By Issa S. (Issa-345)

“What are you eating for lunch?”

Are they any other six words in the English language that can cause more fear, loathing, and despair than these?  The IRS will be auditing you.   Nope.  That does make you look fat.  Maybe.  We don’t make that in chocolate.  Close, very, close, but it’s the lunch dilemma that kicks the legs from under me and leaves me rolling on the floor like a turtle on its back.

By the lunch dilemma, I’m talking about work.  I’m a nine to fiver, well, nine fifteen to five fifteener, but close enough.  At some point during the day my decaf coffee runs out and something needs to go in its place so I can continue earning the big bucks as a desk jockey.  But what?  Sandwiches are out, been there, done that, can’t stand the sight of them.  Soup?  Too messy.  Frozen food?  Have you actually tasted that stuff?  [shiver]  And the portion size makes even my toddler wonder where the real meal is.

Household duties are divided so that the husband does the grocery shopping.  This was done quite purposely as I would prefer to clean the toilet with my toothbrush then go grocery shopping and the husband decided he was tired of hearing me whine about it.  So every week he picks up his little notebook, pulls out his little pen, and gives me the look.  The look that says just tell me for goodness sake what you want, don’t make me poke you with my pen till you answer.

So what do I do?  I just don’t know what to do about lunch.  Why is it so hard?  I want something easy, something portable, something relatively healthy, but I’m not going go crazy with that, and something filling so I’m not feeling my stomach eating itself two hours later.  Being the tech savvy desk jockey I am, I decide the only thing to do is to let Google help me out here.   So I tell the hubby he needs to wait, he’s not in a hurry anyway, and go to the computer.  I type “lunch ideas” into the browser.  Now if there is a blogger, major corporation, website, TV show that does not think it knows what you want for lunch then let me know who that is because the list of hits that appear is mind boggling.  Nothing for it though but to get to work.

After 30 minutes I’ve learned that half of the links shown simply link other websites.  Why they think I need a second link to a link I’ve already been to I can’t fathom.  But we can put those aside.  Another 15 minutes and I’ve eliminated the remaining links.

Have I mentioned I’m a picky eater?  I don’t eat fish from a can, potatoes, romaine lettuce, tomatoes, unusual cheeses, wheat bread, or pitas.  That’s just a small sampling of the things I won’t eat.

I should also mention that I’m lazy.  Gravity is my friend.  It does a lot of my filing and puts things away. Most nights I just toss my shoes over to gravity and she puts them wherever.  Same with my bag and the clothes I haven’t decided are dirty enough to put in the wash.  I also don’t cook, not willingly anyway.  I cook dinner occasionally because, well, the family needs to eat and I can only stand hot dogs and boiled eggs (the husband’s culinary choices) so often.  But as soon as I win that million and hire someone to cook I’m done.

So all the sites that have things I won’t eat and require me to cook something are out.  So after wasting that 45 minutes I decide this isn’t working and change my search parameters. I type “lunch ideas for lazy people” into the browser.  And darned if I didn’t get a whole page of hits.  As I’m scrolling through I see that lazy people eat a lot of salads (not quite what I’m looking for), fish in a can (out), peanut butter mixed in milk (just ew), cottage cheese (okay occasionally but not everyday), and yogurt (same as for cottage cheese).  Well shoot, most of this is for dinner which requires cooking.  Do I need to mention the whole cooking thing again?

By this time an hour has passed and the futility of my search is beginning to set in.  I can hear the husband rustling around for his shoes to go shopping and I have bupkiss to give him.  As he walks into the office and gives me “the look” all I can do is be grateful that Skippy makes peanut butter, Franz makes white bead, and Chef Boyardee makes cheese ravioli (the lunch foods I’ve been eating for months now), otherwise I would starve.

What’s for Lunch? by Cindy Chang

Munch! Crunch! What’s for Lunch? by Janice Lobb

What’s for Lunch? by John Schindel

What’s for Lunch, Mum? by Gay Firth & Jane Donald

What’s for Lunch? by Cindy Rodriguez

What’s for lunch? Chocolate by Claire Llewellyn

Tags: Book Recommendations, Book Suggestions, Members

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 5th, 2012 at 4:34 am and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.