These Bean Sprouts Have Tied It All Together

A while ago I realized that if I kept eating lunch the way I was going it would only take a year or so before I was fat and broke (and sick of eating lunch). Not wanting to go shopping more than once a week and not wanting to eat the same damn thing every day were my first priorities. I also wanted to see if I could get away with less than $5 a day.

I realized that if I wanted to eat well, have variety and not waste money on my food going bad I'd have to plan pretty carefully. For me, the bean sprouts tied it all together.

Here's a purchasing list for items that will faithfully make 3 separate lunches. A tuna sandwich, a deli meat sandwich and a decent salad. Goddamn it if bean sprouts aren't in all three.

Biggest problem solver: You can have lettuce (or baby spinach) on your sandwich without worrying about buying a whole bunch of lettuce and then throwing it away. You're gonna use the lettuce in the salad. Problem solved (ass).

Throw the bean sprouts and the spinach/lettuce on everything. It's only gonna be better because you did.

The prices below reflect within a dollar the price of these items as purchased at Trader Joe's.
Constants (one time/infrequent purchases):

• Salad Dressing (~2.50)
• Horseradish (2.09)
• Mustard (2.50)
• Mayo (3.50)
  
• raisins (4.00)
• Walnuts (5.00)
  

Bi-Weekly:

• Deli Meat (~5.00)
• Cheese Slices (3.50)
• Red Onion (~1.75)
• Bread (2.50)
• hummus (3.00)
• Large can Tuna (3.50)
  
• Celery (2.50)
  

Weekly:

• Baby Carrots (1.25)
• Box of Prewashed Baby Spinach (2.99)

Lunch always consists of the main course, (sandwich/salad) and then a small side of carrots and hummus or celery sticks.

Several brilliant points to save on prep time:

1. Cut up your onion once (thin thin rings, that shit's intense) and then throw it in some tuperware. It'll keep for at least three weeks without any harm done. You can use a big onion every day for that long and still throw some out at the end. Onions are awesome.
2. Make your tuna salad in a big batch and save it. Seems like it lasts at least a work-week, might last through the weekend too. So far I haven't been bold enough to try.

I can't help but acknowledge that this post has been in the works for almost two weeks and the only reason I'm finally pushing it out now is to see what my avatar looks like over at PlanetMikix.

Mission Statement: To little to late

Before I continue to bring everyone up to speed on the nature of my lunch let me do something I should have done a while ago. I want to lay out the intentions of this food centric blog.

Casual cooking is primarily learned and taught through direct experience starting with the every day examples set by a person's parents. There's a couple of problems with learning to food in that manner.

• You hated what your parents cooked
• You didn't really have to think about shopping and maintains food supplies
• Crap food is enticingly cheap
• You are lazy

Granted that bullet list wandered a bit at the end, but I think you see what I'm getting at. This is a blog about food. Deal with it.

Let me lay out the outlook for the blog for everyone who doesn't read, or doesn't believe the information contained in, blog descriptions: This blog will continue to talk about [eating,| preparing| storing| shopping for| pooping out] food, at some point it also might talk a little about growing and distributing food as well.

I am specifically trying to not make out with someone

This caught me by surprise when I found out, but it's true. My tip-off was my lunch. I didn't realize when I was putting it together but I have crafted a meal that is almost exactly the opposite of Ton-Loc's funky cold medina.

Read and Understand.

How to make breath like ass, a lunch by Nick Garner;

Sandwich

• Roast Beef
• Horse Radish
• Swiss Cheese
• Coleslaw
• Red onion
  

Sides

• Salt and Pepper Chips
• Pickle

(It is important to note that this sandwich is not even very good.)

UPDATE: Today (Tuesday, June 27th) I made a substitute of humus in for the coleslaw and horse radish. It was way more palatable without being any less offensive for my breath!

I have been assimilated

This is what a section of my task bar looks like for almost the whole day.

Lunch Amok

It's been nearly two weeks since I've gone to the trouble of bringing lunch to work. A difficult two weeks; the result being that I've felt a bit like a money sieve .

Today's at work lunch expedition traveled to the local Panera Bread. I've done a complete 180 on Panera since my first experience. At first glance the food seemed healthy enough, the service was speedy and the decor was corporate comfortable. I admired the simplicity and speed of the ordering/pickup system, which uses a number of vibrating coasters to notify patrons when their food is ready.

The problem is that if you look too closely at any sandwich from Panera you will find a Big Mac. The only difference is that at Panera everything tastes like I'm taking hits off a NutraSweet hookah. Eating there gives me exactly the same feeling that I get from eating at a place like Wendy's. It's the feeling where you feel only semi-necessary to the digestive process; as if most of the work's already been done for you.

I'm not saying I'm a glutton for digestive exercise, that I'd prefer to grind the grain with my own teeth and bake the bread in my stomach, but at fast food restaurants I barely feel involved. The food seems to feel the same way. It doesn't even stick around in my system long enough to leave any nutrients behind. It's all: "Yo dude, I am out. I got a thing to do."

Bottom Line: Panera Sucks and I've got to get back to bringing my own lunch. The satisfaction of being lunch-self-reliant is tangible, and I miss it. Right now I'm giving up that feeling and replacing it with the feeling of eating diet-flavored laxatives.

That's a load.

A special Link

My disappointment to find this was already taken is deeply soothed by the fact that this is exactly what I had in mind for the site anyway.

Thread bare

Sarah made a noteable picture this week, but at the time everyone was really excited about talking about dicks. Let's enjoy this great picture by making some more dick comments!

Discovering a New Terror

Joe helped me work through some issues I had while making breakfast today.

[10:32] me: I almost spilled some oatmeal today
[10:32] me: i was gonna[sic] blog about that
[10:32] joe: yeah i hate that
[10:32] joe: it looks like you threw up
[10:32] joe: and it's unpleasant to clean
[10:33] me: I was alot more afraid of spilling the oatmeal than I expected to be
[10:33] me: looking back on the event
[10:34] joe: you unconsciously knew what a bitch it is to clean
[10:34] joe: do you have carpet?
[10:34] me: yeah, my heart was in my chest[sic]*

*Throat


I am way more afraid of spilling oatmeal than I would have guessed. I think that's a good reaction though. My fear heightened my ability to cope with the situation and no oatmeal was spilled. I was saved what would have been a 15 minute clean up time.

Thanks body!

Sarah Can't Believe She's Doing This

Can anyone say hard hitting opinions and huge block paragraphs? Not one to cater to the faint of heart: Sarah today decided to start her own damn blog.

According to the title of her periodical no one is more surprised by this than she is.

It's MEAT!

UPDATE: My lunch lacks meat. So eating a dick actually might have helped. I'm sorry blogosphere, I didn't mean to preemptively censure your good advice.

A Lunch that makes you want to eat lunch again

This week I fell in with Mikix's plan for bagged lunches. The following is involved:

• 1 banana
• 5 Organic "Ritz" Crackers
• 1 handful of Baby Carrots
• 1 Stonyfield Lowfat Yogurt
• 1 Granola Bar
• 1 Apple (thanks for the reminder mike)
  

Rather surprisingly this is, in fact, a filling lunch. Rather unsurprisingly it is bland as butter and makes me want to eat a big bag of Doritos as soon as I've finished. I am hilariously reluctant to mess with this system, for no reason I can put my finger on, but it's clear to me that something is going to have to change.

Comments would be welcome, but try not to tell me to eat a dick. This is what I hope to come to expect from my readership.