Who Says There's Nothing's Left to Eat? (The Greenfellas Solution)

Lunch was on. It had started with a brief email "wsp?"—the universally understood male cry, derived from "wassup?" which comes from the Olde English "what's up?" The message had raced around the virtual circuits, gathering momentum, dazzling bytes doing their Paul Revere best to rouse a sleeping population. And it had worked: lunch was on, the Greenfellas were going to ride again.

Where to lunch is rarely an issue with men, and it was thus with the Greenfellas. Today felt like a Half King day. Pub food with a dab hand, a rep for well-sourced ingredients, cheery waitstaff and airy rooms and garden. Here the Green Man would enjoy the illusion of eating sinfully while treating his body and the environment with the respect each deserved.

One by one the Greenfellas trickled in. There was Steve "The Telescope," Mike "The Hammer," Marc "The Professor" and, today by special request, Kevin "Dozens." Missing was David "Two Aspirins," who lunches separately with the Green Man due to a lack of compatibility in musical taste with the others.

Hardly a man is now alive who remembers the origins of the Greenfellas, back in the dark days when "organic" rhymed with doofus and "green" was an epithet for young cowpokes who put their union suits on backwards. But let it be known that here is the institutional memory of men who work, and eat, not necessarily in that order. True Greenfellas remember what it was like to live in office cubicles in the days of lunch choices like "fried pork gyoza w/fried rice," "meat patty brw gravy yelo chese bun," and the "potato and egg burrito" obtained from a vending machine and microwaved on the premises—the gastronomic equivalent of a depleted uranium round from a tank-busting A-10 Warthog, fired into your lower intestine.

The Greenfellas know what they owe the organic movement. They just don't talk about it to outsiders. Because, they say to themselves, it's "their thing," or "this thing of ours," or, in private back rooms where even the waiter is a Greenfella, "this green-thing thing."

We opened our menus. There was ample evidence of the greening of American lunchtime fare. The special salmon burger with chiplote mayonnaise and mesclun salad was destined to be the Green Man's pick; he would hold the fries and double the salad in order to have something to tell the Green Goddess.

Steve "The Telescope" squinted at the menu, then closed it. "Hanger steak with mushrooms and blue cheese," he said. "Who wants to share an appetizer of calamari with chive aioli?"

We stared at Steve. He had broken the code of lunch. Men don't share appetizers, unless, of course, they are ordering every appetizer. He stood his ground. "I'm hungry, even starving, but not utterly and shamelessly ravenous," he said. "Not sabre-toothed tiger ravenous, anyway."

"What's the problem, Stevie," growled Kevin "Dozens." "Not getting any at home?"

He nodded. "It's my wife," he said. "She came back from the market last week and said there's nothing left to eat."

"Oh man," said Mike "The Hammer," looking pale. "She said that?"

Steve nodded. "It's been tofu and scallions ever since."

"Don't scallions have a little e. coli problem?" asked Marc "The Professor."

"Oh stop it," said Mike. "You want him to live on plain tofu?"

The Green Man had heard it all before. "This your first time?" he asked, gently. Steve nodded. The Green Man bent over Steve's plate and picked out one of his fries, twirling it in the chiplote mayo with a show of deep thought. "First, you must understand that this will pass. There's no sense in fighting her—it's a common reaction. She's probably read something."

Steve looked as if a lightbulb had gone on. "You know, I believe she did read something!"

"There you go."

"It was about farm salmon being sold as organic...and some other farm salmon being sold on the basis of having fewer PCBs than wild salmon...and she said something about it all being too confusing. She quit chicken the week before, after talking with her vegan yoga teacher."

"Vegan yoga?" said Mike. "I see sprouts on rubber mats. Sprouts in leotards. Doing the Plow. "

"I meant, yoga teacher who is a vegan," said Steve.

"Who is practicing dietary advice without a license," said Marc. "So bring on the tofu, and pretend that life is better for lacking complication. For being bland. White. I'm sorry, I want diversity, texture, fractility."

"Me too," said Steve. "I'm having whatever you're having." He turned to the Green Man. "So what's your advice?"

"At dinner tonight, surprise her with a slab of wild Copper River salmon, grilled over the barbecue with a sprig or two of dried fennel or sauteed with just a little olive oil and broccoli rabe." The Greenfellas leaned back in their chairs, closed their eyes, and savored, mentally, the picture. "Pull the cork on a bottle of Frey organic sangiovese, and explain that the food marketplace is a fluid environment that moves in cycles, boom and bust. Every time there's an advance in standards, sourcing, or general information, there's often a period of info-shock as consumers process the new data. Often, this includes a period of backlash as corporate interests dive in and try to ride the organic movement's coattails. Often, they try to obscure the issue in order to divert the consumer."

Several of the Greenfellas' eyelids began to twitch, the sign of rapid eye movement. The Green Man knew he had them where he wanted them. "Remember what happened to the no-fat muffin craze, how then they made them too big? Now we are wiser consumers of muffins, we want them small, whole wheat-based, and we accept no substitutes. Remember when exposing the factory chicken scene led to the free-range breakthrough, but then there were issues of what, exactly, did free-range mean, and what about antibiotic and byproduct feeds?

"These were all good questions, good issues. But they take time to sort out. A little tofu time-out can help. But you mustn't overdo it, because then you're going to hurt the producers whose unstinting efforts and quest for ever-higher standards help us all move forward."

The Greenfellas were now sound asleep. The Green Man knew that when they awoke they would remember everything, just not how they knew it. Furthermore, their wives were going to be very happy when their husbands got home tonight, because now they would no longer be afraid that there was nothing left to eat.

And so, while they snored off their lunches, the Green Man helped himself to their french fries. He figured he'd earned it.

The Green Man is a regular Green Guide feature.
© Don Wallace, 2004