Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Eleven (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

Darjeeling in India is famous for its tea. But did you know that the Darjeeling tea plantations were created in the 18th century, in part a Scotsman?

Perhaps this is not a surprise. It could only be a Scot who would think that a country where the temperature routinely hits the mid 30s was really missing a boiling hot cup of tea.

And, for the two days each year when the temperature drops, the dour prophetic Scotsman, wrapped in a tartan shawl, is sitting in the corner, holding a cup of tea aloft and telling everyone “Och aye, I knew the weather would turn – the sunshine cannae last forever! And neither can the big freeze, even if we have reached the point where the local pond has frozen over and all the local Torvill and Deans have come out with their skates to Bolero on it.

I don’t understand the attraction of skating on a pond. An ice rink is safe An ice rink is maintained. A pond in Glasgow is filled with chip suppers, buckfast bottles and botulism. Why would you want to risk falling into a pond that has more health hazards than Donald Trump eating a Big Mac while unicycling around the top of the Empire State Building?

How do they even know if the pond is safe enough to skate on? One part may look thick but the rest could be as thin as, well, anyone not Donald Trump. I don’t understand the appeal, just like I don’t understand the appeal of tea. Even when the temperature drops, I don’t see any need to drink a hot drink, unless it’s hot Chocolate, in which case, bring me a cup.

There’s a place near us – Il Geletessa – that serves fantastic hot chocolate, except today when it offered a special of Brown Butter Hot Chocolate. I thought “that sounds nice” and then I tasted it and thought “that’s just melted butter! I’m drink boiling butter – and who drinks boiling butter? No one. You pour boiling butter to repel invaders from scaling your castle walls. You don’t turn it into a beverage!”.

Luckily, I’d already had my lunch so I wasn’t disappointed to throw it in the bin as I was already full from a roll and sausage (the last from a packet bought from yesterday’s dinner of sausage and mash). And I didn’t drink tea.

Bread: M&S White Roll

Filling: a cumberland sausage from Morrisons

Taste: thankfully nothing like boiling butter

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Ten (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

I worked from home today as a plumber was fixing a tap, which is a routine job unless you forget that, to fix the tap, he has to turn off the water, which also turns off the heat – and its minus eight outside. To warm up, I thought of eating ice cream but, instead, I poured a lot of mustard on a a roll and used food as heat.

I love mustard. I also love ketchup. If I went on the Dragon’s Den I would show them my greatest invention: Orange.

Orange is not the fruit, the colour or the mountain bike brand. It’s a combination of red ketchup and yellow American mustard create ‘Orange’! Why have two bottles for a hot dog when you only need one: Orange!

Then the Dragon’s would ask if I had googled for competitor products and I’d admit “No, I haven’t googles it” and Doug Ballamntyne (retuning just for my audition) would call me a fool and “I’m OUT!” as he shares the link for Mustketch and I slink out the door with the lighter of the Dragons following me.

Anyway, now that my condiment based based dreams have died, what did I actually eat on Friday?

With the plumper in, I kept it simple: roast chicken slices, mature cheddar and some M&S soft rolls from the bread bin. And mustard. Lots of mustard. And no ketchup, because that’s just a daft idea now!

Bread: M&S White Roll

Filling: chicken slices and mature cheddar

Taste: like a roaring fire in an igloo

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Nine (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

With tomatoes left over from yesterday, today was nice and simple. Buy rolls. Buy cheese. Eat cheese and tomatoes rolls. Reduce food waste. Done.

Bread: McGee’s white roll

Filling: Tomatoes + mature cheddar

Taste: Like saving the planet

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Eight (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

I met a man in Tesco. I knew him, so it wasn’t weird. It would be strange to meet a man in Tesco otherwise. It’s not somewhere you would suggest to meet a stranger. A pub, a coffee shop, a cinema, the gym. Those are acceptable places to meet. But if someone says “Let’s meet.” And you say “where?” and they say “The Toiletry Aisle in Tesco Sauchiehall St” you’re going to have question. Questions like “Do I know my escape routes from this location?” and “How do I run away?”

I met a man while trying to solve yesterday’s filling problem. I still had coleslaw and wanted to finish the packet. But what to add to it? Sliced cheese or sliced ham or sliced chicken or perhaps, hear me out, some combination of all two or three? Madness, I know.

But I chose another option. I thought “This month is meant to be about trying new things so what goes great with mayonnaise and would be something different to try for lunch?”

And my brain picked: tomatoes.

As a filling.

