Succumbing to the lure of take-out

I put food in jars. I am a religious farmers market shopper. I made dinner from scratch just about every night. And yet, there are sometimes when the siren call of take-out chinese (a hot meal, delivered right to my front door) is more than I can resist (particularly since they have my husband’s credit card number on file).

Last Thursday, all day I planned to do a quick saute of marinated beef and some broccoli and serve it over some steamed browned rice. Virtuous, healthy and economical. However, when I got home, I tried to talk myself into the kitchen and found myself heading towards the menu drawer instead. I hesitated before sliding the tri-fold menu out of the stack, remembering all my objections to take-out (nothing even resembling local. Tons of MSG. All the packaging. And the disappointment that comes when I eat it and remember for the 99th time that it’s never actually as good as I want it to be).

I think you can probably guess what I chose. It was just as mediocre as anticipated (we really need to pick a new take-out spot, but The Wok has been Scott’s go-to chinese spot since he moved to Philadelphia six years ago. It’s hard to sway that kind of devotion). At least they have brown rice.