Throwback Thursday From October 2016 – “A Treatise on Lunch”

WHY I THINK OF SUCH THINGS I DO NOT KNOW. I certainly could find a better use for my remaining brain cells. There are days when I worry that my gray matter is slipping away by the cup full. Those days are usually Mondays.

The substance of my obsessive thoughts for today is: Lunch

Lunch is one of those things the origin of which is lost in the Misty Fog of Time. Breakfast I can readily see – my ancestor who is living in a cave wakes up after a long sleep and feels hungry. He craves food – Sugar Frosted Mastodon or whatever. And later in the day, near sunset, he is hungry again after a full day of hunting and gathering, but where does lunch fit into this? Unless you have really been out there slaughtering a T-Rex or two it has only been a few hours since that bowl of Flintstone Puffs.

In our modern society where the majority of people work behind a desk there is little or no nutritional imperative for Lunch. It has become more of a social event than an “I gotta eat and then go plow the back forty,” sort of thing.

But – to be honest, Lunch is the most important meal of the day to me, and I make no apologies for it. I don’t hunt or gather. I don’t slay dinosaurs and I ain’t gonna be plowing the back forty. The only back forty I have is in my pants.

I’m just not a big fan of breakfast. Early in the day my body is not conscious enough to chow down on bacon, eggs, grits, or anything else that is more chemically complex than coffee. On occasion I will have toast, but that’s pushing the limitations of my innards. Beyond that there be Gastric Dragons.

This morning I had tea and toast (The nearest St. Arbucks is 20 miles away.) and checked my email.

Early this afternoon we joined the rest of the Texas family for lunch at a local eatery. I opted for a Grilled Chicken Sandwich – it came with fries and a trip to the restaurant’s Bean Bar – not the salad bar, but the Bean Bar. It was lunch, my power meal of the day, so while others made salads, I got a bowl of some sort of bean, liberally sprinkled with chopped onion.

Dee-Licious

Beans are compact balls of protein and with the onions it made a very satisfactory alternative to the run of the mill salad bar end product.

My sandwich came and had so much chicken on it that, if you could reattach the feet, it could have gotten up and made a break for the door.

I left there feeling sated, stuffed, and, I suspect, well fed enough to make it to Ground Hog Day.

This lunchtime gathering was more about socializing with everyone else than it was about the food. I think the food just kept us from wandering off during those awkward silences. When you had nothing to add to the conversation – take a bite or two. Tonight we are all gathering again at Granma’s House. Five hours after our Lunch-a-thon it will be time for a Spaghetti Dinner. In reality it will be another Lunch and for the same reasons as the first – conversation and family story telling.

I doubt if there will be a Bean Bar tonight.

Imagine – a day with two Lunches.

The real impact of Lunch carries far beyond a baloney sandwich. It is the glue that holds a society together. Without Lunches we would deteriorate into a culture of nomadic desk jockeys – putting in our hours and then wandering off into our own misty fogs of Time – at least until the NFL game came on TV.

Now you can see why I think of Lunch as the most important meal of the day. Of course, if you start adding extra Lunches into the day on a regular basis the “Back Forty” may turn into the Ponderosa.

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