What's in your lunch box?

Very quickly, because my lunch break is almost over: what do you eat for lunch?

One of the perks of work in The North (or at a camp, anyway), is that you don't really have to worry about feeding yourself, except for overeating (or, if you have any sort of alternative dietary needs, you just have your baseline worries). I have hated packing lunches forever, and now that I'm out on my own again, but working out of town with no hope of buying anything, I've been really struggling getting back into the whole bagged lunch thing.

Last week I had a bit of a brainwave and realized that the best way to deal with my current schedule, with a chance of actually dragging my increasingly out-of-shape self to the pool after work occasionally, would be to distribute food throughout the day so that I'm not starving to death when I head home. So this week I'm trying to figure that out.

Today I packed:

• a sesame seed bagel
  
• strawberry flavoured light cream cheese
  
• a banana
  
• an apple
  
• cheese and crackers
  
• plain Greek yogurt (accidentally bought this instead of vanilla, but it's not as inedible as the last plain yogurt I bought, so maybe I'll get into this) with fresh raspberries
  
• a granola bar

I've eaten most of that so far, with half the bagel saved to eat at afternoon break, and the granola bar for my drive home. It doesn't seem to be quite enough food, but I don't feel as starved as usual, so I think that's a good sign.

Leftovers are no good because I have some strange aversion to hot lunches. Lunch is easily my least favourite meal of the day, although I do have one very fond memory of a sandwich mixte (ham, emmental, and butter on a baguette) eaten at a sidewalk cafe by the water in Nice a few years ago.

In short, lunch is my least favourite meal of the day and I am really inept when it comes to feeding myself.

And my lunch break has been over for a little while now, so this post is, too.

Sicilian Pizza

For the longest time, I have been the “pizza guy” in my family.  By this I mean the guy who makes the pizza.  When I was really young my mom did it.  Eventually I started helping her, and learning how.  And even more eventually I took it over completely.  Everyone agreed that I make awesome pizza.  Perhaps this is true, or perhaps it was a good way to keep me making pizza, so they didn’t have to, haha.  It is from a kit after all.

I use these Kraft pizza kits from the store.  The kit provides ingredients for dough, sauce and spice.  Then you still need to make the dough, and add your toppings and cheese of choice.  It is pretty easy, and takes about an hour.  It yields a good result. 

For the longest time I wanted to tinker with making the dough from scratch, but for whatever reasons I never got around to it, until recently.  My brother and his fiancé have introduced me to Sicilian Pizza!  This is a great way of having pizza.  It is still recognizable as a pizza but is different in a lot of ways that are great for changing up your pizza experience.

First off the dough is hand made, which is a nice touch.  Then instead of a tomato sauce you use olive oil to lightly coat the dough.  Then you add your toppings, which usually include more interesting deli meats than your standard pepperoni or ham.  It is also a good idea to use some different cheese like swiss, or Havarti, or something smoked.  Then add some tomato’s and basil, salt and pepper, and any other little flairs you would like.

Then comes my favorite part.  Take the whole concoction and put it on a pizza stone, and put that on the barbeque.  A pizza stone is a flat round stone, that is used to cook pizzas.  It is great for summer cooking as you can use the barbeque, and keep the heat out of the kitchen.  The pizza is ready when the crust gets crispy.

Once you remove it from the barbeque, you have a light, thin crust pizza covered in delicious and non-traditional toppings.  And it tastes fantastic!  I highly recommend this method to anyone who is tired of the same old pizza.  It is also a great meal for hosting an event.  Everyone can help in different ways as you prepare and cook the pizzas.  Add some cocktails to the mix, and it is the start of a great evening with family/friends.   

Year Two Idea

While I do still plan on writing a post about food, I wanted to put an idea out there too.

Since we have reached the one year mark did we want to try something new?  I was thinking it might be fun to try a podcast.  I know you might be thinking that we are no where near fancy enough for that.  But, a podcast is really just a group of people (usually friends) having a conversation, and sharing it with the internet.  I think it could be fun to try, and it might be a good way for us to actually all participate.  We would  have to get together and chat for an hour or so once a month.  That could lead to us discussing things that have been written in the blog, or inspire us to write new things.  And I am sure there is available technology to help us do this without actually all being in the same room.

Anywho, just an idea.  Let me know what you think.

June Topic! and Happy Birthday to us!

Hi everybody!

Socializing Engineers is officially one year old! And although it's occasionally neglected, everyone seems interested in keeping the project going into another year. We've discussed a bit behind the scenes and should have some interesting stuff coming up.

However, since no one was proactive enough to notice the anniversary of the blog approaching, June will just be a regular month where we write about a topic of everyone's choice.

The May poll closed with the following breakdown of votes:

• 0 votes: body mods, something you love, something you hate, character
• 1 vote: religion, food

I'm going to make an executive decision and say that the topic for this month is food. It seems more appropriate for a laid-back summer month, and I expect to see some recipes!

Contributors: You can interpret this topic any way you want, and you can write as many posts about it as you want (within reason, obviously, not like 200 posts over the course of the month, but I don't think any of us have that kind of time on our hands). When you write your post, make sure you tag it with the topic and your name/blog identifier, so that if any potential readers like you and hate the rest of us, they can find your posts easily.

Everyone: Blogger polls are kind of sucky, so I decided to try something new this month. You shouldn't notice any differences to your voting experience other than the fact that your vote will hopefully actually show up this month. Also, there is a new "Other" category that should allow you to suggest new topics within the poll itself. The poll is in the sidebar (not visible on the mobile site), and you can vote until the 25th of this month. Whichever topic gets the most votes gets written about next month.

The topics have been shuffled in with old ones that were kicked out over the course of the last year, and there will only be five per poll from now on. Comment on this post or the topic ideas post if there's anything you'd like to see added to the poll in July. As far as I'm concerned, any topic is fair game, so suggest away!