Diet

Menu—September 3, 1987


Breakfast: 3 white-powder doughnuts; tall glass of milk.

Lunch: Cafeteria food, Santa Lucia Elementary School (Chocolate milk was surely involved)

After school snack: hot-dog franks with ketchup, cooked over the stove flame, burned, and cut into pieces for dipping in ketchup.

Dinner: beans and tortillas with Tapatio sauce while watching tv in the living-room, waiting for my dad to come inside the house; he’ll be out until the beer runs out or he gets hungry.

I was thinking about this last night because I’ve come to the conclusion that I have horrible eating habits. I blame my chilldhood. But I would’ve starved without this menu. It’s not that my mom was neglectful; we were just poor. We had nothing. The powdered-doughnuts were a luxury, but they were still cheaper than cereal. I was lucky I went to school—at least there I would get to eat a stale hamburger with soggy fries and green jell-o. My mother would try to make with what she had, but she only had what we could afford, and hot-dog franks were cheap and, if I ate a bunch of them, very filling. Sometimes, when we had eggs, she’d mix them in to the franks—delicious! Other times, she'd mix them in with nopales (which is a slimy green cactus plant), which I hated and never ate. On these occassions, I coocked my own and drowned them in ketchup and had a feast.

I’m trying to eat better these days, but everything is harder and less tasty than hot-dog franks with ketchup.