Food Rules: The Edible Experiment, Week Six

Journal Entry
Week Six
October 7, 2010

Rule 59 “Try not to eat alone”

Now this rule always gets me, because I live alone…and therefore find it very hard not to eat alone! I guess I could put a mirror in front of me while I’m eating…but that would totally freak me out so I usually refrain from doing such things. I do occasionally eat with my family on the weekends when I go home to visit them; in fact, I look forward to Sunday dinner with the family because quite frankly, it gets pretty lonely night after night sitting there with a bowl of cereal or scrambled eggs or oatmeal (don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love breakfast! I love it so much I often eat it for dinner :) If I had to pick a favorite meal, I’d say it would have to be breakfast. And then breakfast again for dinner. Naturally. (I really like it.) But I digress.

So anyway back to this problem of me finding people to eat with. Well the characters in my books that I study for school while eating (I know, I know, breaking the “refrain from multitasking rule”) aren’t the best company. So when I do get the chance to go eat with friends, I usually take advantage of the offer! Now last week I mentioned the new Organic restaurant that my friend and I went to visit, and promised a dissertation on the matter. Yet I’d rather not consider this a dissertation so much as a little slice of a really incredibly cool experience! During the course of our explorations at the Farmer’s Market last weekend, my friend (Rachel) received a text from another friend of ours who was in town and who wanted to get together for lunch. It was a really beautiful day, and we were already out and about, so of course we said yes, absolutely! Well I had been hearing raving reviews of this new little café that just opened up here in Covington, called Toad Hollow. I had heard that they were “all-organic” or, at least, all-natural, and that their food was simply delicious and simply must be tried! And thinking back to the Farmer’s Market that I attended (was subjected to Community Service at?) a year ago, I remember them actually serving samples of their little tasty goodies and remembered how people had raved at how delicious they were. So I suggested going to this little café to check it out and see if it was really as good as claimed.

Now, neither Rachel nor I are 100% “let’s only eat organic food for the rest of our lives” type of people, but both of us are very health conscientious and do strive to balance a healthy diet and good solid exercise regimen, and we both hit up the gym several times a week. So we both were curious about this new restaurant and really eager to try it. Now of course, when we arrived, our friend immediately said “Toad Hollow? Gee how unappetizing that sounds!” (Hey I thought it was kind of a cute name, but whatever) We proceeded inside, curious to find out what they had to offer.

The menu was filled with delicious-sounding delicacies, and amidst comments such as “wow all this stuff sounds so healthy,” and “do people really eat this way?” and “what the heck is couscous?” from our dear out-of-town friend, the peanut-gallery of one, I noted a section on the menu which said that none of the meat served there was treated with any type of antibiotic or additive. I also noticed that when they brought my Hibiscus-Mint iced tea (a specialty brewed fresh on the premises daily) there were no pink, yellow, or blue sugar-packets in sight!!! (Now THAT was a sight for sore eyes!) Only Stevia and turbinado sugar were available as natural alternatives to artificial sweeteners.

There were tons of delicious selections on the menu, which included everything from breakfast items made with cage-free eggs, all natural cheeses, and lots and lots of fresh fruit and vegetables, to salads with light tasty dressings, to sandwiches, wraps, entrees, and even desserts, all of which fulfilled a large majority of Pollan’s rules – eat your colors, 2/3 veggies to 1/3 meat, no preservatives or fillers, names that could all be pronounced, all-in-all, a very well balanced menu and delicious twists on new meal ideas! And to boot, I was with friends and not eating alone!

Except there was only one tiny little problem: I was SO full from the breakfast that I had eaten before the Farmer’s Market, and from the sampling of many yummy things at the Farmer’s Market, that alas! all I had room for was my tea! I was going to buy something and take it home, but I figured that would completely ruin the experience because a) I wouldn’t be eating it fresh and in the ambience of the restaurant (sometimes that makes things taste that much better) and b) I would end up … what? Eating it alone?! No way, really?

So I just forfeited lunch that day for the moment, ate a sandwich later when I got hungry, and resolved to go back to Toad Hollow with Rachel very soon, where we could both enjoy a nice, healthy bite to eat without comments from our “less” health-conscious, out-of-town friends.