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Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Twenty Two (Andrew)

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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 does lunch become dinner? Yesterday I discussed the timing of lunch and how for some people it can be midday and for others it might be 2pm but what I hadn’t considered is what happens when it becomes 7pm, and it’s dark and it is definitely not lunch anymore, it’s evening.

That’s what happened today. Lunch didn’t start until after I finished work. I bought lunch at midday, I meant to eat it before 1pm but, due to being waylaid, I couldn’t get to it until 7pm.

First, I already knew I what need to eat quickly. I had a meeting from 1pm to 3pm and then 3pm to 5pm, and the meetings were not the type of meetings I could bring a sandwich and munch away. I would be doing a lot of talking and no one wants to listen to someone chewing. Unless it’s on YouTube and you’re a weirdo and you don’t call it chewing you call it ASMR.

This was not an ASMR meeting.

So, I had to get to the meeting and then speak to a receptionist to hand in some signed documents and then I had a 10 minutes window to eat my sandwich when… I met someone I knew and they started talking, and talking, and I couldn’t eat my sandwich then either because that would be weird too.

“It’s great to see you. How long’s it been? Two years. Fantastic, now tell me about your family while I stare at you while eating a baguette.”

So, no sandwich, 4 hours of meetings, walk back to the office, collect car, go home, play with daughter, and then, and only then did I get to eat lunch. For my dinner.

So, was that lunch or was it tea?

Bread: Baguette, with 5 minutes in the over to crisp it up and to melt the cheese.

Ingredient: Mozzarella, tomatoes and param ham

Taste: delayed gratification

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Twenty One (Andrew)

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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.

The problem with lunchtime is that people have different ideas of when it takes place. To me, lunch has always been 1pm. I think that stems from my first office job having a fixed 1pm to 2pm lunch break. Or, at least I thought it was fixed, in reality everyone had lunch had some point between noon and 2pm and it was entirely flexible, it was just the employment contract that was not.

Even with this flexibility I still had a colleague who thought lunch was at a different time entirely. He would have lunch around 11am. But, because he didn’t want to leave the office and make it look like he was skiving early, nor did he want to eat at his desk, he would often be found eating a sandwich in the men’s toilet.

“Early lunch or late breakfast?”, I’d ask.

“Both,” he would say, using the sandwich in his hand to point to the empty (and just finished) cereal bowl and single serve packet of corn flakes beside him on the bathroom sink.

I always thought that was the strangest lunch/breakfast I’d ever seen until, last week, I discovered one of my colleagues has an even stranger habit. They have breakfast cocktails, which is not as alcoholic as it might first appear.

A breakfast cocktail is when you get a cereal bowl and then fill it first with one cereal, let’s say Rice Krispies, and then you take that bowl and… fill it again with a second entirely different cereal, let’s say Just Start. Then you mix the two together and have them both for breakfast. What freak does that?!

I thought of both of my colleagues today as, through the fact that no one knows the right time for lunch, I had people book meetings at 1130, noon, 1pm and 2pm, completely covering three hours over lunch. So, to eat, I’ve bought a sandwich from Sainsbury’s and I may need to say at some point: “Excuse me, a minute, I’m just going to pop to the toilet.”

Bread: Tuk-IN Kashmiri Chili Chicken in an naan (very nice!)

Ingredient: See above

Taste: convenient

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Twenty (Andrew)

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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.

One of my favourite meals is a proper hot dog from a stall that looks German. Not sure what the stalls nationality has to do with it, but, if the stall has a German flag, or is made to look like a wooden Bavarian hut or is anything but a white formica van in a car park, then I’m sold. It’s authentically German, especially if it calls the sausages ‘wursts’.

Today, I inadvertently recreated a hot dog by buying some sub rolls from Morrisons than making a sandwich to bring to work. I had the rolls, I checked the fridge and I had some slices of Bavarian smoked ham, I had some cheese and I added some tomato chutney. And, after tasting it, I had managed to create a hot dog substitute. The only thing that was missing was mustard. And any sense of German-ness. I should have worn lederhosen.

