Lunch in My Gut

I eat a lot of Smart Ones frozen entrees for lunch.


This was Tuesday.

No, wait. Not all at once. I mean, I frequently have one for lunch. One at a time. Per day. Whatever.

Anyway, I'm not a huge carnivore, so I typically get meatless varieties. And there are a lot of them, fortunately. Beans and rice, broccoli and cheddar potatoes, cheese ravioli - they're all pretty good. Every once in a while I'll get a chicken type (Thai style chicken and rice noodles - yum!). But I don't ever get anything made with beef. I rarely eat beef. Beloved Spouse isn't supposed to have red meat, and I don't really miss it. I cook with ground turkey, and although I'm not supposed to say this in Texas, I'm not a raving fan of either brisket or steak.


You can take the girl out of Milwaukee,
but she'll still crave bratwurst.

 The point is, when I eat frozen lasagna for lunch, I eat Smart Ones lasagna florentine. It's got zucchini and carrots in it, and no meat. It's really quite good.
But last week I went to the freezer to grab the day's lunch to take to work, and I realized that instead of this:

I had bought this:

I put it back in the freezer and I've been ignoring it ever since. But today I had nothing else to bring. (There's a little cafe in my office building that serves killer chicken tenders with mashed potatoes and white gravy, but I'm trying to keep my arteries clear right now, just for kicks.)


White gravy: Texas' greatest contribution to Western culture.

 So today I had lasagna with meat sauce for lunch. Now, I love lasagna with meat sauce when it's done right. But I had my doubts that Smart Ones was going to do it right. Not for $1.99.

Long story short, there's a whole mess of low-quality ground beef sitting in my gut right now. And it's not sitting pretty. All I can think of is Judge Reinhold in Beverly Hills Cop saying, "You know, it says here that by the time the average American is fifty, he's got five pounds of undigested red meat in his bowels."

I love me some Judge Reinhold.

Note to self: Read those packages carefully. The stomach that expects zucchini and gets ground cow is not a happy stomach. I'm making a list of things I can eat to make it up to my tummy. So far I've got brownies, bing cherries, yogurt-covered raisins, and vodka. That should do it. Maybe some ice cream. At least Blue Bell doesn't make any flavors containing meat. On the other hand, they're from Texas, so maybe I'll double-check the label before I dig in.