The 6 (+1) favorite foods for out-of-home

You know the food pyramid? If you don’t remember what it’s like, I immediately refresh your memory. At the base there are vegetables, fruit, bread, rice and pasta, to be eaten every day; as you go up you meet milk and its derivatives, fish, eggs, legumes, meat and cured meats; and in the end, at the top, there are sweets and spirits, which should be consumed
occasionally. Clear and simple guidelines, right? Well, for out of office they are not valid.

via GIPHY

Those who live alone *, away * from home, refer to a completely different food pyramid, whose structure could be summed up with the words “totally random”. Here are the foods on which the diet of each off-site is based:

Pasta with tuna.
God bless the pasta with tuna, a shining beacon in that long and winding night that is the life of every off-site. Does anyone really like it? Reliable scientific studies conducted by myself say no: apparently, there is no one who really likes to eat this dish. It is perfectly understandable, given that we are talking about fish of dubious origin squeezed into a tin box. Despite this, pasta with tuna is and will always remain the favorite recipe of every out-of-home: it costs little, even a child would know how to cook it and requires ingredients that are never lacking in the pantry. Faced with advantages of this kind, everything else takes a back seat.

Pasta with pesto.
Remaining in the context of pasta, it is impossible not to mention the one with pesto, another cornerstone of the nutrition of every self-respecting out-of-home. And no, I’m not talking about the branded pesto, obtained from top quality ingredients, carefully selected and handcrafted by Tibetan monks, but the discount one, which costs less but still does its duty in a dignified manner. Patience for the vague chemical aftertaste: here you die like a hero.

Simply pasta, of any kind.
After the one with tuna and the one with pesto, an honorable mention goes to pasta in general, of any format and in any way it is cooked. Pasta costs 60 cents per package, it practically never expires and, in the worst case scenario, a little oil and Parmesan cheese are enough to transform it into a dish that I would not define as good, but at least edible. In short, we are made of the same substance as pasta, to paraphrase Shakespeare.

Toast, wraps and sandwiches.
Between work, cleaning, shopping, the boiler that suddenly decides to break and the thousand other daily tasks, living alone is not always a godsend, and there are times when you arrive in the evening without any desire to start sautéing. Well, it is precisely in these moments that the out-of-towners fold on toast, on a flatbread or (when they would prefer to take bleach shots rather than turn on a stove) a sandwich. In carbs we trust.

Salad in envelope.
“Eat vegetables, they’re good for you!” is the classic phrase we all grew up with: how many times did we hear it when we were little * and had a tantrum in front of broccoli? Every now and then, in the hidden meanders of my mind, the voice of the mother who recommends me to eat vegetables peeps out; I could ignore it, since I’m an adult, I live alone and nobody comes to check what I put on the plate, but something – perhaps the sense of guilt for having ordered pizza for four nights in a row – pushes me to indulge it. So I do what all non-residents do when they decide it’s time to eat healthily: I pour the salad from the bag to the bowl and dress it with oil and salt. Gourmet.

Chicken breast.
The meat most bought by the penniless out-of-home is chicken, and the reason is very simple: it is the cheapest. You could cook in many ways, but who has the desire and time to bread, marinate, flour? Not the off-site, who fall back on the famous recipe of Elisabetta Canalis: slap some chicken slices in the pan, cook them for a few minutes and finally season them with oil, salt and oregano.

Bonus: alcohol.
The best part of living alone * is the freedom to do whatever you want to do, including going home after a day at university or in the office and slathering yourself on the sofa with a glass (or two, or maybe three ) of wine. They call it the liquid diet, and I think I speak for everyone out of the office when I say it’s not bad at all.