Hungry Hulk

Friday night is usually our decompressing time at some place offering cheap drinks and tasty eats, but the weather and work schedule weren’t cooperating this week, so we settled for plan B – pizza, beer and a movie at home.

Whole Foods makes fresh brick oven pizza. You can pick your crust and all the toppings which can be an easy and fairly healthy choice. We’ve been going there for months and the lady at the counter even started to remember our order – whole wheat crust, roasted veggies, tomatoes and turkey sausage. Last night; however, was a pretty disappointing experience.

1. They changed their prices and before you could get 1 topping pizza for 10.99 (not counting the cheese) or 3 topping for 13.99. Now, they no longer offer the 1 topping option. It’s either cheese for 10.99 or 3 topping for 13.99. (This does not really matter to us much as we always went with the more expensive option and get more toppings, but it bothers me when prices go up in general.)

2. Our usual lady was not there (and she makes awesome pizza). Instead, it was some new younger girl and an older gentleman. “Ok, no biggie” I thought “I am sure the two of them can handle our order.”

3. All of Whole Foods was a zoo. Most of the samples were demolished with sad empty bowls abandoned throughout the store. Thousands of years of evolution, but human survival instinct for hunting and gathering is still strong at Whole Foods during dinner hour.

We were able to claim the meat and produce territories and sampled some dry meatloaf and weathered cherries as the “vultures” were mainly sticking to the ready-to-eat section.

4. There was a huge line at the pizza counter with 6 orders ahead of us and a wait time of 20-25 minutes. C’est la vie, so we went on to explore the weekly deals throughout the store while waiting for our order. Unfortunately, when we arrived 25 minutes later, they have not even gotten to our order yet (they claimed that they fell behind, but I am pretty certain they missed it all together in the rush). It was nearing 7pm by then, and I was starting to get pretty hungry. And you know what happens when Jane gets hungry?

I turn into a bit of a monster. The poor pizza people were so terrified of me that they rang up our 3 topping pizza at 10.99.

When we got home I threw together the 5 second salad (organic mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, baby mozzarella, basil and oil and vinegar) and grabbed a slice with my hunger-shaking hands.

I know some folks can tolerate hunger with no problem (weird ones don’t even really feel hungry ever, like Eric), I was not wired that way. Once my belly starts to growl and my blood sugar drops, I become very cranky, weak and a bit light-headed. Eric learned early on in our relationship that he should stash snacks in his car to keep the hungry hulk tranquilized in traffic jams.

We had plans to watch a movie after dinner, but with our pizza delay it was already past 8pm. While most people consider this to be too early for a movie as it’s still light outside, I usually start dozing off by 9 (too many unfinished movies on my list already), so we settled for a couple of episodes of 30 Rock instead.

[Jane Asks]: Do you have low tolerance to hunger? What’s the one thing that brings out your inside monster?