Before and After: Office Meals

Hey hey there cool cats! (or hot dogs… whichever you choose)

It’s a sunny Tuesday here in Dirty Durham (at least it was earlier this morning….) Ry has my car today until his car is fixed and working pretty again, so I brought my lunch to work. And as I was packing it, I realized why I don’t normally do this.

I HATE prepping my lunch at the office! And, more than that, I hate pre-prepping my lunch the night before, so I chose the lesser of two evils. I jammed my bag full of the ingredients needed and walks outta the apartment with a grocery bag literally full to the top of stuff. One day, I’m sure I’ll be a super-organized mom who packs her kids lunches in an adorable fashion:

Oh, this ol' thing? It only took me two and a half hours. I always keep rice pandas around.

But in the meantime, I’ll focus on “Ordo ab Chao” (Order from Chaos, if my ~~memory~~ Internet serves me correctly…)

I started this morning off with a little Attunes Food cereal mix up (which you may have seen in one of my secret hoarding cabinets yesterday…) Finishing off a box of cereal that has dried blueberries in it results in this:

Not little critters, just blueberry dust!

Which is what my cereal looked like before I even took a bite. What it looked like after, though, actually matched the color of my FR60 watch more than a cereal!

Violet! You're turning violet, Violet!! - Mr. Beauregarde, Willy Wonka

Regardless of my blue milk, I slurped it up like a little kitten.

But this was the real kicker. Lunchtime. Here’s my before:

Salad Ingredients or what a mother of 2 bought at the grocery store?

My haul included:

Two bags of spinach (one that I just opened, one that had about 12 leaves left so I polished it off!)
Tupperware full of thyme roasted veggies (eggplant, banana pepper, and red onion)
Avocado
Plum tomato
End of a GIANT green pepper
Leftover box with fajita veggies and a teensy bit of chicken
Trader Joe’s Salsa Authentico (arguably one of my favorite salsas… and I’m a salsa officianado)

The “after” was a lot more manageable.

Salad Beast: You are my lover.

The process took quite some time, but the result was more than worth it.

It sort of reminded me of the “blogging behind the scenes” by Chelsey this morning…. only taken with a cheaper camera and with no real trickery. Just blue milk and a counter full of bags!

Are you an ordered chef or baker? Or does your counter look like chaos every time (like me!)?

What’d you have for lunch?

7 thoughts on “Before and After: Office Meals”

I’m still on breakfast over here…. but your work-made lunch looks a wholehelluvalot better than mine did yesterday…. I officially am not eating anymore of the old turkey so today’s lunch will be a hodgepodge to hold me over until Nicole makes me dinner tonight 🙂 she promised tofu and I asked for quinoa (we’ll see what happens)