16 PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM {sloane citron} like a colossal waste of time, especially when you could be watching reruns of Bonanza or The Middle. These days, finding dinner is a challenge. Occasionally my overworked wife has a moment to make some chicken soup or stew. Once a week, I’ll throw some chicken (and occasionally, if there is any in our home, red meat) on the grill and wait 16 minutes until it’s done. That I can handle. Often for dinner I have a piece of chicken with a microwaved bag of Trader Joe’s broccoli, and I’m content. Of course, keeping kosher complicates things. Unless I have the foresight to bring meat up from Los Angeles when I am there, I’m dependent on Trader Joe’s for its few kosher meat items, mostly chicken. (Don’t get me wrong—I’m eternally grateful that it carries any kosher meat!) But they only stock one type of steak, and that only during the summer, so I don’t eat much red meat. For a good portion of my life, food has been something that I’ve not been able to enjoy much. Instead, it’s been more of a burden and that is why, I’m quite sure, that I eat to live. But I’m okay with it. When I’m in Israel, the meals are incredibly delicious, and I’ll remember how good food can taste. These days, after I finish my work at PUNCH and go for a run, I head down to the kitchen to figure out how to fill my stomach with the least amount of effort. And generally speaking, it’s that old but incredibly reliable option, Top Ramen. Though the price has shot up from around 20 cents a pack when I was a graduate student to 80 cents today, it’s still the tastiest, most filling meal that one can have. All you need to do is boil some water and open a packet. And that’s something even this dispassionate cook can handle. I’ve gotten a lot of grief recently for not eating enough, or for being too skinny. I explain that my BMI is right in the middle of the “normal weight” category, and that I weigh the same as I did in high school. Still, I get annoying comments. Food has never been something I much cared about, and I’m afraid my life experiences have turned me into more of a “eat to live” guy than someone who lives to eat. My mother did her best to have a good dinner for us every night until she left home when I was 12. From then until I left for prep school at Andover, I mostly was in charge of my own dinner. I opened lots of cans while my dad was out dating. It was a quick way to get skinny. I didn’t much mind, since it was better than having to go over to some strange woman’s home and eat there. In the mornings, my dad would make breakfast, and he loved his eggs so raw that they were runny. I would choke on them and tell him that they looked like snot. He would yell at me to eat them. I gagged them down, but I was well into adulthood before I could enjoy eggs. When I went away to school at 15, it was the start of seven years of being served mediocre cafeteria food until I finished college. The next two years, while I was at Stanford Business School, most dinners consisted of Top Ramen, which was my main food source, or cereal, usually Trix. After Stanford, my wife and I lived for a year in Jerusalem, and we had almost no money. Late on Friday afternoons at the open-air market, Machane Yehuda, the left-over, thirdrate food was abandoned. We, along with other poor folks, gathered it up to see us through the week. Along with some cheese, eggs and bread, we survived. My wife made wonderful meals while we raised our four children, while most of my energy was focused on controlling the rambunctious kids—getting them to the table, shutting down arguments and petty fights, using parental tricks to get them to eat something and forcing them to take their dirty plates to the sink. My other role was doing the dishes—which I do well. It’s a chore I’d much rather undertake than cooking—something I don’t do well. It seems like such an extreme effort—go to the store, buy all the ingredients, get them home, figure out the recipes, chop away, look for spices, cook everything and then, in a heartbeat, most of it is eaten up. The whole effort seems no cook today
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