The SDMB fairy alights on your doorstep and informs you that from now on, no matter what you eat it will be nutritionally complete, keep you healthy, and allow you to maintain (or reach if you are currently too thin/fat) a recommended weight. (You’ll be magically able to consume anything - if you are diabetic or have no gall bladder, no problem, you can still eat anything).
BUT this delightful state of affairs comes with a big catch. You are going to have choose one of the following set-ups:
Every meal will be a unique surprise, and you get no input into what it will be. It will make culinary sense (to a fine chef somewhere, not necessarily to you) but if you hate beets, bleu cheese, nuts, and vinegar, and the meal consists of a beet-walnut-bleu cheese salad with vinaigrette, well … you’ll have to either eat it or go hungry until the next meal arrives. One thing is for certain, you will never again be faced with that same exact salad.
You may pick 8 meals, each consisting of up to four items (chosen from the categories of main, vegetable, salad, starch, dessert), and you will be served those 8 meals, in rotation, for the rest of your life. They can be anything as long as there are a maximum of four items: for example, one meal could be grilled lemon-infused salmon with pesto, mixed green salad with herbed vinaigrette, mashed sweet potatoes with butter, and fudge brownie; another could be moussaka, hummus, pita, and cucumber salad … BUT you get those eight meals, and only those eight meals, for forever.
It’s not an easy choice, but I think I’d go for the variety. I’m crazy about food and love to think about it, so the constantly new experiences would please me intellectually. There are a few foods I loathe (that beet-bleu cheese-vinaigrette dish would probably be one of them) but overall I’m not picky and I love new experiences. On the other hand, I am sure I could concoct 8 menus of utterly delicious repasts that I would probably not tire of.
What about you? And explain how your choice is influenced by your overall attitude toward food - are you picky, indifferent, food-obsessed …?
Also, several of my choices would be from fast food restaurants. Taco Bell crunchy tacos and Little Caesar’s $5.00 “hot and ready” pepperoni pizza would be on the list, for instance.
Variety. Might be hesitant to eat raw oysters and beef tartare, but part of the requirement is nothing I eat will get me sick, so maybe I’ll get a chance to try Fugu, if that ends up on the menu.
For this reason I would make sure to enjoy every meal to the full. Years ago I used to go to a Vietnamese place for lunch. I would get the young guy taking orders to choose a meal for me, he thought it was funny. I told him I was going to work my way through the menu. When I go out in a group, and we are sharing, I never bother looking at the menu and just enjoy whatever others choose.
I don’t like a lot of foods, so I would definitely pick the 8 meals.
But how does breakfast figure into this? I like to eat bacon and eggs with toast for breakfast, but I wouldn’t want that in my dinner rotation. Similarly, I wouldn’t want one of my dinner options for breakfast. Can I choose one thing for breakfast every day, and rotate through the other seven for the other meals?
This is a little tough, but I would go different foods rather than the eight favorites. Now if you had me pick my 30 or so favorite meals, I might go for that, though I think I would still need a bit bigger rotation than that. But I definitely have a number of favorite meals, and it would truly suck not to experience them again, but I think I would enjoy trying different things rather than sticking to eight meals only.
I’m a picky eater. There are LOTS of foods that make culinary sense that other people like that I don’t eat. For instance, I avoid the whole capsaicin family. All of it. Maybe I’ll make an exception for fresh raw green pepper.
And yet… I love novelty in food. I actively seek out new foods when I travel, or at new restaurants. I would be so incredibly poorer if I could only eat 8 meals ever.
The first option sounds great, until you realize you only get to eat raw oysters on the half shell, lobster Thermidor, a cheeseburger, a sausage-onion pizza, etc., ONE MORE TIME IN YOUR LIFE.
And a restriction to eight meals only is too much of a restriction. With the pandemic isolation making it impossible to trot down to the corner daily for fresh shrimp or a rib steak or even Chinese takeout, I’m chafing at my limited menu options as it is.
It’s tempting to have a private caterer forever and ever, but I’d probably smile graciously, thank the SMDB fairy from the bottom of my heart, and try to convince her to give me an eleven-inch pianist instead.
Yeah, it helps that I’m truly an omnivore: there’s no foods I avoid. Maybe I’d get a little squeamish when we started getting into the weirder insects and more exotic meats, but I’ve eaten cicadas, ants, worms, and all that.
Also, how is “same meal” defined? Are variations considered the same? Like, say, today I have a plain cheeseburger. Can I have a green chile cheeseburger somewhere down the line? Or how about a juicy Lucy? Patty melt? If I have chicken paprikash one day, can I have chicken pörkölt another (which is the same, minus the sour cream.) Or how about steak? Are the different cuts different meals? What about different sauces they’re served with? I might want one au poivre, but then if I choose the same cut with bernaise (which is a different experience), is that a different meal? If not, what if I use a different cut? How tight are the rules on variants?
The first one, easy. There are few things I absolutely hate, and too many interesting foods in the world to limit myself to the same eight meals forever.
Answer puly’s questions and then I’ll pick. Because I immediately started gaming the OP (big surprise). I could make several thousand variations of a green salad if varying the amounts of certain ingredients is allowed, for example.
But for now, I’d still pick the variety. 8 meals is way too small a selection.
I wouldn’t want to eat 8 meals for the rest of my life. But there’s not enough information on the first option for me to decide. For instance, could I get fish to eat ten thousand times in a row? Or is there an effort to make consecutive meals significantly different? What about snacks?
Simple choice. Eight meals I love. First of all, I can’t think of eight meals I love so there’s my variety right there. Second of all, if I ate a different meal every time, sooner or later I’d run out of pizza and chicken teryaki and end up eating deep-fried dill flavored Twinkies or braised cockroaches over maggots in a white wine sauce. No thanks.
We like to watch “Chopped” and I suspect it could work out like that. These chefs get venison in a basket and have to come up with something delicious. They invent something…well, no. Maybe instead of Beef Wellington (one of the best things I’ve ever eaten) they make Venison Wellington, tweaking a recipe that’s already tried and true rather than receiving a thunderbolt of inspiration and creating a novel recipe out of thin air. Yes, you don’t cook venison the same but a skilled chef will compensate as needed, so it’s all good.
Like pulykamell I’m thinking many loopholes are open. Burger King says:
You can prime factor that to 2^13 x 3^3 I’m guessing 2s would be either or items—ketchup/no ketchup. 3s might be no pickles, pickles, extra pickles or something along those lines.
And that 200K + number is from what BK has on hand. Next we ask our chef to put it on a brioche bun with brown mustard and gouda cheese, Hatch chilis, etc.
I’m a simple woman.