So if you ever catch a glimpse of me with my insulated Oglethorpe University lunch bag in tow, you can bet its contents will meet needs at the base as well as the peak of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid. It’s about quelling hunger and self-actualization.
Dinner, it’s what’s for lunch tomorrow.
New South Essays 