I always brought my lunch in a lunch box, which was selected at the beginning of each year along with a new backpack. The choosing of the lunch box was a way of expressing yourself (and the newest Disney movie). In kindergarten, my mom taped a picture of herself to the inside of my lunchbox because I would miss her so much at lunch time that I would cry. Second and third grade’s lunch boxes were like status symbols, with the Cadillac of lunch boxes having glitter, shiny plastic, and cool zippered compartments.
The summer before sixth grade I got the grand idea that I was going to decorate my new lunch bag in a multicolored swirl design of puffy paint; everyone would be so jealous of my creativity! Well, apparently, the lunchbox trend did not make the transition from elementary school to middle school, and on the first day of school I was horrified to find out that no one else had a lunchbox. People had paper bags or they bought a Cup O’ Noodles from the lunch counter. I begged my parents to buy the paper bags, but they thought it was silly to throw a paper bag away everyday instead of just reusing a lunch box. So I suffered through the agony of toting my horrendous lunch bag for another year.
By eighth grade I had convinced my parents that I was responsible enough to pack my own lunch. Most of the time though, I would beg my friends to lend me a dollar to buy something at school, like some of the deliciously gooey chocolate chip cookies made fresh daily. The all natural peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were long gone and a Styrofoam cup of dehydrated carrots, corn, parsley, and fried noodles in a bright yellow broth took its place. Cup O’ Noodles in particular was so popular that they always had a giant hot water dispenser next to the lunch counter for kids to rehydrate their soups with.
Instead of trading “good” foods with each other or laughing at the kid who could squirt milk out his nose, lunchtimes consisted of gossipy girl talk, boys asking girls “out”, and deciding which cliquey formation to sit with that week. Lunch time was no longer about eating, but more about socializing, and more specifically, who to not socialize with. Any outsider would have needed a detailed map to figure out which tables (or sections of tables) belonged to whom.
In high school, the cliques continued to determine where you ate lunch, but there was another deciding factor: your race. This wasn’t an official ruling (obviously) but one that happened because of socioeconomic status. If you were white, chances are good your parents would give you lunch money to eat off campus. If they didn’t, or you were on free or reduced lunch, you ate in the cafeteria. Sadly, the line could not have been drawn any clearer. None of the popular kids ate in the cafeteria, and most had probably never set foot in it. In the four years that I attended Roosevelt, I never ate one meal in the cafeteria.
Because of the open lunch policy, between 11:15 and 12:45 p.m., the surrounding neighborhood was flooded with flocks of teenagers traveling to and from their lunch destinations. There was the tiny teriyaki shack (which has since closed due to health code violations), Taco Del Mar (a local Baja-style burrito chain), QFC (a grocery store), Whole Foods, and Jamba Juice. In order to eat off campus, you had to scrounge up some money, and since my parents didn’t believe in giving me lunch money every day, I would often get one of the $0.33 bagels at Whole Foods, or mooch a chicken tender off someone.
Sometimes I didn’t eat lunch at all. I said “I wasn’t hungry” because I was too ashamed to bring a lunch from home and didn’t want to keep asking people for food. Freshman year of high school I grew 2 inches and lost thirty pounds. People that I knew in middle school introduced themselves to me because they did not recognize me. Of course, some of this was due to puberty, but not eating lunch (and sometimes not breakfast) played a huge part in that I’m sure. I was extremely insecure, and even though I was not overweight, I had a mental image of myself that was clearly distorted.
I had grown up loving cooking and eating, and to suddenly convince myself I didn’t want to eat was easier than it should have been. There were so many rules about when, where, what, and who to eat with that lunch time became the most stressful part of the entire day. When I was in class, I was assigned a seat. At lunch, it was up to me to find people that would accept me into their group. A few lunch periods I wanted to just hide in the bathroom, just to not have to deal with it. That’s not to say that every lunch was dreadful, in fact, I often had fun and seemed to fit in with the “popular kids” for the most part.
My senior year I finally had an opening in my schedule to take an elective. It was between culinary arts, pottery, and gym class, and I didn’t hesitate to pick culinary arts. When I was little I had taped my own cooking shows and had pretended I was a famous chef, so taking a cooking class instead of a gym class was an exciting offer. While in that class, it became clear to me that I was different. I cared about the way my food looked and tasted, and knew more about cooking than anyone else. It dawned on me that maybe I should follow my rekindled passion and look at a career as a chef. By the spring I had made up my mind; I didn’t want to just go to college and get a degree, I wanted to pick a field that I could do what I loved every day. I applied to Johnson & Wales University, the Culinary Institute of America, and the University of Washington (to please my parents). In the end, I chose to attend Johnson & Wales University in Denver, Colorado, and haven’t looked back since.
