Gourmet Part 2

These days, I tend to bring lunch to work. For one, it saves money. For another, we tend to meal prep our food days in advance, so lunch is usually just another meal in the mix. The last, and certainly most fun reason, is that it seems to make my coworkers think that I'm eating some sort of fancy, highfalutin gourmet meal that's only available to members of a special subsection of Filipino society. For the record, I make no attempt to encourage the thought process that leads to that last reason, but I include it on the list because it's pretty darn funny.

Given that back drop, it should come as no surprise that lunch time at work can be an amusing thing. For one, I usually know what's coming several days in advance. Most of the time, I have either helped prepare the ingredients, cook the food, or otherwise pack my lunch. As with most people, I tend to have favorite foods, so this means that I usually know when one of my favorite dishes is in the mix. Just think of the anticipation.

In my case, there's actually an element of surprise mixed in, too. That might seem a tad counter intuitive given that I help prep the meal, but I don't tend to look closely at the contents of the Tupperware before I throw it into my lunch box. I always figure that the whole point of meal prepping is that you have several lunches ready, so I can just grab any of them. So, that's precisely what I do. There have definitely been lunch times where I have made some version of the "oh, look at that!" remark.

Still, there was a recent outlier for lunch time. You see, I was recovering from a cough/cold type of illness, so the Mild Wife insisted that I should continue to have soup and drink lots of liquids. I was actually on the upswing towards good health again, but you have to be vigilant about eating and drinking your way back to health even when the symptoms have passed.

That's how I ended up with this for lunch:

The mason jar was a nice touch

In case it's not readily apparent to you what that is, that's chicken soup with peas and spinach mixed in. It's a pretty good sized portion, too. That was actually part of the reason why it was in that jar instead of a thermos; the thermoses we have weren't meant for a portion of that size.

The other half of the rationale was the far more interesting one: we didn't want the soup to just sit there all day. The spinach would get soggy, the peas might get mushy ... you get the idea. Essentially, what we were after was a healthy, home-made version of Cup O'Noodles.

Well, there are two relevant facts that you need to remember. First, necessity is the mother of invention. Secondly, the Mild Wife is a freaking genius. She had the brilliant idea of putting a dollop of chicken bouillon at the bottom of the jar, to essentially act as the seasoning. I did, in fact, just add water and mix the jar above (that's actually where the picture came from: I was happily reporting my progress). I had to remember to actually physically mix the contents of the jar, though, since the bouillon wasn't going to just diffuse its way throughout the whole jar. Still, it worked. I had home-made Cup O Noodles.

MacGyver ain't got nothin' on my lunch.