My struggle with the caf’s chicken bacon wrap

So after spending yet another summer living at my parents house, where I was spoiled  with home-cooked meals every night, I have come back to the city for university, and I need to learn how to make healthy and inexpensive food decisions again.

I can cook.  That’s not the problem.  The problem is that I don’t always have the time to cook. (Actually, it’s more that i don’t have the energy or ambition to cook.) So - if I don’t want to cook all the time, what should I do? Eat out!  

This was a very bad idea, as I have already been eating out way too much this school year, and am left broke and over-stuffed.  Each week I make a new resolution to bring a bag lunch to school, but there are definate flaws in my plan.  Even if I bring some crappy sandwich to school with me, that doesn’t mean I am going to eat it. 

 Here’s my problem:  By the time lunch hits I am ravenous, because I probably slept in too late, and didn’t even have time to make breakfast (my first mistake).  So I sit down with my crappy sandwich, or whatever I tried to convince myself could be appetizing, and I stare at it.  It is at this time that I notice other students with the chicken finger and bacon wraps from the cafeteria, or something else delicious.  I no longer want my meal, so I will eat half of whatever I brought, and then dispose of the rest.  I want something else.  Something better.  My friends are currently trying to figure out if there is a medical term for this disorder of mine,  although if there is,  I don’t think I have ever met anyone else who could be diagnosed with it. 

I would be better off just ordering a semi-healthy choice from the cafeteria in the first place, rather than spending money on groceries, and then still ordering the greasiest thing I can find after my brown bagging attempt fails.  Oh well.  Maybe next week will go better, and I actually will be able to eat the lunch I packed. All I need to do is make a trip to the grocery store to find something a little more appetizing than my normal turkey on rye (and after the lysteria scare, it probably wouldn’t hurt me to avoid lunch meat). 

For the rest of you out there, who do manage to keep your budgets in check by bringing a lunch from home, I applaud you.  Our university has many restaurants on and around campus from which to choose from.  Many of them are even healthy choices.  But eating out is definately hard on the pocket books  of students (who usually are pretty penniless in the first place), and so I, for one, am going to try and keep it a minimum.

Note: If you read this and immediately after see me standing in line waiting for a chicken bacon wrap, please don’t judge.  I only said I was going to TRY to keep it to a minimum.