Food became my life. I earned a culinary degree and worked in a variety of foodservice establishments including a bar and grill, a catering company, a sandwich shop, and a fine dining restaurant in a boutique hotel. I loved reading about cooking, watching other people cook, and experimenting in the kitchen. I would spend hours poring over beautiful cookbooks in the library and dreaming of dishes to serve in my future restaurant.
I had gone from trying to be the person other people thought I should be to being the person I actually was. All of a sudden I was getting straight A’s, whereas in high school I had done just ok. I was away from my comfort zone and was allowed to make decisions on my own, without the influence of my parents or peers.
One of those decisions was to pursue a Bachelor’s degree in nutrition. I had realized that I didn’t want to succeed in life by myself; I wanted the success of others to determine my success. I wanted to show people the power that food has over every aspect of their life; that their mental, physical, and emotional well-being are all influenced by the foods they choose to eat. I also wanted to dispel the myth that healthy food tastes like cardboard. So, I started teaching Operation Frontline classes (six week food and nutrition cooking courses that are targeted at low income families) and got involved with Nutrition Society (a campus organization whose purpose is to spread the word about nutrition to the community). Everyone loves to eat good food, and to be able to offer food to people that tastes good and makes them healthier is one of the most rewarding things I can think of.
So just how important is a sack lunch? Its one thing to be able to eat lunch and even a privilege to decide not to eat lunch, but it’s a whole different issue when someone does not have the means to eat at all. There are millions of people in this country that can’t afford to eat a Chipotle burrito or even to pack a lunch from home. For whatever reason (and there are many) there are people that live in the most bountiful, powerful country in the world that didn’t eat lunch today. Or dinner. Or breakfast. Worst of all, they probably didn’t have any food to feed their children either.
When asked to organize a Nutrition Society service project in December, I decided that I didn’t want to sort food at the food bank or host a canned goods drive. I wanted to give sack lunches directly to people that really needed it. With the economy taking a hit the last couple years, the number of beggars on Denver’s street corners has grown tremendously. So with a hundred dollars I went to the grocery store and bought enough loaves of whole wheat bread, natural peanut butter, jelly, vegetables, fruit, and pretzels to make eighty sack lunches. I invited Nutrition Society members to help make the lunches one Saturday morning and within an hour we had managed to make 96 lunches. I am proud to say that these lunches didn’t contain preservatives, corn syrup, or saturated fat. They were nutritionally balanced, hearty, and cost only a little more than $1 each.
We got into a couple cars and headed out to distribute our goods. Once my car got downtown, we saw our first “victim” on Speer Boulevard. Bobby, one of the members of our group, jumped out of the car and sprinted to an older man sitting on the corner near the Convention Center. Before giving the man the sack, Bobby explained who he was and shook the man’s hand. He handed him the lunch and sprinted back to the car just as the light was turning green. The homeless man grinned a toothless smile and waved to us, shouting his thanks. For the next hour and a half we drove around downtown Denver, ambushing people with free food and thumbs ups. Not one person turned us down, and all were grateful for the lunches.
That day was one of the highlights of my college experience, one that I will never forget. The feeling of giving someone a wholesome meal at a time of day when most soup kitchens aren’t open and their last meal was hours ago is something like none other. I hope to always be someone who spread the word about healing eating, and an advocate for those who don’t have food to eat at all. The saying “all I really needed to know I learned in kindergarten” is so true, and the importance of a sack lunch is definitely part of that.
Simple Sack Lunch
Cutting and bagging your own vegetables and pretzels saves a lot of money and doesn’t take too much time. This recipe makes one lunch, but making lunches for the whole week saves time.
Ingredients:
2 slices whole wheat bread
1 tbsp natural peanut butter (look at the label for ones without hydrogenated oils,
sugar, or corn syrup)
1 tbsp jam (again, avoid corn syrup)
1 each carrot, whole
1 rib celery
1 cup pretzels
1 each apple
Directions:
1. Spread one piece of the bread with the peanut butter and the other piece with the jam. Sandwich the slices together, and cut down the center on a diagonal to make two triangles. Place the sandwich in a bag.
2. Wash the carrot and the celery. Peel the carrot and cut both the carrot and the celery into sticks. Place the vegetables in a bag.
3. Put the pretzels in a bag.
4. Wash and dry the apple.
5. Put everything in a paper, plastic, or reusable lunch box to enjoy at lunchtime.
LADY!! this is amazing!! well done chickenwing!
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