I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve gotten into the bad habit of eating at my desk. I usually try to stake out a peaceful moment at our dining room table with my lunch, but it’s not always possible. It’s so easy to get sucked into a story, managing to work in bites of food in between paragraphs. Some desk lunches of late:
Sliced cucumbers, lemon juice, black pepper, and brie on Ryvita crackers.
Oven-roasted broccoli rabe, butternut squash, garlic and red pepper flakes tossed with pasta, Pecorino, a big splash of starchy pasta water, and several generous lemon squeezes. I love roasting the broccoli rabe until it’s so charred and dried-out, it gets flaky like paper. Delicious.
Homemade granola + a glass of milk. (Right now my favorite granola combination includes dried blueberries, almonds, flax seed, sunflower seeds + sesame seeds. Very simple + so nourishing; I wish I could use more dried fruit + nuts but the truth is that it can get expensive, so I stick to seeds and high-quality oats to bulk out my granolas).
A gigantic salad, inspired by my numerous trips with my dear friend Paddy to Wegmans for their Wings of Life salads. Back when I lived in New York, every Wednesday night we would order these mega salads and a pizza eat them with beer while we watched LOST. It was always the highlight of my week, and I think I miss these salads as much as I miss my friend and my favorite television show.
The key to a successful main-course salad is to include as many ingredients as possible for constant visual + mouth stimulation. This salad was particularly bountiful. It included: Spinach, arugula, diced cucumber, shredded carrots, sprouts, chopped walnuts, toasted sunflower seeds, Puy lentils, Himalayan brown rice, Quebec feta, chopped red onion, boiled fingerling potatoes. Best to keep the salad dressing super simple, so I turned to my favorite standby: lemon juice, French mustard, and olive oil, shaken up in a mason jar.
YUM!!! (as always)