Second opinion

I have never minded getting advice.

My husband, Peter, is good about giving advice, and one of the things I regularly need advice on is food, specifically if I should eat food that I already know I should not.

I hate throwing away food. I was not raised during the Depression, so I have no idea where this aversion comes from, but nothing makes me more sad than seeing food that looks perfectly fine getting tossed out.

The key here is “looks perfectly fine.” I will have a very strong indication that the food is not, in fact, perfectly fine, and I will go ahead and eat it. This is always a mistake.

I have eaten beans that have gone bad. “Oh,” I say, “they cannot be bad. I just made them!” I have a pretty good sense of smell, and I know there is something not quite right about those beans, but I throw them into a stir-fry, anyway. I trust the calendar instead of my nose. A few hours later, I very much regret it.

Most recently, I broke the glass container holding my broccoli. I steam my broccoli in advance so I can just toss it into a stir-fry and have a meal in minutes. The glass container shattered.

It seemed like a clean break. I carefully picked it up and removed the broccoli from the container, put some in my stir-fry and the rest in a new container in the fridge. I added wild rice and lentils and barley, a little spinach and put some cheese on top. I was eating late. I’d had a big day of going over copy edits for my book, so I was especially hungry.

I took a bite. “Crunch.”

This was not an undercooked broccoli crunch. This was not wild rice. This was the crunch you might experience while eating a sandwich on a beach when the wind was blowing. I looked at my delicious meal. I took another bite. “Crunch.”

My husband, Peter, had eaten his lunch earlier. I took my plate into his office and looked very sad. “Peter, you don’t think it would be terrible to eat a little glass, do you? I mean, if it’s really just glass dust – no big pieces or anything – I think I might have…”

“You can’t eat glass,” Peter said.

“But it’s really, really fine pieces…”

“You cannot eat glass!” Peter sounded totally sure.

I threw away my wonderful lunch. I threw away the rest of the broccoli, all the while thinking, “Maybe the broccoli in the container doesn’t have as much glass in it as what was on my plate…”

It was awful. But it was probably the right thing to do. I don’t make my best decisions when I’m hungry; that’s the truth. I had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch.

But I am very grateful that I was able to ask Peter. Maybe at my age, I should know what to eat. There are probably a lot of things I should know by now. Too many times, I have justified continuing to do something I know isn’t good for me. This can apply to my lunch or to relationships that become like eating bits of broken glass. “Maybe it’s not so bad,” I think. “Maybe it will get better.” Sometimes, I need a second opinion, even if it’s not the one I want. Sometimes, I need someone to state the obvious.

So, for future reference, if you think I need advice, please let me know. Especially if it involves something I’m about to eat.

Till next time,

Carrie