Burritos

There is no other food that does it quite like a burrito.

 

Down the street from my office there are a variety of cuisines available: a few sit-down places with Italian, Japanese, Deli, and Mexican food, sandwich shops, quite a variety of Asian places, some coffee shops, and a few burrito places.

 

Every so often, like today, I think to myself, I’m going to get a burrito. It’s a lot of food, so I’ll have some leftovers for tomorrow, too. With a sandwich from home the next day, it’s enough food to get me through a couple days.

 

And I’m usually pretty good at this. Ferrinstance, one of the deli’s has a lot of salads available, so I get the 3 salads to go. (Usually, this incredible avocado/romaine/tomato number with Italian dressing he does, which is so popular he preps three or four trays of it ahead of time and will still run out; plus a pasta salad of some kind; and then one other to suit my whim.)

 

I’m fine with gnoshing on that baby at my desk then stowing the container in the fridge for the next day. I eat until I’m lightly full, but stop well before getting stuffed, and enjoy having the remains for a late brunch the next morning. Or not so late, depending.

 

But the burritos. I can’t do it. One place does a wet burrito down the street, wet meaning that, in addition to all the good stuff inside, it gets red sauce, sour cream, salsa and avocadoes on top. It’s way too much food. It’s absurd to think I’m going to finish all of this at once – the goal, really, has to be squirreling some of it away until tomorrow.

 

And yet, and yet.

 

I’ve powered through two thirds, approaching three quarters of this thing and realize that, from the neck up, I’m fully prepared to keep chowing this thing down. But wait, I propose to my poised fork and mouth democratically, let’s poll the stomach.

 

Stomach, how are you doing down there?

 

“We’re pretty damn full down here, Mac! You can keep snarfing it down, but we long ago reached capacity and began shoving all the extra right up against the beltline, so keep swallowing all you like, but we’ve hit the extra-belt-notch phase and before long you’re going to need a pile driver to keep slamming it down!”

 

So the head says to hand:  put the fork down, and back away. And still, I realize, mouth and hand are more than willing to keep shoveling.

 

It’s not just that burritos are good — the other food is good, too.

 

What’s up with that? How do they circumvent the normal satiation point that way? What is it about burritos?

 

 

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