What to make for lunch

I love lunch. I am always so hungry in the middle of the day so it comes at the perfect time. I also like typical lunch foods like sandwiches and salads, and going out for lunch is one of my favourite meals to eat out. I have never loved (nor, until recently, been particularly good at) making lunches. Luckily for me, my mom made my lunch until I was 18 and graduated from high school so I never had to make it then. I can't really remember what I did for lunch in either Berkeley or Austin but I know I didn't often eat big lunches or I would go out for lunch with friends. I rarely made lunch. Throughout my first two years of law school I ate relatively little at lunch. I'd have an apple, two mini light babybel cheeses, and an energy/power bar. In retrospect I can't believe that's all I ate but at the time I didn't want to buy (and there weren't good places) something every day and I didn't want to make lunch. Plus, I felt that eating less at lunch let me justify eating more at dinner.

But then last fall, I accepted that I was always really hungry at lunchtime, I no longer liked energy/power bars (not sure what exactly turned me off them but I don't like them anymore), and an apple and two small cheeses was not enough. Around the same time, D. and I decided we needed to start making lunch. For a while I emailed friends for lunch suggestions and did some googling (I googled: easy lunch suggestions) and we were really good about making lunch. We settled on turkey wraps (very good and easy to make: just a wrap, lettuce, corn, tomatoes and turkey) and were quite diligent about making them for a few months. Our good efforts then kind of trailed off (making lunch every day - though it sounds like it should be easy - can be hard! especially when lunch can be bought) but have started again since we moved at the end of June. Eating a proper lunch (so more than an apple and two babybel cheeses) is a necessity at work. I feel like I'm even hungrier at lunch at work because I'm usually running around and/or in court all morning. (While writing this post I also realized that when teaching English in Paris I would eat lunch every day too. I think working in the sense of interacting with other people expends more energy (and thus makes me hungrier) than sitting studying for school the way I did the last three years.)

The last few months before I left Montreal I went to this cafe called Resonance regularly. It was really close to where I lived, had a relaxed and nice atmosphere, and had really good food. I particularly liked their chili and also this sandwich they made which they called "The Thai." I liked it so much that I made note of all the ingredients (there weren't a lot) and decided I would start making it once I left Montreal. I am happy to announce that I have done just that. I am the type of person who once I like something, can eat it over and over and over again. (I can do this for breakfast and lunch - for dinner I prefer to have a few different options, but even then I usually eat one of five different options each night). Therefore, I have eaten my version of the Thai sandwich every single weekday in July. I plan on continuing to eat it in August too, and will probably eat it until I get sick of it and just can't eat it every day anymore. It's not that odd for me to eat the same thing every day for lunch as back in high school, I would eat the same lunch (that my mom so nicely made me) every day: a peanut butter sandwich on a bagel, cucumber slices and an apple. I think eventually, maybe in September, I'll have to come up with something else for D. and I to eat for lunch. Maybe we'll go back to turkey wraps? But in the meantime, I have always wanted to take pictures of each step as I was cooking, like they do on food blogs. And now I'm doing it!

Here are all the ingredients: almond butter, snack size dill pickles,  sriracha sauce and coconut flakes.

First put almond butter on both pieces of bread. 

 (One thing Resonance did that I have not yet tried is make the sandwich on all different kinds of bread. So sometimes it was served on a baguette, sometimes just plain whole wheat bread, etc. I have only ever made it on whole wheat or multigrain bread.)

This picture encompasses two steps: first, put the sriracha sauce (I only put it on one piece but if you really like hot sauce put it on both) on one piece, and then cut the pickles in half and put them on one piece. 

Last sprinkle the coconut flakes over both pieces.

And finally put the sandwich together and cut it in half. 

It doesn't take long to make this sandwich and it is delicious! Enjoy and happy lunches!

Well the universe is shaped exactly like the earth (or thoughts on mix cds)

I remember the fall I was 15 begging my mom to buy a new computer (given how reliant everyone in my family now is on the internet/their own computer it seriously astounds me that all through high school we had one computer for the whole house) that would be compatible with an external cd burner so that I could start making mix cds. A friend had recently shown me Napster and I was so excited about the idea of getting songs on Napster and then using them as tracks on a mix cd. After getting tired of my pestering her, my mom did buy a new computer, I put Napster on it (and proceeded to download Bon Jovi's Always and listen to it over and over - I swear, even then, my music taste was better than that but I still do like that song), got a cd burner, and began making mix cds. A tradition that continued until very recently.

