As I was making my lunch today, I thought about Things That People Eat In Secret — part of what Carrie Bradshaw called Secret Single Behavior (in that episode of Sex and the City, hers was a tower of saltines with jelly on them). Odd-ball combos that you’d never serve to company, or even just foods you have a wacky name for that you can’t really use around other people, because no one will understand you. My lunch was actually not strange at all, but more of the latter: It was tuna salad on rice, with sliced cucumbers and avocado, which is basically just a deconstructed California roll but with tuna. (I also sometimes put in tomatoes.) (It gets weirder if I use the tuna salad recipe I used for sandwiches, which has sweet pickles in it, but never mind. [I did do that today.]) This is a very standard, balanced meal and it is quite delicious. BUT! I make it because my college roommate Jen always made it, and for some reason, her family referred to this meal as “Cat Food.” (I suspect because whenever they ate it, their cat was terribly interested in it thanks to the tuna fish.) I was DELIGHTED to realize this morning that I had all the fixings for Cat Food, and then I realized…that’s not a sentence anyone but me and my roommate Jen and her family would understand at all. Having said all that: When I was a kid, I used to eat peanut butter on slices of cheddar cheese, which is for sure not a snack you can serve to other people. My theory is that everyone’s got this sort of thing in their meal rotation. What’s yours?
