Fast Food

On my way home from work I drive past a couple of fast food places.  Usually I smirk at the long line of cars snaking around those buildings, waiting to pay for and consume grease, salt and sugar in various forms, wrapped in overabundant packaging.  But sometimes I have to admit that I wish I could order some simple, local fare from a window.  Someone else could cook it, package it, and have it hot and ready to serve when I get home.  Fortunately, I have a few quick and easy dinners up my sleeve that my family enjoys, so I sigh and drive on past, towards the grocery store.

A new find at my local grocery is uncooked tortillas.  Although packaged and not local, they fit into Michael Pollan’s definition of “real food”, the only tortillas in the refrigerated case with five or fewer ingredients:  wheat flour, water, canola oil, salt, sugar.  Less than a minute on each side in my heated cast iron skillet, and they are puffy and slightly crispy, just perfect.   Tonight I fry half of a giant onion from the Moore’s farm with a pound of ground beef from Triple S farms.  I sprinkle with some chili powder and salt, then add in a giant can of organic black beans which I’ve rinsed to get the bubbles out.  In goes a half a cup of water, then it all simmers for a few minutes while I cook the tortillas.  I crumble up some homemade goat cheese that I’d gotten out of the freezer earlier, and chop a huge bunch of cilantro I bought at the market this weekend from Blue Moon farms.  I take a jar of jalapeños and a tub of fresh deli-made salsa from the co-op out of the fridge.  It takes me longer to get my men off their respective computers and come downstairs than it did to make dinner.

No wrapping, no Styrofoam, no paper napkins.  Everybody rolls up their sleeves and stuffs as much as they can of their favorite combinations into the tortillas; they’re messy and dripping as we dig in.   (I didn’t even have time to make my specialty margaritas!)  No window, no waiting in line, no indigestion afterwards.  I remind myself that my version of “fast food” is worth the tiny bit of extra effort I put in.