Here at my school, we have a kind of running joke about our cafeteria food. Don't get me wrong, the food is actually good - mostly home cooked and usually fairly healthy. We rarely have meals that no one likes.
Except on weekends.
On the weekends, we usually have three people running the kitchen. Breakfast is always cereal. Lunch is always cold cuts or PB&J, carrots, and chips. Dinner is always sloppy joe's, corndogs, soup, or some form of casserole. "Weekend food." That phrase has come to encompass anything we are sick of and don't ever want to see again. And for people like me, who believe that variety is the spice of life, there comes a point where you just can't eat weekend food anymore.
So, although I believe (theoretically) in regular meals and well-balanced diets, weekends are always up in the air around here. I usually sleep past breakfast and make do with tea, eat some turkey and cheese sometime in the early afternoon, and hunt around in the fridge sometime after 7:00 for something worth eating. And if nothing presents itself, I have a secret chocolate stash like every good college girl should. Don't judge.
But here's my secret, my private habit that really helps me get by when the chef in me confronts the PB&J in the cafeteria:
I daydream food.
Yes my friends, when I can't have that crab-and-grapefruit omelet I so long for, I dream it up in my head, in stunning detail. When corn dogs on a paper plate try to pass themselves off as dinner, I think ahead to the cold salmon with lemon-and-dill dressing I'm going to make when I get back to my favorite coastal city in two months.
Until then, I'll pretend that the "beach" at the lake is a real beach, that this springtime heat isn't nearly as humid as it really is, and that this peanut butter and jelly sandwich is a panini with all the fixings. Sometimes, it's good to give the imagination a workout.
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