Posts Tagged “lunch”

When the weather gets into the 90s I try to stay inside during daylight hours, as much for the shade as the humidity-cutting air conditioning.  So it’s important to have lunch material on hand to avoid having to go out.  What I thought was scraping the bottom of the barrel today turned out to be an excellent combination.

Toasted corn nuts from Whole Foods.  Salty and crunchy.  How can you go wrong?

Tomatoes from J’s garden.  Cosmetically imperfect but tasty beyond measure or need for any seasoning or accompaniment.

Cold leftover Chinese food.  Truly the breakfast of champions, but somehow this batch of buckwheat noodles with housemade tofu and vegetables from East Asia in Powderhouse Square made it through till noon despite a passing resemblance to Japanese summer breakfast fave Zaru Soba.

Two minor digressions here (this time I’m warning you in advance!)

The tofu from East Asia is amazing.  It’s made of sheets like the stuff we had a Mu Lan a while back, but this tofu has a toothsome texture and the sheets hold together in chunks and hold sauce admirably.  The restaurant looks like nothing special, but service was extra friendly.  Let’s have a closer look at this marvelous tofu.

Lunch is what’s on TV. Well, the Lunch video podcast is what’s on RSS at any rate. Check it out.  They’re lunching all over town, and sponsorships are available.

There’s something oddly satisfying about the soft splat of leftovers into the bowl, still holding the shape of the box.

Every now and again I get inspired, usually while avoiding some other work, to cook a lot of food.  Sometimes a week’s worth of lunch at a go.  After violating one of the cardinal rules of grocery shopping – don’t go while hungry – I came home and whipped up a week of lunch.  There’s a weird zen to mass production of lunches. Past experience suggests this will last longer than a week because I will forget to bring them to work, forget to eat them, and/or get lunch invitations that I cannot pass up.  So I guess it’s a week of lunches and maybe dinners.  Maybe more.

Bento it’s not, but here’s a week of beet couscous, steamed broccoli and teriyaki salmon.  It seems a little out of balance greens to fish, but maybe I’ll add a supplemental salad.  Even shopping at whole foods, the price isn’t too out of whack with what I’d pay for probably much lower quality prepared lunches. The sockeye salmon alone clocks in at almost $4 for each of the five lunches, but the rest cost very little.  On the other hand, I don’t have to wash up after a purchased lunch.

The cheese sandwich quest continues.  Following up on a tip from Brian, I ordered up the Ploughman’s Lunch at The Burren here in Davis.  It came with excellent chips (fries) but the cheese was less than it might have been.  Apologies for the sub-par cameraphone shot, I was caught out without my Ricoh.

The menu describes it thusly: “Ploughman’s Lunch – $5.95 - open faced sandwich on french bread with choice of swiss or cheddar with  lettuce, tomato & onion, accompanied with branston pickle“

I opted for cheddar, which was of decent quality but a little stingy in quantity, just one square slice per half sandwich.  The sandwich wasn’t actually open-faced, but I suppose I could have ditched half the bread.  I’m not sure how authentic this is, but it was an inexpensive and filling sandwich.  A perfect cheese sandwich, perhaps not.  Next stop, Deli-icous?

I’m a big fan of lunch.  It’s one of my favorite three meals of the day.  Yesterday I went with tangyslice and our CTO to a new to us place, Martsa on Elm for a Tibetan buffet.  We weren’t sure what to expect but we were happy with what we got.

I’m not sure how authentic or representative the buffet selection was, but it was pretty chicken-heavy.  On the first plate, I sampled the steamed bread, tofu with creamy spinach sauce, lemon curry chicken, and sauteed eggplant and vegetables.

The tofu was like a watery palak or saag paneer, but the lemon curry chicken was citrusy without the syrupy sweetness you sometimes get in chinese style lemon chicken.  It had a nice curry flavor too.  The eggplant was tender and a little smoky flavored.

About the steamed bread: it’s not for everybody.  A bit like the dough in a cha siu bao, it’s, well, doughy.  Not much in the way of flavor and you might feel a bit cheated at an all you can eat buffet if you eat a fist-sized blob of bread.  But I love anything that I can use to mop up sauce.

On the second trip to the buffet, I decided to sample each of the other dishes and picked up chili chicken, mixed vegetables and “chicken n cabbage”  I skipped the lentil soup and rice pudding dessert.

The chili chicken was nicely spicy with some kind of cornstarch coating and a selection of crisp bell peppers and onions.  The vegetables were carrot-heavy and not overdone, always a plus especially on a buffet.  The third chicken, with cabbage, was pretty much as advertised: chicken with cabbage.

I’m not sure how often we’ll return, but Martsa is a welcome addition to the run of Davis square lunch options, giving us a little more variety and diversity.  Vegetarians are well-served but not as well as chicken-lovers.

Kudos also for Martsa’s smart decor and quiet vibe.  Love the lampshades.