IT'S JUST A MATTER OF TASTE

JACKSON -- Three women who work diligently side by side in the Cape Girardeau County Prosecutor's office have very different tastes when it comes to lunch.

Beth Friedrich, who calls the town of Perkins home, finds it impossible to go home over the lunch hour, so she enjoys eating at a local restaurant, just a block or so from the courthouse.

"They've got salads and a whole variety of food there," Friedrich said. "But it can get expensive it's something you've got to budget for."

When she has a mess of errands to run over the lunch hour, she tends to grab "a bag of cheese crackers and a soda," she said.

Chris Bess, who is five months pregnant and growing, goes home every day for lunch to save money and clean her house without her two year daughter around to "help."

"We really can't eat at our desks here in the front office," Bess said. "People would walk in and we'd have food in our teeth or something. No one would really like that too much."

At home, Bess eats salads, soup or left overs from the night before.

"I try to eat healthy," she said. "But right now, I'm so hungry that everything tastes good.

"I've become an equal-opportunity consumer," she said.

Another woman who works in the prosecutor's office who really did not want her name used, said she brings her lunch to work every day.

"It's nothing elaborate, just anything I can grab quick on my way to work," she said.

She and other county employees who work in the Cape County Courthouse eat in the break room in the bottom floor of the building.

"There's a microwave and a refrigerator down there that we can use, a television to watch the soaps and a sofa to take a quick nap on," she said. "Lunch that way is a lot cheaper, and you don't have to get out at lunchtime."