Lunch Lessons Learned Today

As I'm home and searching for jobs, I am now making lunch out of what we have in the pantry at the moment, and trying not to subsist entirely on Fiber One™ bars (or their Special K equivalent which have extra warnings for fibrousness) and fifty-cent ramen. This would be easy except that I am lazy and occasionally suffer from what I call "food aphasia," which is where I look into a fridge at raw ingredients and say, "how does this become food"?

Today, I made food in two steps. I cooked up some Uncle Ben's "Country Inn Mexican Fiesta" rice, adding a can of Goya red kidney beans for complete protein-icity. I then heated up a Quorn cutlet with some of Mark Bittman's tomato chutney.

Lessons learned:

• Quorn is good with tomato chutney.
• Uncle Ben's "Mexican Fiesta" is about as Mexican as the taco stand at McFadden's on Cinco de Mayo (the Hawk & Dove in Southeast also has a similar stand on offer, but McFadden's manages to keep its ground floor from smelling like urine, thus making it a classier establishment despite the Georgetown frat boys). The rice is also pretty tasteless.
  
• The "Mexican Fiesta" rice does not go that well with tomato chutney.
• However, it tastes great mixed with the extra-spicy version of Bittman's onion chutney that the Sherbs cooked up for our Sunday hot dog party.

That's lunch. Now back to the job hunt.

Gifts and Stuff

Vegetarian Times says that a good father's day gift is a sustainable koa wood skateboard. So, fathers, if you get one, you know who to blame.

The Sherbs and I slaved over a hot stove all day for brunch tomorrow; our guests better like it. We made at least three hot dishes plus our own pita chips. I'm hungry just thinking about it, and I ate dinner (which we also made - ramen plus from Mark Bittman's vegetarian cookbook).

Today's Lunch - It's Got Okra!

Lunch today:

1. one packet kosher instant ramen, prepared my usual way - smash in bag, pour into bowl for microwaving;
2. four whole frozen okra, added to bowl of ramen
3. handful of frozen corn, added to bowl
4. handful of veggie crumbles, added to bowl
5. add water
6. microwave for maybe five minutes, starting at 3:30 and then just smacking the "add 30 seconds" button until it looks like it's sufficiently boiling
7. stir in ramen sauce packet

It was tasty.