Sausages and eggs, and hot and sour soup
Aug. 17th, 2004 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ventaIn an ideal world people might remark, after a few day's silence, on my journal's lack of its usual quality content, fine writing, and insightful comment. As it is, I'm receiving complaints that it's at least four days since I posted meaningless drivel about tomatoes and spiders.
However, I have the highest respect for the complainer's critical faculties, and so I shall present some meaningless drivel:
Having just consumed a lunch calculated to make pretty much anyone other than me go "Ewww", my thoughts have been turning to the contents of lunchboxes in general.
(If you're interested, my lunch was based round some rather nice bready-biscuity things which, as far as I can tell, one can only buy from Ikea. They're a nice halfway house between bread and cripsbread, and don't appear to go stale. Today's contained cardomom, and were hanging out with spicy aubergine paté, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and anchovies.)
I've never really thought sandwiches are all that practical for a lunchbox thing. Unless you're a lot more careful than me, they tend to fall apart as you carry the box around. They take time to make, and if you've constructed them the night before, they've probably gone soggy by the time lunchtime comes around.
Shop-bought triangular-pack sandwiches are a perennial disappointment to me. They're never quite as nice as the packet description would have you believe, and are usually damp, limp, and have had all the taste chilled out of them. Pret-style sandwiches are better, and deli-style made-to-measure sarnies better still; sadly, the location of my work renders both unavailable.
So, usually, I bring my own lunch in. Perversely, I call it dinner (the meal I eat at night is tea), but I'm aware that causes confusion. In the winter I munch my way through a tin of Baxters soup each day - almost always vegetarian, because they seem to do a better job of containing things like beans or pulses, and thus being filling. In summer, though, hot soup doesn't particularly appeal.
Mostly, I bring in salads. It's another perpetual source of disappointment that my idea of a salad is different from the idea of every salad-purveying emporium in the world. The last salad I brought to work: chopped ham, chopped raw peppers (that's capsicum for American viewers), cherry tomatoes, half an avocado and some cold potatoes. What do you notice ? No bloody lettuce. Lettuce is, I suppose, cheap - and, if you're carefully marking up your salads with calories, largely irrelevant. It's also bland and unfilling - if I buy a bowl of salad, I don't want to find that around 60% of it is full of chopped iceberg, which will be a pain to eat and require me to consume the packaging as well to stop being hungry. I get along OK with things like rocket and watercress, which taste of something.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
elethiomel's view that lettuce only exists as a vehicle for vinaigrette is fair enough, but really not enough of an excuse for its ubiquity.
Salad vendors of the world take note: make nice stuff.
Which reminds me, ham. The joint which I grew up calling (and still do) "a boily bacon" seems to me to be a very much undervalued animal. A small, unsmoked bacon joint in Tesco will cost you £3-4. You boil it - chuck some cloves, onion, cardamom, peppers, chilli, whatever you fancy in the water with it. Take out, slice, eat - with new potatoes and some form of vegetable (and about 1/4lb. butter) it's one of my favourite meals. The remainder goes in the fridge, and will help out with your lunchtime sarnies/salads for the rest of the week.
Boiled meat seems to be terribly unfashionable, somehow. I don't know why.
And my culinary discovery for the month: limes on sweetcorn. Next time you're eating corn on the cob, instead of slathering butter all over it, squeeze half a lime over it. It's quite surprisingly good - though works better on barbecued sweetcorn than boiled. I'd suggest this as a dieters' alternative, but since most of the diet-following people I know seem to be on some Atkins variant, they're probably allowed the butter but not the sweetcorn to go with it.
The word discovery is a little unfair in the previous paragraph, since I didn't discover it at all, I was told about it at a barbecue by SpikeyNeil a couple of weeks ago.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get chocolate muffin out of the keyboard.
However, I have the highest respect for the complainer's critical faculties, and so I shall present some meaningless drivel:
Having just consumed a lunch calculated to make pretty much anyone other than me go "Ewww", my thoughts have been turning to the contents of lunchboxes in general.
(If you're interested, my lunch was based round some rather nice bready-biscuity things which, as far as I can tell, one can only buy from Ikea. They're a nice halfway house between bread and cripsbread, and don't appear to go stale. Today's contained cardomom, and were hanging out with spicy aubergine paté, cherry tomatoes, feta cheese and anchovies.)
I've never really thought sandwiches are all that practical for a lunchbox thing. Unless you're a lot more careful than me, they tend to fall apart as you carry the box around. They take time to make, and if you've constructed them the night before, they've probably gone soggy by the time lunchtime comes around.
Shop-bought triangular-pack sandwiches are a perennial disappointment to me. They're never quite as nice as the packet description would have you believe, and are usually damp, limp, and have had all the taste chilled out of them. Pret-style sandwiches are better, and deli-style made-to-measure sarnies better still; sadly, the location of my work renders both unavailable.
So, usually, I bring my own lunch in. Perversely, I call it dinner (the meal I eat at night is tea), but I'm aware that causes confusion. In the winter I munch my way through a tin of Baxters soup each day - almost always vegetarian, because they seem to do a better job of containing things like beans or pulses, and thus being filling. In summer, though, hot soup doesn't particularly appeal.
Mostly, I bring in salads. It's another perpetual source of disappointment that my idea of a salad is different from the idea of every salad-purveying emporium in the world. The last salad I brought to work: chopped ham, chopped raw peppers (that's capsicum for American viewers), cherry tomatoes, half an avocado and some cold potatoes. What do you notice ? No bloody lettuce. Lettuce is, I suppose, cheap - and, if you're carefully marking up your salads with calories, largely irrelevant. It's also bland and unfilling - if I buy a bowl of salad, I don't want to find that around 60% of it is full of chopped iceberg, which will be a pain to eat and require me to consume the packaging as well to stop being hungry. I get along OK with things like rocket and watercress, which taste of something.
elethiomel's view that lettuce only exists as a vehicle for vinaigrette is fair enough, but really not enough of an excuse for its ubiquity.Salad vendors of the world take note: make nice stuff.
