Food for thought (at the office)
By Chelsea Lowe, 4/10/05
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Illustration/Cristina Sampaio
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As a young office worker, I had a consistent daydream about cooking stir-fried soba noodles with vegetables for lunch. No workplace ever gave me the chance to do so (although I did once sneak a hotplate into my centrally cooled office one miserable summer when heating even the water to boil noodles at home would have been unbearable).
Still, if you're creative, you don't have to accept instant soup in a cup as your lot - at least, not all the time. If, before leaving for work, you throw into your tote bag a glass plate, a bag of corn chips, a plastic bottle of gourmet ketchup, and a bag of shredded cheese, for instance, you can enjoy passably good nachos at lunchtime. I've also reconstituted instant hummus and tabouli mixes, brought along a ripe avocado to spread on sliced
French bread, and slurped dehydrated broth and bean thread noodles made soft with hot water - an experiment that horrified a friend I invited into my office with the promise of a hot lunch.
Fruit and cookies made the trip with me almost daily - and the fruit usually made the trip home, as well. What can I say? Despite my efforts, proper nutrition has eluded me most of my life.
At an earlier job in New York, I often ordered from a natural foods restaurant chain. Once, when I had a sore throat, I asked for an extra cup of hot water and salt packets, for a saltwater rinse. I took the components into the bathroom, where a woman from a neighboring office noticed the restaurant's name on the cup and arrived at the wrong conclusion. "Don't you have any other place to eat lunch?" she asked.
In time, I came to eat small amounts throughout the day. In workplaces all over the Northeast, I gained a reputation as a world-class snacker.
Of course, the thing about keeping bits of food in the open all day is that other creatures soon become attracted to it. By this, of course, I mean co-workers. Perhaps it's my Russian roots: I can't bear to see anyone hungry. All my co-workers needed to do was say, "Gee, I'm hungry," and treats would
appear as if by sorcery from my great big bag.
Office friends tried to return the favor, but it was useless. There are too many foods I won't eat and too many restaurants I avoid. Your sandwich shops, your midscale ice cream chains, your burger pits, uh-uh. I'll stick to dry cereal, thanks, or bread. Even plain, dry bread. I don't mind.
For a picky eater, lunch meetings can be unbearable, especially in offices that aren't near decent restaurants. Sometimes, I'd leave meetings hungrier than when I'd arrived.
At office parties, it was the same story. Usually, I'd stick to rolls, if there happened to be any.
Savvy co-workers often sneaked into the excellent business school cafeteria across the street. A terrific idea, until the school put up a fence and charged anyone who wasn't student or faculty to park.
We had our own cafeteria, but I hated running into people who had interviewed me for other jobs at the place.
It wasn't only lunch. One temp job required an 8:30 a.m. arrival, which meant leaving home at 7:30 and hoping for a few minutes once there to reconstitute the bulk-bin soup flakes I'd brought. I don't hold to any rules regarding what to eat at breakfast.
Hunger makes some people crazed. I'm one of them. Busy with multiple, confusing projects, I put off eating in the hopes of getting most of my work out of the way first, a bad miscalculation. Before I could look up, I'd been there some six hours.
My longing for a hot meal from my own kitchen undoubtedly matched the longings of most working people: a yearning for freedom - from drudgery, spatial constraint, regimented hours, and personal politics. In essence, to live as a responsible person, making one's own choices about hours and working conditions.
Perhaps you expect me to say I never did get my soba noodle stir-fry lunch - that, even working from home, I'm too busy most days to cook properly; that my friends and boyfriend work in offices all day, so I have no one else to cook for anyway; that, usually, it's too much of a nuisance to bother with anything more than yogurt or cereal. You'd be right.
Still, I know I can make that stir-fry any time. And that knowledge is... delicious.
LIFE AT WORK:
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