Today I grabbed lunch from a fast food taco joint (I won’t mention their name lest they put me on some new marketer’s to-do list to follow me on Twitter, Plurk, FriendFeed and Facebook until the right time to get me to promote them or ask me to keep blogging about their mediocre product). Ok, it was Taco Bell.
Anyways, I ordered lunch and a few extra rich imperialist tidbits (see yesterday’s post) just in case I got hungry later and was too lazy/busy to cook. Well that was indeed the case, the case not the quesadilla. Don’t get those though, gas.
And that reminded me of my college days when I would always order one dish for two meals. I perfected that art the summer I spent at Princeton on an undergraduate research fellowship. The eating clubs were closed during the summer so it was either cook in the dorm or eat out. I would go to nice restaurants and appear to go in with the intention of eating a full meal, not with a half eat in have to-go strategy. I’d plan the portion size vs. cost vs. yumminess in my head then order accordingly.
As the only Chicano in these semi fancy restaurants (especially as a non-Puerto Rican Latino) I got a look of understanding from the wait staff. Most people take home at most a fourth of their meal and I was taking home half. But they had to work extra hard to get all that food into the aluminum foil swan they sent me home with.
This was a nice trick but as money dwindled that summer I ended up eating pizza by the slice and lots of ice cream "blends" which didn’t lend themselves to portioning.