Which reminds me, ham. The joint which I grew up calling (and still do) "a boily bacon" seems to me to be a very much undervalued animal. A small, unsmoked bacon joint in Tesco will cost you £3-4. You boil it - chuck some cloves, onion, cardamom, peppers, chilli, whatever you fancy in the water with it. Take out, slice, eat - with new potatoes and some form of vegetable (and about 1/4lb. butter) it's one of my favourite meals. The remainder goes in the fridge, and will help out with your lunchtime sarnies/salads for the rest of the week.
Boiled meat seems to be terribly unfashionable, somehow. I don't know why.
And my culinary discovery for the month: limes on sweetcorn. Next time you're eating corn on the cob, instead of slathering butter all over it, squeeze half a lime over it. It's quite surprisingly good - though works better on barbecued sweetcorn than boiled. I'd suggest this as a dieters' alternative, but since most of the diet-following people I know seem to be on some Atkins variant, they're probably allowed the butter but not the sweetcorn to go with it.
The word discovery is a little unfair in the previous paragraph, since I didn't discover it at all, I was told about it at a barbecue by SpikeyNeil a couple of weeks ago.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get chocolate muffin out of the keyboard.
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no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 06:28 am (UTC)What you describe sounds much nicer than a salad, but also absolutely nothing like one !
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 06:30 am (UTC)1a) A dish of raw leafy green vegetables, often tossed with pieces of other raw or cooked vegetables, fruit, cheese, or other ingredients and served with a dressing.
b) The course of a meal consisting of this dish.
2) A cold dish of chopped vegetables, fruit, meat, fish, eggs, or other food, usually prepared with a dressing, such as mayonnaise.
3) A green vegetable or herb used in salad, especially lettuce.
4) A varied mixture: “The Declaration of Independence was... a salad of illusions” (George Santayana).
I think I'm ok under (2) with my salad!
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 06:33 am (UTC)What would you call a side dish consisting of rocket and watercress, tossed with vinaigrette?
If it's anything other than 'salad' I shall just retire from the field in the sure and certain knowledge that you're Just Plain Wrong.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 06:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 06:44 am (UTC)This might also have something to do with my desire for bacon, turkey, cranberry and stuffing sandwiches.....with mayo....on a ciabatta.....
I tried the salady thing once or twice but like you've experienced end up with a box filled with lettuce or evil sneaky nasty onions, which repeat on me all day. I'd do without lunch if my breakfast wasn't so meagre and paltry......
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 06:48 am (UTC)Boiled meat is not dead! Though most recently I have boiled my ham in coke, then roasted with appropriate substance smeared on the fat. However I wasn't 100% convinced that this was the correct way of doing things. I shall return to plain boiled bacon unless pressured by others (who liked it better than I did).
Barbequed sweetcorn is foul and must be destroyed. It is a sad thing that you have contaminated an otherwise sensible (if foody drivelly) post with talk of this Satan's snack.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:04 am (UTC)!
!!
Er... well, I suppose it might work. But...
At what stage did you suddenly think "I know, I'll boil some ham in coke"? Or are you working through food/drink combos ? Y'know: pears-in-lemonade, works. Parnsips roasted in organe juice, works. Beef in Dr. Pepper, doesn't work. Etc.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:08 am (UTC)In case it wasn't obvious, that should have said "orange juice".
My mum roasts parsnips glazed with orange, and I'm reliably informed they're lovely. Since I dislike both parsnips and oranges, I'm not a useful source of verdict on this.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:08 am (UTC)I've said it once before, but it bears repeating
Date: 2004-08-17 07:17 am (UTC)There are two good solutions to this problem:
1) Make thicker sandwiches,
2) Make more sandwiches.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:26 am (UTC)I call the middle one "lunch" if it's the smaller non-breakfast meal of the day and "dinner" if it's the larger one. Likewise I call the evening meal "tea" if it's a small meal and "dinner" if it's a big one.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:30 am (UTC)The largest meal in any given day is "dinner". Discounting breakfast, if the remaining, smaller meal preceeds dinner then it is "lunch", otherwise it is "tea". Meals beyond three are named as appropriate.
IME "supper" happens either after 10pm or north of Hadrian's Wall.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:32 am (UTC)Most perturbing.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:37 am (UTC)*I know that this was kinda broken into several wars. But it isn't usualy pluralised, is it?
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:40 am (UTC)Besides, the idea that the Wars of the Roses have in anyway ended is a myth which no one north of the Humber would dream of believing.
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:42 am (UTC)As far as I can remember, in my house when I was little, dinner (12ish) was the main meal, tea (5-6ish) was sandwiches and so on.
On the rare occasions when the main meal was in the evening, we had little-dinner (sandwiches, 12ish, not to be confised with petit-dejuner) and dinner-for-tea (5-6ish).
I stopped saying dinner-for-tea when I got to university and people laughed at me.
It's not liked they stopped laughing at me, mind :)
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 08:00 am (UTC)Alternatively, like the Pennines, they're the blustery bit between Lancashire (which is where Wigan was at the time my mother was born in it, even if it's now in Manchester or some such new-fangled nonsense) and Yorkshire (although my father is technically from Derbyshire, he's from within line-of-sight of Sheffield).
no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-08-17 11:44 am (UTC)