Bread: Sub roll from Morrisons

Ingredient: Smoked ham, edam and tomato chutney

Taste: like hot

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Nineteen (Andrew)

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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.

Post race snacks this way, said the sign. We (Iain TwinBikeRun and I) had just finished the Nigel Barge 10k and were following our stomachs after collecting our finisher’s medals.

I love a good post race buffet. Both the Jimmy Irvine 10K and the Forth Road Bridge 10K have tables and tables of home cooking. This one was not so plentiful but it was varied and, more importantly, it didn’t have a queue.

We helped ourselves to tuna sandwiches (with the crusts already cut off) and selection of sweets before sitting down in a canteen in the Gascube sports centre and witnessing the queue floods open. By the time I eat one corner of my sandwich there were at least 20 people in the queue for food. More kept joining every minute.

“We must have been first and everyone else is just finishing the race,” said Iain TwinBikeRun.

“Were all the people in front of us disqualified and went home early?” I said.

“We must be a the tipping point,” he said.

“Between what?” I asked.

“The athletes who are cooling down and the folk who’s first thought after a race is “Can I now eat a caramel shortcake?”

No need to consider lunch today, it was provided by the race.

Bread: 10k ready

Ingredient: tune and mayonnaise

Taste: like athletic achievement

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Eighteen (Andrew)

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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 really wanted a bagel for lunch and that meant I really wanted turkey for lunch. For some reason, I associate bagels with turkey. Not cream cheese and salmon. I’ve never understood that one. The cream cheese squirts out as soon as you press down.

“That’s because you eat it open!” You scream at me.

“But then it wouldn’t be a sandwich!” I retort.

And you accept I’m right because I’m the one writing the argument so I’m not going to make myself lose, am I?

Anyway, I am right. You need a bottom and you need a top. Without one, you have what is called an ‘open sandwich’ and open sandwich is a sandwich with a bit missing. It’s half a sandwich. Just a sand. And no one eats sand.

I admit my views on open sandwich may be born out of bitter experience. I bought a sandwich in London and chose to sit in rather than take it away. They brought it to my table. It had no top.

“There’s a bit missing,” I said.

There was a pause. Then they explained with only a large amount of patronising expressions that this was what I ordered. A sandwich, open to the world.

All I could think was “If this was £7 [it was London!] how much to get an actual sandwich!”

That’s why I don’t eat open bagels. When it’s cold I like a bagel, toasted, and I like to add turkey and cheese to it. Never chicken, never ham. Always turkey and I don’t know why.

Until writing this entry I would never have thought about it. It’s become a reflex action. Buy bagel, buy sliced turkey. Maybe it goes back to my childhood? Maybe my mum only ate turkey bagels when I was in the womb?

But given my mum thinks that anything other than traditional plain Scottish bread is exotic I can rule out this explanation as she’s never eaten a bagel in her life. I may not have either. I used to think bagels had the texture of a tyre rim, looked like a tyre rim and could, in a flat tyre emergency, be used as a tyre rim.

But a local baker started making them and I bought one as it didn’t look like moped wheels and, wow, bagels can also be used for eating and not dirt biking.

At the same time I must have had some turkey and added that to the bagel and a link was created in my head. Bagel, bad. Bagel and turkey, good.

Whatever the reason today I had a bagel with turkey and cheese.

Bread: bagel

Ingredient: mature cheddar and sliced turkey.

Taste: like a complete sandwich

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Seventeen (Andrew)

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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.

And back to soup. It feels like I’m in the backward time loop of Tenet with everything revolving around the 15 January as a few days before I had soup and then I had nothing and then I built back up to soup again. Maybe I should reverse the entire month and eat everything in reverse order?

