Hunger Strikes and Other Corporate Pitfalls

Greetings from the office! Yes, it's true, yours truly has succumbed to the need for a stable cash flow and has since stumbled into the corporate realm. But, fear not, for I am helping the work world shirk its over amplified productivity by lounging on my blog! (You will all thank me later, no doubt.) As a receptionist at a psychiatric clinic (I am resisting the temptation to self-medicated, though it is oh-so feasible) I make a lot of faxes, garner a lot more paper cuts, and allow my brain waves to be sloshed around in the magnetic fields of a myriad of electronic office do-dads and gee-gaws. (The only really great thing about electronics is that they all have a universal repair button-- the "power" switch.) What does the white collar (gasp! Am I in a pink collar job? Oy! My gendered ghetto...) worker do to make the work-a-day world fly by? Dream of the one hour lunch break! (The Man took away our dreams of endless lackadaisical smoke breaks since invented the "100 Yards from a Building" rule and giving us the masochist's and denouncing "smoker's station" which consists of little more than a goose-knecked plastic trough in which to poke our extinguished butts, oy and oy!) True, the sack lunch at first glance seems regressive, and for me at least, calls up repressed memories of cafeteria bullies and the shames of sitting along or worse, sitting at the "nerd table," or worse yet, finding nothing but falafel in your lunch bag for weeks on end (why, mom, why?!)... Childhood traumas aside, it is time to reinvent the boxed lunch and reclaim it for mature adulthood. An insurmountable task, you gape, but nay, the quest is already begun. Behold: www.veganlunchbox.blogspot.com ! The website traces the trials and tribulations of an eastern Washington homemaker and animal rights activist as she tries to feed her young son, our little schmoo, a cruelty free and well-balanced school lunch. Ok, so we're not talking adult food per se, but nonetheless, schmoo's tastes are quite cosmopolitan. Check out schmoo's favorite lunch, "Chinese New Year", which features crispy sweet tofu chunks, sticky rice, chile green beans, kiwi fruit, and a scrumptious-looking dumpling. Some of the recipes, like the dumplings, are a little on the tricky side, and the site is definitely for the adventurous eater with an epicurean edge, but the site also offers many simple lunch ideas that I had never thought of, like spicing up raw veggies with a little jicama, (pronounced HEE-comma) a potato-like spud that tastes sugary sweet. Of course, it's a great resource for vegans and vegetarians, but I have no doubt that many of the recipes could be modified for the omnivorous among you (at your own moral peril, and the risk of food poisoning from unrefridgerated or uncooked e-coli!). I await anxiously the forthcoming vegan lunchbox cookbook which is slated to arrive in the fall, and meanwhile I pine for my own brown-bagged delights. Today's menu: Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwhich on Hemp Bread, Plums, and Organic Granola Bar. Yum Yum!