Seriously Un-Gourmet

Just in case some of you out there think I make myself crazy meals every night… I decided to share a secret. I have a foodie vice: frozen veggies.

My freezer is absolutely stocked chock full of frozen vegetables. At any one time, I could have peas, green beans, spinach and broccoli, and roomie has just thrown frozen Brussels sprouts into the mix. Many evenings, when I’m too tired to do anything else, I grab anything green, toss it with pasta and add pesto sauce. Instant dinner. More often than not, I snack on frozen veggies on their own or topped with tons of black pepper.

And then, of course, it gets worse.

In high school, one of the ways I survived on dining hall food was to take raw broccoli from the salad bar, top it with orange grated cheese, and nuke it in the microwave. It was one of my favorite foods, and I ate it for more lunches and dinners than I care to admit.

In Paris, we don’t have grated orange cheese… we go one better: there is a French version of American cheese. They call it a cheddar-emmental mix, but I know better: it’s square, it’s shiny, and when it’s raw, it tastes like plastic. But when it’s melted over a bowl of frozen broccoli and topped with black pepper and a tiny bit of grated emmental (hey… it was in the fridge, and I don’t discriminate when it comes to melty, cheesy goodness)… it’s heaven. And it was my lunch twice this weekend.

So you see? No one’s perfect.