The Slow Food USA Blog

Eating in: not so hard

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A week ago I wrote about Cathy Erway’s book The Art of Eating In and about HuffPost’s challenge to its readers to like Cathy did and eat in for one week.  So, here goes my progress report, day 4. 

For me—as for many of my colleagues—this isn’t so very different from a regular week.  I usually make my lunch at least 3 days, if not all 5 workdays.  Although lunch eats in DUMBO are better than in some neighborhoods, stuff I can make at home will almost always be better.  It seems to be merely a matter of organization/planning, and making the time to prepare something.  True, I’ve been eating kale salad for four days running, but it did have blood oranges and avocado on top, and those sweet potatoes I baked in the office toaster oven sure made the office smell good.

On Monday, Anna Lappe came to our office and wrote this lovely piece about the merits of eating in and how it made her lunch date with Josh (Viertel) more fun and more delicious.

I myself found that the challenge got me:

   
• Eating at home with a friend in a very casual and potluck-y way that made both of us think: why don’t we do this more often?
   
• Using up food in my fridge and not throwing out as much as I sometimes do (i.e. no produce was harmed/tossed in the making of this experiment)
   
• Eating less
   
• Spending less money

The bog trick will be the weekend, which is often structured around dinners and brunches and the like.  Wish me luck.