Hey, Pal, Don’t You Tell ME to “Enjoy!”

I really don’t eat very much in the morning - maybe a breakfast bar or a handful of animal crackers.  Lunch during the work week is pretty much the same way.  For that meal, I try to pick stuff that meets these requirements: 

1. 350 calories or less 
2. 1/3 or less of the calories from fat
3. Must take 4 minutes or less in the microwave
4. Must take as few steps as possible to put together

The first two are important for health reasons.  I mean, I pretty much sit at a desk all day - it’s not like I’m out lumberjacking up the forest or free-running at first light or whatever.  Sometimes I press CTRL-ALT-DELETE but that’s about all of the exercise I get during the workday.  I just don’t need the calories.  

The third is important because I don’t want to sit in the break-room making apologetic smalltalk with the folks in line for the microwave while I wait for my Lean Cuisine Sweet Potatoes au Potato avec Potatoes meal to make the sudden switch from “starch-cicle” to “fusion ignition temperature” somewhere between eight minutes and eight minutes and three seconds after I press COOK.  You have four minutes to “wow” me, heavily processed food items.

And the fourth requirement is inspired by a few pantry meals I have tried recently that advertise “Ready in 3 Minutes!” but actually contain more subcomponents than, say, a car.  Unless I am missing the part in the instructions where it tells you to “slip into Bullet Time” before opening and mixing packets 1 through 137 then adding 2 teaspoons of water I am pretty sure you will have burned through the allotted 180 seconds well before chucking one of these Rube Goldberg-y science experiments into the oven.  

And that’s it.  Please note that “Must be delicious. Nay, it must be a veritable ambrosia for all the senses.  In fact, if it is not easily the best meal I have ever had I will consider my lunch, and, by extension, my life up until that point, to be a colossal failure” is not on the list.  

Lunch is fuel.  It doesn’t need to be tasty.  It just needs to be digestible over a reasonable period of time.  I make up for “tasty” at dinner.  Most of the time I sleepily grab something out of the pantry or the freezer and throw it into my lunchbag in the semi-dark of morning without fully realizing what it is I grabbed.  Since my wife usually does the grocery shopping I am often surprised.  I am never disappointed.

Now that I have explained to you exactly how low the bar is for my lunchtime repast, here are the items in this box you see up above listed in the order I would eat them if I found myself starting at this container at 11:30 AM some future workday from now: 

1. The fruit - dried pineapple and cranberries, lightly sugared - Pretty good!
2. The crackers - Meh, they’re crackers.  Hey, whaddaya want?
3. The toffee thing - Ok, I guess, but has a worryingly greasy aftertaste for some reason
4. The “turkey” “pepperoni” “slices” - These taste like they were constructed with an industrial 3-D printer loaded with food coloring, sawdust, and the leftover contents of recycled Denny’s margarin packets.  Not a flavor or texture I could readily identify, even after my eyes repeatedly assured me of what my mouth refused to believe.
5. The little wooden stick they give you for spreading the “cheese” - Pine, I believe.
6. The cardboard box itself - You know, I really think I could keep this down.
7. The Asiago Cheese Spread - Dude, “Cheddar cheese” is NOT an ingredient in “Asiago Cheese” (see pic on left)!   And don’t insult me by trying to educate me about the differences between “cheese spread” and “cheese”.  The only thing this opaque, antique-white gelatin has in common with Asiago cheese is that it is approximately the same color.  In fact, I think a semi-liquified black-and-white photograph of a piece of Asiago cheese would taste more like Asiago cheese than this “gourmet”... stuff.  You know, that would be a much more honest and accurate name: Stuff.  Just relabel the box and the little container “STUFF” or, better yet “CAUTION: STUFF” and I think you would be on track to setting things right, here.
8. The plastic everything came wrapped in - I admit, it would probably be better for me to eat the cheese spread.

All in all, I would rate this about a D-minus.  I have had worse and, honestly, I did feel full even after dumping the spread into the trashcan. If these things were on sale for, like twenty-five cents each or something I would buy them out and pretend I was eating 1980’s MREs until I suffered from organ failure (pick one).