Something neither cheese nor ham or chicken or even flat.

I picked a round filling.

And then, disaster. There were no rolls in Tesco! (Technically there were rolls, they just didn’t have any of the ones I wanted). I had to get croissants instead. (Other baked goods were available, but, as I had both coleslaw and tomatoes, I knew another crazy leap into the world of wraps would be a lunchtime experiment too far, like if the inventors of the cloned sheep called Dolly had skipped the whole idea of cloning a sheep and had gone straight to create an army of 100 Hulk Hogans).

You know what though. Unlike 100 pensioners ripping their t-shirts off with their bare hands, this turned out to be a decent combo. It could probably have still done with some meat, but, for a change, the tomatoes added a wee bit of bite and a wee bit of sweetness to the sharp tasting coleslaw.

Sometimes it does pay to experiment.

Bread: Tesco Croissant

Filling: coleslaw PLUS tomatoes

Taste: like an English picnic in a French park

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Seven (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

“Do you like mayonnaise?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you like carrots?”

“As much, if not more, than a rabbit.”

“Then why the hell do you not like coleslaw?!?!”

That was the conversation that led me to try coleslaw for the first time. Until then I had avoid it for looking like something a rabbit would throw up after eating too many carrots. And, I avoided it, because, to be honest, I didn’t know what it was. I never knew it was mayonnaise. I always thought of it as wallpaper paster with bits in it.

But then I tasted it and I though “I like mayonnaise, I like carrots, I DO like coleslaw!”

Today, I had a coleslaw roll. What did you have in it, you might ask? Coleslaw. I would say. And you would say, is coleslaw not like butter or mustard? You add it to a filling. It is not a filling it itself. A filling is cheese or ham or cheese and ham or, if adventurous, sliced chicken. No one just has a coleslaw ‘sandwich’.

Except me. Because I thought I had cheese in the office fridge and, it turns out, that I did, but as I opened it three weeks ago before the Christmas break, it had evolved to not just create new life, but had evolved into an actual cow.

And because I didn’t have time to go back to the shops I had a coleslaw on a roll and nothing else.

And while I thought it should probably be classed as a ‘lunch fail’, it was also perfectly edible and still better than any pre-packaged sandwich.

Bread: A McNab roll from Tesco

Filling: coleslaw

Taste: like a carrot drowning in mayonnaise in a swimming pool made up of a well burnt rolls.

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Six (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

Iain TwinBikeRun is looking at a plate in our kitchen when Mrs TwinBikeWife walks in. He’s using a spoon to poke at a grey mushy filling in the plate.

“What is this?” He asks.

“It’s smoked mackerel pate.” Says Mrs TwinBikeRun before adding, “It’s homemade!”

Iain drops the spoon and picks up a sausage roll instead. It takes him a second before he realises how this might come across:

“It’s not that’s it homemade,” he explain “I just don’t like mackerel!”

I love smoked mackerel and today we’re having a party for TwinBikeChild who turns four this year. We have homemade smoked mackerel, homemade sausages, homemade cake and… a sandwich platter from Marks & Spencers. In a month of lunches the only thing we’ve not made fresh is… the lunch. So, as Iain was avoiding the mackerel I thought that meant there was more for me so finished it off with some toast and water biscuits to scoop it up.

The scoop element of eating is very underrated and very satisfying. I know we have spoons, but you don’t scoop with a spoon, you spoon with a spoon. A scoop suggests something more primitive, more primal, something involving your hands scooping water from a mountain stream. Or using a cracker to clear pate from a delicate bowl. You know, just like the cavemen.

More scooping in my scoffing is a definite goal for this month.

Bread: a few days old loaf from Newlands Bakery

Filling: smoked mackerel pate

Taste: like the dawn of time (with a squirt of lemon and some cayenne powder).

Uncategorized

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Five (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

When I was young, on a Sunday night we were allowed to have dinner in front of the television. For the rest of the week, we would have dinner in the kitchen, as a family. But on Sunday, we could watch TV and eat biscuits and cheese.

I say cheese. It was a Kraft cheese slice cut into four squares and then eaten between two cream crackers.

It was great.

Today, I also had biscuits and cheese but a ‘posh’ version – instead of Kraft cheese slices I had a selection of cheeses from a local cheese shop.

I say cheese shop but I don’t think they would recognise themselves as a shop. They are a cheese specialist importer/wine bar/deli. Or basically a Tesco Express with a sit in drinks licence.