Also, like Tenant, I could complete every update as

BWHAN NANN AHHH MUMBLE MUMBLE Time loop MUMBLE NANN BWAH

Or maybe not.

So, today was back to soup but to escape the loop it was vegetable rather than tomato and I was happy to see that my appetite was coming back and I should be back to normal tomorrow.

Bread: toastie bread and butter.

Ingredient: vegetable soup

Taste: like continued recovery

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Sixteen (Andrew)

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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.

“Would you like a sandwich?”

Normally, the answer would be “Yes!”. Who would turn down a sandwich?

But there are two times that I aways say “No”. The first time is this week (or any other week when I’ve had a stomach bug). No one wants a sandwich straight after vomiting. It takes a few days to build up an appetite again. From yoghurt to yesterday’s toast to today’s yoghurt and an apple. You can’t jump straight back into a multi-layer club sandwich. You need to build up.

The second time I’ll say “no” to a sandwhich is when that sandwich comes from a buffet. Or, more precisely, it comes from someone else’s buffet. I have no problem with a sandwich spread at a meeting. Someone brings in various sandwiches and I’ll get tucked in. What I object to, what I avoid is when someone asks “Would you like a sandwich – there’s plenty left over from lunch?”

Who wants an unwanted sandwich? If there’s sandwiches left over then that’s because other people have pawed at it to get to the good sandwiches. It’s not leftovers, it’s cast-offs. And who want to eat a second hand cast off?

This especially applies to the Japanese sandwich known as sushi. Never eat cast off sushi. An entire room of people have already looked at the nigri roll of hours old tuna and said “no, I won’t eat that.” Why would I eat it? It’s not just fish that’s been out in a boardroom for the last few hours, it’s unwanted fish. It is charity shop fish. It doesn’t need eaten, it needs binned.

Bread: Nothing

Ingredient: Yoghurt and an apple

Taste: like improvement

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Fifteen (Andrew)

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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 worry about 31 days of lunch was that it might cause me to gain weight. Ha. No chance of that this week. After yesterday’s yoghurt, I’ve added a slice of buttered toast for lunch.

“You don’t need butter,” said Mrs TwinBikeRun, “my mum reccomends a dry piece of toast to help with a stomach bug.”

“And when did your mum stop being a nurse ?”

“1967”

“I’ll have some Lurpak – before she also reccomends bleeding me with leaches”

Bread: A slide of toastie bread.

Ingredient: Butter

Taste: like recovery

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Fourteen (Andrew)

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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.

Aaaaaaahhhhhh! Ooooooohhhhhh! Rumble! Rumble!

Last week, Mrs TwinBikeRun came down with a vomiting bug. As a week had passed, I thought I was safe. But, just when you think you’re safe… it struck.

Last night was spent on the hour every hour revising last night’s dinner. By 6:30am I felt it had passed but I’ve not had anything to eat so far today except for a single Muller Light yoghurt.

Does a yoghurt count as lunch? Maybe if I was model or a ballerina or if yoghurts came in trough sized portions. But a single tub of Muller light is not sufficient for a lunch. At least not most days. Today, it was just perfect.

Bread: Nothing

Ingredient: Nothing

Taste: like last night’s dinner

Andrew

31 Days of… Lunch – Day Thirteen (Andrew)

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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.

Nearly two weeks into this challenge and what have I learned:

  • I don’t need to repeat meals. Normally, when I buy food for lunch I repeat the meal until I’m finished with the ingredients. Say I buy cheese and ham. I make a cheese and ham roll on Monday and I have cheese and ham left over. So, I have it again on Tuesday and then Wednesday until it’s done. I don’t have to do that, small changes can make the lunch different.
  • I have slightly more variety than I thought – but I can do more. The second half of the month will involve challenging myself to try new things.
  • I love cheese. Always have. Always will.

Bread: McGee’s roll.

Ingredient: Cheese from last week

Taste: like Wallace & Gromit