I was talking to a friend recently about food – what else! – and found that pizza had features large on the lunch menu. And it took me way back to the time when I was in college and always hungry. It was many years ago and I had just moved to a campus in the gorgeous Rocky Mountains. In the coed dorm where I had to stay for a year, I met all sorts of people, from unclad Norwegians who helped name my rubber plants to the college Casanova to a Boston Brahmin with incredibly bad breath. And along the way I made friends who taught me an alternate way of food, stuff that was not light, lite, healthy or high-fibre, had plenty of calories and fuelled the system for the hard days that we all had to go through.
Perhaps highest on that list was pizza. Every occasion that counted - which meant every excuse that could be invented – mandated a call to the nearest pizza delivery service, the more coupons we had for it, the better. At one point in time my roommate and I had 22 people in our room, scattered over bunkbeds, desks, chairs and the floor, all munching on pizza and talking non-stop with their mouths full. Smoking and drinking alcohol were not allowed in our small space, since both of us and the plants had various allergies, but bad jokes about bananas and minor jousts with forks were permitted, if the provocation was strong enough.
And whenever we had these dos, there would be leftovers. The hosts got to keep them, unfortunately. Or was it fortunately? With my terrifically Tam-Bram snobbish upbringing I quailed rather when it came to the question of very cold and very stale pizza, but my roommate thrived on it. I remember waking one very cold winter morning to find her standing by the open window watching the fat while flakes cover the lawns, while she munched happily on a day-old slice and sipped from a steaming mug of instant coffee. When I asked what in heck she was up to, even as icicles formed on my sleep-sagging eyelashes, she turned and offered me a bite. The piece wilted in her hands and whatever hunger I may possibly have felt at that hour wilted, too.
But the same girl also taught me about some pleasures of this kind of instant food. She would sit on the floor by the miniature refrigerator I had and smear lettuce leaves with sharp mustard, rolling them up and crunching into the tunes with great enthusiasm. For a long time I looked and shuddered, but one day I was goaded into taking a bite. And now I know just how wonderful fresh crisp lettuce with spicy yellow mustard can be! Then there was the peanut butter and celery thing – this was before I got allergic to peanuts, but after I had discovered a passion for American celery, which was large, tender and most delicious just by itself. My roommate would open the jar of extra-chunky peanut butter that I hoarded, grab a few sticks of celery from the fridge and do the dip-and-eat routine with almost cow-like devotion to the chewing. Soon she had me doing it too. And while I keep my distance from peanuts these days, I find that tahini or cream cheese does the trick equally well for me when teamed with lush green sticks of crunchy healthiness.
But old cold pizza still will not make me want to indulge. This is one genre of leftover I would rather leave over.
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