Back in the 1990s, I ran a forum before there was the internet. I called it the "Five Minute Grunge Gourmet". The title needed little explanation. You needed to have the meal ready in five minutes or less. It had to be gourmet. And the grunge meant it was cheap and a bit iconoclastic. It was a hit. Some of the tips and contributions were priceless. I can remember making special trips to McDougal Street to have a particular coffee confection that someone recommended.

Forget cooking

It seemed many shared my sense that the way to do food is to go light on preparing things from scratch and find things in the cornucopia of NYC that were wonderful.

Those days are gone as things online will do. There was DOS. There was the chance to do your own programming without confronting bells whistles and complexity that sustains conservative capitalism.

Anywhere but here

Today one thing has remained unchanged. I still eat mainly what I get elsewhere already prepared or can whip up with a few slices of bread or some other five-minute methodology like number 16 pasta.

I also honor a peculiarity I may share with others. I have done no research to determine if it is so. I don't eat much so if we are at a restaurant (a cheap one) I take half home generally.

I also get plain pizza and super customize toppings like calamari from restaurant meals.

Constant changes

I periodically change what I get and have an essentially cyclical pattern. There was a time for example when I subsisted almost entirely on a huge cross between an orange and a grapefruit -- but much larger than a grapefruit.

The noble pomelo. I would just chop them into sections and there would be my meal.

Status report

You may be wondering if I am a lonely bachelor who has nothing better to do. My glorious spouse is as eccentric as I am. She subsists on a very particular diet which includes lots of very good things like raw fruit and veggies and she walks five miles or more around Manhattan and never pays much for anything because she knows where everything is.

We commune over tables from cafe to cafe but we eat different things for the best of reasons.

Remember Dr. Atkins?

I am a sort of Atkins veteran. I always say a prayer for Dr. Atkins, the king of protein diets. He perished from a fall onto an NYC sidewalk, a reminder that security was a problem before Donald Trump exacerbated it. I still go low oxalate, which means I eat all the wrong things to avoid pain and suffering. No further enlightenment should be needed. I work at home and eat at my computer.

I am flirting with reviving my little forum but I am not fond of any options I can imagine. So perhaps this matter will live as a modest eating suggestion for odd city dwellers like me.