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OftenBen  ·  2816 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Writing With Refugee: An August of Prompts

Lunch today was Red Chicken Curry with a side of steamed broccoli. (Which I didn't eat) I was inspired to choose that over one of my other freezer lunches because of johnnyFive's Chicken Tikka. I popped it into my bag, and then into the fridge at work. (Which I never touched again today) I can't name put a name to why, but frozen food in general rarely seems as appetizing as its 'fresh' counterpart, even if the difference is only perceived. See the example of every chain restaurant that serves frozen meals to get you to spend money on alcohol. But this is also true of my own cooking. (Which I ignored) If I had a bowl of fresh made curry, and a bowl of the stuff that's been in the freezer less than a month, if all other things were equal I think I'd still prefer fresh. Is this a quality of freezers? Lunches? My own weird taboos and mores and norms about food? I can be honest about the appeal of eating out daily, especially in an office environment, and especially in a city known for both gourmet food and intense professional competition. I can honestly say that I perceive such a thing as a signal of economic overabundance, to the level that daily expenditures under three figures are trifling. Such a thing can also be a signal of economic ignorance, wastefulness or sheer laziness as well, but those don't enter into my head. But back to the packed lunch(Which I didn't eat), I still feel differences in the types. A young man with a neatly packed bento box might have a doting significant other, or else too much free time. A series of frozen 'Serves 1's conveys all kinds of different things, depending on the context in which they are observed. So many different ways to get a few hundred hopefully nutritious calories into your body, so many different contexts.

And in all this hullaballoo I forgot to eat.