Mangia! Mangia!

I love food. It's definitely my second favorite thing behind sports and before sleep. The Food Network is my third favorite channel, behind CBS and ESPN. Like any good Italians, my family spends many moments around food -- we gather, we eat; we celebrate, we eat; we get bored, we eat. Food is a significant part of my life and I love it. I'll say it again. I love food.

Moving away from home was scary at first when I went to college because I feared the food would be disappointing. For four years at Bucknell, however, I had everything I ever wanted in terms of food options. "The Caf" was certainly my favorite place to go for the simple fact that "all you can eat" options make me extremely happy. The more the merrier, I say. Let's not forget about the occasional trip to Larison Dining Hall for a personal pizza you made yourself or the occasional trip to The Bison for a pretty solid sandwich/soup combo or a giant sub (which, by the way, were WAY better when we were freshmen and they were made upstairs near the Terrace Room and not actually in The Bison). But seriously, I ate pretty well in college and that was a good thing.

Graduate school left nothing to be desired as well in terms of the food options. The food across campus was diverse and delicious. I still crave stir-fry and my made-to-order hot Italian sub from Encore, by far my favorite place to eat. Mmmm. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. Again, I ate pretty well and that was a good thing.

Growing up like I did, I swore I would never eat boxed meals. I swore I'd never succomb to the wrath of Lean Cuisine and Marie Callender and Hungry Man. I vowed to cook and use my food knowledge and eat healthy and often.

But alas, I succombed. I have no excuses for falling off this wagon, but more often than I would like to admit I eat food from a box. It hit me recently how often I do this.

I went to a dinner with one of the teams I work with and one of the players said, "Carol, this is the first time I ever saw you eat food that didn't come from a box." I wanted to crawl into a hole and die when he said this; he was right, I eat this crap way too much.

This depressed me. You see, I do love to cook, but I don't really like leftovers and any good chef will tell you it's hard to cook for one person (it's also not very fun... I mean, cooking with friends, drinking some good wine, and setting off fire alarms in residence halls is MUCH more fun). It's also cheap and easy to buy these meals, throw them in the "nooker" (aka, a microwave for you elitists out there), and scarf on down.

Seriously, though, I will not be discouraged. I am confident I can overcome this food challenge and rise victorious and more satisfied in my food consumption. For starters, I realized this week that I have successfully managed to go three entire weeks without eating any variety of Hot Pockets. I can't say the same for Lean Cuisine but I am making progress, and that too is a good thing.