MY EXPERIMENTS WITH LUNCH RECIPES

Right now I'm between jobs and unfortunately have plenty of time to fuss over things like cooking. In the past two months or so I've done a lot of experimenting with lunches. I was looking for something that would allow me to lose weight, but which would be tasty and sustainable; something which would form the centerpiece of my lunches for years to come, regardless of deviations. I was anxious to make my peace with vegetables too, so they had to be in there. After trying a bunch of foods I came up with what I think is a clear cut winner, which I'll reveal at the end of the post. I think it'll surprise you...but first I want to tell you about some of the meals I tried.

Well, the first thing I tried was the complicated vinaigrette salad that I call "The Parallel Universe Salad," after the physicist friend who turned me on to it. I put up the recipe in a post about two years ago. I ate it four times a week for several weeks, and it was so delicious and so filling that I sometimes skipped dinner afterward, without missing it. A success, you say? Mmmm, not exactly.

The problem was that I ate so much of it that I began to get tired of it. You can get too much of a good thing. Not only that, but it sometimes left me with a craving for ice-cream a few hours later, making me wonder if the salad was really satisfying my need for fat. It was delicious, but I felt I had to move on.

After that, I tried frozen Marie Calendar pot pies. I microwaved them for 15 minutes as per the instructions on the box, then when they came out, and were still intensely hot inside, I stuffed them with half-cooked veggies. By veggies I mean mushrooms cooked in a little olive oil and bacon fat, and slightly cooked diced celery, walnuts, onion, and any vegetable I had in the refrigerator that could take the heat. It was great. the problem was, that these pies and veggies tasted so good that I ate nothing else for a week, and then grew tired of them, at least for a while.

Next I tried soups. Soups make good lunches, and are good repositories for veggies. I'd heat up Campbell's Chicken Broth, throw in some of those tangled bean noodles that look like birds nests, throw in spinach and Japanese pre-cooked fish or shrimp, and at the very end, toss in some hard-boiled egg slices. Delicious! Campbell's makes a good mushroom soup too, and into that I poured my usual mushrooms, veggies, fettuccini, and some cut-up boiled ham slices.

[I found it handy to always have mushrooms, celery, walnuts, ham slices, and fettucini around. They're good for adding bulk to almost anything you cook. I always have alfredo handy, too. Alfredo is fattening, so I only use it in small quantities, usually to ease the pain of eating vegetables that I don't like.]



Oh, and I took a liking to fennel (above). If you don't know what that is, it's the ugly white and green bagpipe of a vegetable that you always pass by in the supermarket because it looks so alien. It's a real Frankenstein monster of grafted elements: mild white onion-type mass on the bottom, celery-type stalks in the middle, and delicate little dill-type leaves at the top. I know that doesn't sound appetizing but, trust me, it tastes better than it looks.

How does it taste? Well, it's like a sweet, slightly licorice-flavored, extremely mild onion. It's not really an onion, but it looks and feels that way. It's very cheery and eager-to-please, and makes good filler in a recipe that requires bulk. I cooked it with mushrooms and shallots and added it to other things. It was great, but once again I ate so much of it that I couldn't bear to look at it for a while.

This brings me to the grand finale, where I reveal the most successful lunch recipe I tried during that time. Which recipe got the top spot? I hate to say it, but none of them. They were all too doggone tasty and fattening. I ended up gaining weight instead of losing it.

The only lunch I ate during those few weeks that was consistently delicious, dietetic, healthy and sustainable was.....drum beat, please.....good old American peanut butter and jam on bread or muffin, served with milk. Yep, that and nothing else. A popular hippie book called "Diet for a Small Planet" also recommends it. It's nutritious and you never get tired of it. Something in the chemistry of it makes it ever-green for your taste buds. It doesn't go with vegetables, though. I guess I'll have to save those for dinner.

So that's it for now...but I'll put on my mad scientist cap and keep experimenting.