A Lunch Person

When I was three, I attended a half-day session at the school down the block from where I lived. Being the "older than my time" girl from an early age, I was bothered by the fact that there were other kids (some 4 years old, some 3) who were staying there for the entire day. I wanted to be a "Lunch Person" like those who stayed until the afternoon. My mother, wanting to support her youngin's desires, would pack me a lunchbox that I could bring to school, even though I didn't eat it there. I was a Lunch Person.

I am again a Lunch Person. I have begun bringing my lunchbox to work. Yes, you read that right. I'm in my 30s, and I bring a lunchbox to work. Think a modern bento box, less disposable packaging, healthier meals, and downright cuteness. My lunch box is made by Oots. I am in love with it. It has all these cool little containers inside, and if you get the "Deluxe" version, it comes with one large and four small plastic containers that fit inside. (You can also buy it without the inserts.) I was lucky enough to receive one of these beauties from my sister and brother-in-law as a birthday present back in the beginning of May (everyone...mark your calendars for next year...). But it took me a couple months to get in the swing of actually using it as intended. There have been a couple days I've trotted along with a frozen meal inside, but that's not nearly as exciting.

So I gave myself an assignment. Go to the farmers' market (see my previous post called The Prodigal Daughter), buy some tasty vittles, and make sure to eat healthily with the help of my Oots Lunchbox. I started with some fruit. I cut my orange in the "Chinese restaurant" style way, as my mother calls it - in half from pole to pole then slice parallel to the equator. It's the best way to eat an orange. You can just rip the flesh out with your teeth and you barely get any pith.

Next came blueberries. A ton of blueberries in another small bin. They are so easy to snack on throughout the day. I love the way they pop in the mouth.

I also packed one of these little squares with cheese and crackers. It was some delicious Colby that I got at the farmers' market (my dog also likes it...he likes cheese). The Colby was firm, but not oppressively so - it didn't hurt my gums when I chomped down on a big cube. The crackers I used were, brace yourself, good ol' Premium Original Saltines. I know that this Colby could have stood up to a Carr's cracked pepper of a similarly spiced cracker, but there's just something about those Premium Saltines. I love them. One thing I didn't really think about, though, was that the moisture from the cheese made the crackers a little less than desirable in texture. But don't get me wrong, I still ate them. You can't beat the perfect amount of salt on those things.

Lastly, as mentioned in my last post, I had done up some zucchini and and steak in the same grill pan. I had some leftovers in the longer of the plastic bins. Boy were they tasty.

Tomorrow I'm taking another meal. Dark sweet cherries and green grapes in two small bins. Another small bin has some tuna salad (tuna, light mayo, celery, dill pickles, celery seed, salt, and pepper), and the fourth has some more dill pickle spears and some more celery. The big bin has two pieces of Nature's Pride Double Fiber bread (remarkably tasty for how much fiber is in them, and I can toast them at work and make my tuna sandwich) and a handful of Marcona almonds (that are absolutely irresistible).

I'm hungry just thinking about it.

Mayonnaise is not as good as hollandaise

Growing up, my sister and I had this book called From Bach to Verse. It took the famous hooks from classical pieces and added words to them. (This is a unsolicited plug for the book. I don't know if it's even in print any more, but it's brilliant.) For instance the chorus of Beethoven's 9th had the following words: "Sigmund Freud never hoid a concert due to chronic slouch. All his ritzy, somewhat schitzy patients tied him to his couch."

I don't know exactly what year it was (the book came out when I was 7, so I don't think it was too far after that), but my mother, sister and I were sitting at the piano in the living room plinking out the songs on the piano while singing the words. My father, who was sitting in the kitchen (probably eating a clandestine bowl of ice cream), would then yell out the name of the piece and the composer. As an avid classical music fan, my father found this exercise exceedingly simple, but he outdid himself with one piece. My sister, who would have been 4-5 years old at the time asked my mother spelling out the word, "what is M-A-Y-O-N-N-A-I-S-E?" Without hearing any other words in the phrase or even the tune, my father yelled out, "Chopin!" Unbelievable. He was, in fact, correct - the piece was Chopin's Polonaises. The "lyrics" are, "Mayonnaise is not as good as hollandaise. Hollandaise is inferior to sauce bernaise." Genius.

Today I made my own mayonnaise. I've been a sous-chef on this endeavor before when my ex periodically made his own, but this was the first time I've tried it on my own. I originally intended to use my blender or Cuisinart (as those are the ways he did it), but when I went digging into my cabinet to see which one I could grab first, I remembered my immersion blender. I decided that would be my implement of choice. I feel fairly certain that pretty much every single cookbook I have has a mayonnaise recipe, but I chose to go with my cooking class cookbook - it's a great reference for everything from basics like mayonnaise to ridiculous recipes (involving ingredients I've never seen in person) I will never attempt. The book is On Cooking: A Textbook of Culinary Fundamentals by Labensky and Hause. It's super thorough and is usually my first stop. (I think in a future post I'll list the cookbooks I have. It's a motley crew.)

Anyway, I only had two eggs in my fridge (alas, the last of my farm fresh eggs), so I needed to halve the recipe. I had to decide between regular ground mustard and Coleman's mustard and ended up going with the former. I think next time I'll put some Coleman's in there - maybe it will give it a bit more personality. And that's what the finished product really missed overall...personality. I suppose I could have done the math wrong (which, as a former math teacher would be just shy of tragic), but it sure seemed like there wasn't enough vinegar in the recipe. It said to add lemon juice to taste, which I did. But at a certain point (always taste throughout the process!) it got too lemony, so I ended up also adding more vinegar instead of more lemon juice to it to balance out the immense amount of oil and to loosen it up a bit. I think in retrospect I'll also add a bit more salt the next time around.

What are my plans for the mayo you might ask? Well, I bought some grapes, some apples, and some canned turkey (yes, canned turkey) at Costco a week ago. I think I might see if I have walnuts and make some sort of Waldorf salad. I'll definitely have to thin the may with something, so I'll need to do some experimentation. I either need to get some big crispy lettuce leaves (Bibb or Butter, perhaps) or a tasty little roll on which to serve the outcome. I might also need to replace the walnuts with pecans, but I'll need to taste that and see if it works. I love pecans, but they're definitely different from walnuts.