No matter how much I try, I can never see sandwiches as lunch. For me, they’re just snacks. For someone who grew up with steaming rice, noodles and accompanying dishes as meals, sandwiches just don’t have that steaming factor that convinces my stubborn brain they’re lunch. When I was in school, my mum would pack my lunches in a Thermos flask lunch box, so when I opened it, the steam still came out and smacked me on the nose. I ate like this even in hot summers with torrential sunshine.
This of course is not as convenient as sandwiches. As I don’t live with my mum anymore and find far too many things to occupy my time, I have slowly given in to the convenience of eating sandwiches to stall my hunger while my eyes are irretrievably glued to the screen. It scares me from time to time that my life would cease to exist if I couldn’t get access to the more interesting wider world behind the screens of my laptop and my phone. I literally don’t seem to have a life outside of the screen.
Anyway, whenever I suffer from sudden attacks of hunger, but don’t have anything ready cooked I put together a quick sandwich.
The other day, a miserably wet about-to-be-bygone summer day, I experienced one of those emergency hunger pangs as I sat at my laptop. My tummy suddenly screamed, ‘Feed me! Feed me now!’ Alarmed, I ran downstairs and inspected the fridge.
I saw a forest of vegetables and groaned. I always do that. I buy lots of vegetables and stock them in the fridge. I always have good intentions to eat healthily. As a result, a pack of broccoli was staring me in the eyes, making me feel guilty. It’s been sitting there for three days now. Every time I opened the fridge, it kept telling me, ‘come on, chop me up and eat me.’ I smiled politely and said, ‘later.’ But the broccoli insisted on warning me that if I didn’t eat it very soon, it would wilt and turn yellow.
I ignored its little voice and looked for something quick and fairly healthy to eat. I had to take out half of the forest to reach the back of the fridge.
Then I got an idea for solving my midday hunger problem. I had all four ingredients for the solution: two eggs, one overripe avocado, two slices of bread and butter.
This was my action plan:
Boil the eggs.
Scoop out the avocado.
Peel and mash the eggs in with the avocado.
I followed the plan. But there was a tricky bit. I used a fork to mash both avocado and eggs. I don’t tend to have problems with avocado. But when it comes to mashing the eggs, I very often have to deal with their unruly flighty behaviour. The moment I touch them with a fork, they tend to make a break for freedom, and happily land in a dusty corner of the kitchen. It would be nice if the supermarkets could come up with square non-slip eggs that stayed in place when I poked them with a fork. (They’ll probably have to rethink the biological structure of hens.)
Anyway, when I had managed to mix the avocado and eggs into a rough paste, I buttered the two slices of bread generously. This was my favourite part as butter is the only reason I eat bread.
Now the only thing left for me to do is run back to the computer, fix my gaze to the screen and eat, spilling crumbs all over the desk.
My wet summer’s day hunger satiated. Success!