a sucker for the packaging

My successful attempt yesterday to render my leftovers more appealing (by storing them in a Chinese take-out container) reminded me of a pattern in my eating habits that I've noticed of late. I am a sucker for the packaging.  Fairly sure that it began with my first watching of Return to Oz when Dorothy comes upon a lunch pail tree.

The green ones are unripe, of course, for Dorothy plucks the two juiciest red pails from the tree and discovers, wrapped in parchment paper, a ham sandwich.

How ridiculously precious is that lunch pail? I can't quite explain it, and, frankly, it's mildly disturbing, but I get positively giddy during this scene. Can you imagine if such a thing existed? I'd prefer a hummus wrap over the ham sandwich, but I'm sure that the lunch pail tree comes in different varietals.

I'm not a fan of the taste of fast food (especially after multiple viewings of Food, Inc.), but leave a wrapped burger (even a sad looking one) somewhere in my vicinity and watch out for your fingers.

In France, I took only one photo of food, and this was it:

I took these while in Germany for a month a few years back:

But while living in France for a year, nary a croissant or tarte was worthy of my lens. Just, you know, this:

Feast your eyes on the processed, packaged goodness! What a good American I am.

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So what's to be done? The craving for individually wrapped morsels cannot be denied. Yet, I don't like my mood or the state of my tummy after eating Burger King. I'm just not doing that to myself anymore. Nor do I like the environmental impact of the wrappers thrown away. I won't fight my appreciation of the aesthetics of food containment, so I should embrace it. I had the thought just now that perhaps I should dig out those refrigerator dishes from the mountain of boxes in the garage. We'll see how satiating vintage dishware can be.