Thursday, March 28, 2024
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The talking cupboard

They say you are what you eat. My, isn’t that a scary thought. What does your food say about your lifestyle, priorities, discipline, taste and ethics?

If my cupboard could talk, I think it would be pretty near speechless. The day-old Cheerios slowly eroding into a pile of milk-less goop must represent my melting brain.

I guess you could say I overcompensate the lack of actual food in my cupboards with endless colourful little cardboard boxes of tea: green tea, chai tea, sleepy time, hot lemon, coco chai, rooibos, lapsang, oolong and my personal favourite, chocolate caramel chai enchantment.

Between me and my four housemates, the mismatched tea and coffee cups scattered throughout our flat present a never-ending Easter egg hunt when we look to do the dishes each week. Cups can be found behind piles of books, under piles of clothes, next to the sink, next to the toilet and on my front porch.

The hardened block of cheese, one of many, in my cheese drawer shows my hardened look on life after having realized that the “No Tax” event at the Superstore applies to everything except the food. Imagine my disappointment when I pulled up to the cashier with all of the delicious name-brand foods, the ones that come with delightfully witty mascots, the foods I’ve been secretly craving but too cheap to buy, only to return them a moment later.

I guess the clichéd Freshman 15 is a cliché for a reason. We scoffed at our parents when they told us their ‘tricks of the trade’ but would give anything to remember those now. How to remove three-day-old lasagna crust, banish fruit flies and that mystery concoction mom makes that you can somehow choke down no matter how sick you are were replaced by English lit., a full knowledge of the Roman Empire and the complicated but always enticing plot of *Lost*.

Thankfully it doesn’t take long to remember some of those essential tricks, like double-bagging meats. The first time you have to empty your fridge to sop up a mysterious but determined meat juice that wanted to ruin the bottom of every milk container in your fridge, will be the last.

So maybe it’s time to look more closely at what our cupboards say about ourselves.

Do we really eat properly?

Do we set aside enough time to grocery shop and cook real meals each week?

Or do we use cheapness as an excuse for laziness?

If the answer is yes, it might be time to re-evaluate. If it’s too soon to tell and you are still living off the nice care package of premade dinners and ready-to-go meals mom and pop left when they dropped you off, you might want to think about getting into some good habits now, before your teachers hit you with upcoming deadlines.

Good habits are everything when it comes to your health.

Talk it over with your roommates. Maybe you can agree on a few basic food items that you can split between yourselves.

And if, like me, you live with a vegetarian, a celiac, a splurger and a meat-lovers-pizza only person, you might need to discipline yourself a little more.

You’ll find out what compromise means when you go try to each buy your own two-liter milk container. There just isn’t room for skim milk, two per cent, homogenized *and* soy—not if you like juice too, that is.

Katrina Pyne
Katrina Pyne
Katrina was Editor-in-chief of the Gazette for Volume 145 and News Editor for Volume 144.
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