The good thing about having the cheese after Christmas is that we avoided the Christmas queues. Before Christmas you can wait an hour in Glasgow to get into any cheese shop. And, once in, if you’re unlucky, you’ll also have to stand behind someone who, when asked: “Would you like to try one?” says “Yes. And that one. And that one. And that one too. Oh, and why not, can I try that one also?”

It’s cheese! A cheddar. A blue. A brie. What more do you need to know?

So, for today’s lunch, I chose a cheddar, a blue and a brie and tried to recreate my childhood by listening to the Ski Sunday theme tune while buttering a cracker.

Bread: …ish. A biscuit again.

Filling: three cheeses.

Taste: you can’t go wrong with cheese, a biscuit and a bit of butter.

Uncategorized

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Four (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

“Sorry,” I said to the waitress, “I also ordered a drink.”.

My soup and sandwich had been brought to our table but not the drink I’d ordered too.

“You can get that from the counter,” she said without smiling, turned her back and left.

I’m the cafe at our local Morrisons. They have a computer screen on a wall to order your lunch. You select what you want, pick up a number from a small box beside the screen, tell the machine what number you’ve taken and everything is then brought to the table. Except my drink.

And this is meant to be an improvement on staff taking your order.

Which, if the staff, were anything like our waitress, then, yes, it probably was as she was acting like she ran out of smiles in 2024 and was still waiting for a new delivery.

Today, for lunch, I’m still on holiday and my mum had some messages to run. She suggests we get a bite to ear when we’re at the supermarket and that how I end up with a cheese toastie. Just not the cheese toastie I ordered. (Or my drink).

I order a brie and cranberry toastie.

“We don’t have cranberry,” says the waitress after she comes out of the kitchen, after receiving my order.

“You can have ham.”

So, I have ham. And another cheese because they didn’t have brie either, but she didn’t tell me that.

But at least they had my drink – even though I had to get that myself.

Bread: edible

Filling: unspecified cheese and ham.

Taste: it was made with all the warmth, love and care of someone whose dog had just been put down.

Uncategorized

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Three (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

My aim is try something different each day but. by something different, I don’t actually mean something completely different as that would be a waste of food. So, for today, I decided that since it was four days since I bought my bread, it was time to switch to toast as it was starting to become stale.

I love toast. In fact, if given a choice, I would sooner have toast than bread. Bread is soft. Toast is solid. Yet, if cooked right, it can also be soft in the inside. The perfect toast has all the advantages of bread but with added rigidity. Like the difference between a canvas tent and a bus shelter. Both keep you dry but there is just something more reassuring about something which doesn’t flop when you stand it upright.

So, for today’s lunch, a very similar to day one:

Bread: a few days old Italian bloomer from Newlands Bakery but TOASTED!

Filling: Tuna Chunks in Spring Water from Morrisons, Hellman’s Mayonnaise and a couple of spoonfuls of capers.

Taste: Spot on. And better than day one as the soft tuna mayonnaise is now caged in the toast.

Uncategorized

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Two (Andrew)

Leave a comment

For the last three years I’ve used January to try and learn something new. Three years ago it was to try 31 days of exercise, two years ago it was 31 days of stretching, last year it was 31 days of learning to play the piano and this year it’s 31 days of… lunch.

What is a sandwich? Does it have to have bread? But what about rolls? Or wraps? Are they sandwiches?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary a sandwich is:

“an item of food consisting of two pieces of bread with a filling between them, eaten as a light meal.”

I like the use of the phase “eaten as a light meal”.

First, it suggests that a sandwich eaten as a substantial meal, perhaps by swapping out ham with an entire roasted pig, is not a sandwich. You can have too much sandwich to be a sandwich.

Second, it does need to be eaten too. Making a sandwich for fun or art or as a prop is not a sandwich. So, when Patrick Stewart starred in MacBeth and made a sandwich halfway through the performance, was it a sandwich if it was made for a sonnet and not lunch?

Today, I ask this question as I had a sandwich consisting of last night’s left over guacamole (made with avocado, chilli, tomatoes and limes) and some savoury biscuits found in the cupboard. While I realise this was not a conventional sandwich, it did have two ‘sides’ and a filling so met the basic visual image of a sandwich. I also ate it and didn’t use it to murder Duncan in his sleep.

Bread: a very dense form of bread, called a butter biscuit…

Filling: homemade guacamole.

Taste: The biscuit made a better scoop than a traditional tortilla chip and the guacamole was still tasty despite a night in the fridge. I give this an improvised 8.5/10.