Before I ever made mix cds, I was really into making mix tapes. In the late 1990s, the height of my mix tape making, the process of making a mix tape involved multiple steps. I used the stereo in our dining room (which we still have although rarely use now) to tape songs off of the radio on a blank tape, tape songs from cds onto a blank tape, and tape songs from other tapes onto a blank tape. It took some time (especially timing it right so as to be able to tape songs off the radio) but it was worth it. It was also so fun! I always loved choosing songs and trying to figure out the order I wanted the songs to play in. Plus, the cool thing about mix tapes were that they had two sides. I made a lot of mix tapes for friends and they always liked them. I remember one friend telling me that her older sister listened to the mix tape while she painted their living room and I felt so cool that a cool older sister liked the tape I made.

By the year 2000, I had made the transition to making mix cds with my shiny external cd burner. I made mix cds for friends on a regular basis through the rest of high school, university and after that. I loved making them and some friends very kindly said I had a talent for doing so :) Further proof (not to brag these compliments/stories just make me smile) is that I made a cd for my brother once and his then girlfriend (now wife) L. heard it, took it, and then played it a lot at her apt and her roommates all loved it too. In the fall of 2006 I made a mix for my friend D.  who was a PhD student I knew through my friend K. in Berkeley and was that fall starting a new job as a professor at a small college in a small town in Pennsylvania. D. told me he played the mix I made him at a party he had and multiple people asked him about it. He said (and I quote) "I relished telling them, fuck off [my first name] made it for me!" :) The only person who hasn't liked a mix cd I made for them was N. (I made him one during university) mostly because he said he didn't like Ben Harper, and I had put at least one (maybe two) Ben Harper songs on the mix. To be honest, N.'s rejection of my mix cd talent still bothers me to this day. I think it's because I pride myself on having a good sense of the types of songs/music that my friends would like. I must have genuinely thought N. would like the Ben Harper song and it irks me still that he didn't! This sounds so cheesy but figuring out which songs go well together is a bit of an art form, and one which I am good at 99% (N. being the sole exception) of the time.

One of my favourite part of mix cds is writing liner notes to go along with it. The first time I distinctly remember writing liner notes (or at least calling them that - I may have included written notes with some cds I made for friends in high school but I don't think I did) was in June 2004 when I was taking a summer course at Berkeley. I made a cd for my brother and I decided to include notes explaining why I had put the songs I did. I had so much fun writing notes about the songs (sometimes I would just include little facts about the band or a little anecdote about the first time I heard it) that I have since written liner notes for every mix cd I've made since then.

Example of liner notes except mine are always handwritten 

Whenever I think about making mixes for someone, I think of that scene in High Fidelity where John Cusack's character is making a mix for this woman he just met despite having a live-in girlfriend. I remember seeing that movie as a 16 and then 17 year old and wanting a relationship like John Cusack and his girlfriend Laura (her name in the movie). Even though for most of the movie their relationship was on the rocks, there was this one scene where they were both lying in bed reading and I remember thinking "One day I would love to have a boyfriend I could lie in bed with while reading."

This is an image of the exact scene I am talking about! 

I like giving mix cds a name. Usually the title wouldn't be that exciting just "Insert first name's Mix CD!" but sometimes cds I made had names. S. once made me a cd which she called Rainy Day Mix because I was so sad about G. turning out to be such a loser. I loved the title so much that I made her a cd titled (creatively I know) Rainy Day Mix Volume II. and then a year after that I made her another one called Rainy Day/Dreaming of Spring. (I actually have all three still in playlists on my itunes and I was just listening to Volume II. and was reminded of Modest Mouse's Third Planet and how much I like that song (and that's where the title of this post comes from). S. and I also made soundtracks of our time at Berkeley in May 2006 when we graduated. We burned two copies - one for ourselves and one for the other. I still have both of them saved on my itunes to as "my name: The Berkeley Years" and "S.: The Berkeley Years." I have made for and received so many from L. over the years too, many ofwhich I have as playlists on itunes too.

Mix cds are not the same anymore today what with most people listening to music digitally and not through cds. I haven't felt the same desire to make mp3 mixes over the past few years. Even though I have had itunes since 2004, I just feel like it's been different the past few years and that almost everything is digital now. The last mix cd I made was for D. last spring. I really enjoyed making it but I haven't made any since. D. made me a mix back but he just sent it to me as mp3 files over drop box. I really liked the mix and it didn't feel any mix-like or any less special because I never held an actual cd in my hands but as I am writing this I am thinking it maybe did make me feel a bit sad there was no cd. I think how D. made my mix is the way of the future, but I'm not sure I'm ready to embrace it just yet.

This is in High Fidelity too - it's when he's testing out songs for the mix tape he's making