If Famous Authors Described My Daily Meals

The lady inhales the entirety of the burrito. How is she to expect the courtship of a gentleman with such brash and unrefined manners?

Ernest Hemingway Describes My Breakfast

The girl awoke each morning with a terrible yawn of regret that she could not prolong her stay in bed. Her eyes drooped heavily, both laden with sleep and pained from a lack of it. What good was there to awake for—no real job, few friends, no fights of honor. A lack of purpose awaited her in the day. The only thing to entice her was this: eggs.

She loved eggs.

To her, eggs were not merely a source of nutrition, but also a signifier of progress, or at least of a new day, as she consumed them each morning with the aggression of a horse fighting a slightly larger horse that stole something valuable from the first horse. She frequented grocery stores weekly to select the most faithfully preserved cartons of these sweet dozens. For sale: eggs, and that’s all. She bought nothing else, excepting some milk to mix in with the eggs should she want them scrambled—but that was not necessary. Any and all eggs, in any and all forms.

This was how she liked her eggs: scrambled and fried, boiled and raw, natural and artificial. She appreciated them for their taste, their aesthetic, the symbolism of a stunted birth turned life-aiding nourishment, and most of all, she heaped praises upon the egg for the way it did not discriminate in its delivery of protein. It mattered not how tall or short or fat or smart you were, an egg could provide you with sustenance. Eggs were eggs were good eggs to her, and indeed, she loved them all.

Jane Austen Describes My Lunch

It is a truth universally acknowledged that the greatest dish to consume after a lengthy bout of fresh exercise is a delectable bundle of ingredients known as a burrito. This truth is well-fixed, in particular, in the mind of a young lady who walks swiftly down the street with the polite urgency of someone who must weave her way through a crowded ballroom to relieve herself.

The lady, a smallish creature of determined expression, flushed cheeks, and an unremarkable brow, enters the establishment by swinging the heavy door with practiced ease. She approaches the counter with a whiff of excitement. Walking up to the waiting shopkeeper, a man of agreeable countenance, she declares her wishes with tolerable clarity and admirable confidence. Here is a lady who knows what she desires.

Her previously hopeful expression gives way to delight as she observes her meal come together. Her self-assured words are matched by the speedy, nigh-predicting moves of the shopkeeper, which indicates that he, too, has committed her ingredient choices to memory. The familiarity between the two leads one to suspect that this incident is not an anomaly but rather a routine: rice, cubes of meat, red liquid spices, corn, cheese, lettuce. She takes care to pay an additional American pound for a heaping of the thick avocado sauce.

To much surprise, this monetary and burrito exchange is not to be the main exhibition, for what comes next is almost frightening. After assuming a seat in the large public dining hall, the lady accomplishes the most extraordinary feat. She, who appears slight of frame and gentle in her complete absence of physical strength, manages to inhale the entirety of the burrito alone. How such a large serving could safely fit inside a small being . . . but I wish not to be rude. I write this from a place of genuine concern. How is she to expect the courtship of a gentleman with such brash and unrefined manners? How is this woman to maintain good company and respected friends if she continues behaving in such a way? How, indeed, is she to carry on the rest of her day without falling ill? Whatever airs of confidence and self-assuredness preceded this spectacle are now certainly forgotten.

The woman remains seated, staring at the crumpled aluminum tin. Though one might expect to witness traces of regret on her face, there is instead a veneer of peace. Indeed, she appears to be smiling. The remembrance of the experience has become a pleasure for her. She sighs with an air of being in want of nothing.

Gathering her possessions, the woman glances at her self-lit rectangular pocket watch and rises to exit the building. Those around her are relieved, until it becomes clear that she has walked into another franchise and greeted an acquaintance. The two sit down at a table. She is no doubt attending a lunch appointment. My heart fills at once with awe over the state of her expandable stomach.

PG Wodehouse Describes My Dinner

“What ho!” she cried, greeting the dry, uncooked pasta that escaped through the cracks of the wobbly cardboard prison and clattered onto the floor.

Not many people are privy to the sad truth that pasta angels, while whimsical and charming, cannot actually fly. They fall. They are also inedible. In fact, they are not even real angels. In short, pasta is a disappointment. “Darn!” she exclaimed, realizing all this at once.

She had heard an old family tale that a watched pot never boils, and she was determined to prove her ancestors false. It was the twenty-first century, after all, and there were things like self-driving cars and nose piercings. But after an hour’s worth of effort done in twelve minutes, she decided to return to the traditional route by turning on the stove and letting it boil with the help of heat, determining that her eyes were not powerful enough at present. She briefly disappeared to the restroom, only to return full of great chagrin that the pot had begun to boil without her. This, surely, was a sassy pasta. One that resisted being eaten, and, when it had to be consumed, decided to be cooked on its own terms.

“Fine!” she said. “Harrumph!” she harrumphed.

Her friend, a jolly lady of respectable height and even more respectable shoes, appeared at the door following a knock and a swing of the hinges. “What ho!” she said.

“What ho!” she said in response.

It mattered not who was who, for they accomplished the very same set of activities: washing their hands, sitting at the table, chattering about their day, blathering about their evenings, speculating on their nights, and making plans to consume coffee in a social manner, all while digesting the pasta in a very biological sense. Only after they finished their meal did the two women notice they had entirely neglected any sort of sauce—making it, dealing it, eating it.

“Oh well!” said one to the other, probably named Botty or Bussie or Laggie. They tittered at this ridiculous revelation, too polite to indulge in their regret. It was too late, and dinner was no more. They had consumed the plain, unholy pasta mortals sans sauce. As they say in sorrowful hospital rooms or upon eating an entire bag of pretzels alone, there was nothing more to be done. No angels could save a meal as bland as this—and certainly not pasta angels, those useless things.