What I Eat

Meet the Author Whose Favorite Food Category Is Takeout

What is she gonna do, make her own General Tso’s?

I’m sure this is the kind of essay where you expect to find a picture of me casually standing in my sun-dappled kitchen, a woven basket full of my farmer’s market bounty propped against my hip as I lean seductively on my impeccable farmhouse sink, fully hydrated and ready to pass a firm, fiber-enriched stool.

And then I’d write about how every morning I pluck a persimmon from the tree in my yard for breakfast. Then I’d tell you about my three-course organic lunch while listening to a podcast about the news, before finishing my day at a restaurant you’ve never heard of, drinking wine that could pay your kid’s preschool tuition.

Dude, that’s intimidating. The last thing I need to feel while sprinkling crushed Bugles over a room-temperature Lean Cuisine and reading a fancy-food article online is worse; the carcinogens in my gas station corn dog are making me feel bad enough. But I promise I’m not that kind of guy! I don’t know how to say “endive” and I have a Dorito-ranking spreadsheet! (For the record: Poppin’ Jalapeño, a flavor that is embarrassing to say and even moreso to write, is the reigning queen.)

So this won’t be that. There’s never going to be anything in my fridge that I would be embarrassed to pronounce in front of a smart person. You know what is in there? Tallboys of Diet Coke and various cartons of half-used, non-dairy milks I can’t help but buy because of the novelty of it all.

I want you to think I care about being healthy, so here’s where I admit to you that I love a bagged salad. I grew up poor, on box mixes and bagged cereal: Why we are supposed to make believe that convenience isn’t 99 percent of what we want in life? OK, fine. You want me to eat a wide variety of greens every single day and pretend that I enjoy it? I can do that, but I need you to sort the leaves and wash the dirt off them, please. I can’t tell lettuces apart! Just have a machine cut it up for me and rinse the E. coli off — a task for which I will gladly pay the extra dollar or whatever it costs.

Sometimes I can tell a lettuce from a cabbage, but you know what? Other times I absolutely cannot…