The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [61]
I resolved to cook more quickly on weeknights from then on. There were a handful of dishes and techniques I could rely on to achieve this—if I had leftover rice, I could always make a quick meal of fried rice with eggs and frozen peas. I could also do stir-fries or pasta with fresh vegetables and grated cheese on the fly. At the end of my meal I’d put away the leftover portion in Tupperware and bring it with me to work the next day. I’d also do the dishes.
Every now and then Ben would still order takeout just to satisfy a craving. Once his meal was done, he’d pile the remains in our small garbage bin: carryout containers, aluminum foil, waxed paper, sometimes a cardboard pizza box, plastic cutlery, unwanted sauces, menus, paper bags, and the plastic bags the paper bags often came in. On those occasions when Ben ordered takeout, our garbage bin was overflowing by the end of the night.
“Why don’t you just tell them you don’t want the duck sauce or the menu?” I asked Ben after he polished off a takeout tray of sesame chicken one night. I knew that I was treading dangerous ground whenever I contested his eating habits, as he played safe by not challenging mine. He shrugged and stuffed the squeaky container into the trash can, cracking its top to fit it all in. I already knew the simple answer to this question: It was easier not to. He was not one to make special requests when ordering his food. It was also of no immediate matter to me: Ben ordering more takeout meals meant fewer dishes for me to clean and more garbage for him to take downstairs.
This comparison summed up a previously undiscovered formula about not eating out: more dishes, less garbage. Now that I was cooking for myself and eating in, I had a lot more dishes to do. Dishes, of course, are meant to be used, washed, and reused, until they break (or go out of style, at which point hopefully someone else less discerning will get to use them). It was the equivalent of a handkerchief versus a Kleenex when compared to takeout boxes and bags. I had to sacrifice both the time and energy spent cooking as well as cleaning up after it, just the things the patrons of takeout or restaurant food save by their convenience.
But on the upside, I had a lot less garbage on my hands. It struck me then how much less trash I was producing since I’d stopped eating out. It wasn’t just at home, either. At work I used to have a smelly pile of trash from my takeout lunch and sometimes breakfast wrappings in the bin under my desk by the end of the day. These days, I left the office with it virtually empty most of the time. I had stumbled upon a benefit of my original mission: By not eating out, my garbage footprint was now considerably smaller.
I thought about all the unwanted accoutrements that come with every takeout meal. Back when I was buying lunch every day at work, there were so many little things to throw out at the end of the unceremonious twenty-minute eating spree at my desk. Pushing the keyboard aside, I might have a small box of sushi one day. The molded plastic tray came with a lid that, once popped off, served as the dipping bowl for sauces. The soy sauce and wasabi came in individually wrapped packets, as did the pickled ginger and the pair of disposable wooden chopsticks. On the tray beside the sushi was a small green piece of plastic film that was cut along one edge to resemble spiky grass. Everything came inside a plastic bag, along with a stack of napkins that I used less than half of. Another day it might be a cup-sized portion of soup in a cardboard carton along with a double-wrapped half sandwich, a roll, and crackers, along with a spoon, salt and pepper packets, and another bag