Until now, I have eaten nearly the same thing for lunch at work for seven years. Tuna, rice crackers, nuts, and vegetables. Sometimes this would get pretty varied – sometimes it would be a carbon copy for weeks. Months. A year.
For one year it was an exact amount of pistachios, a cucumber, tuna, six crackers. Then I tried five crackers for a while… for fun. Not that that was fun but I guess my raging OCD and the ratio of tuna to cracker got the best of me and I went back.
Then I thought I’d have some actual fun and started to vary the vegetables. That, my little vegan friends, was truly fun. That stuck. I grew up with garden-fresh everything so it was a natural change for me.
Then I varied the nuts. Mostly out of fear. See, I had become terrified that my body would rebel and become suddenly allergic to one kind of nut. I had to diversify. I had to keep my body guessing. Parry, deke, duck, and walnuts.
I did grow suddenly sick of the Thai pepper tuna I was eating. In one day I tossed a half a can and went shopping for plain tuna in oil. It has to be a good consistency and not too salty. The crackers are always sesame. Always store brand.
This was nearly every workday for seven years. Sometimes I would eat this at home or bring it with me traveling. It was easy, comforting, delicious, not too heavy, and very convenient.
In a shock twist, my taste suddenly changed about two months ago and I balked at tuna entirely. It could be three months now as it has been a weird blur of strange lunch foods, meat products, staring at cafeteria items in near hypnosis, and me trying to figure out how the hell other people do this. The gastrointestinal hell I’ve been in, the decision paralysis, weight gain, mourning of tuna… none of it pretty.
So, here is a nice spatter of some – just some – of the photos I took of my lunch over the years. I am returning to tuna lunch, or crunchy lunch as I like to say. Some people eat remarkably limited diets and I am curious if they ever “go off their feed” as I did with tuna. It tastes the same as ever now, and I am happy to have it back. Not sure I want to change it much, or ever again.
There are fewer days in my lunch-packing workday now. Down to four instead of five, so maybe this will help? Anyhow, I know this isn’t much beyond a tumblr-esque blog post of nothing since those in the know knew I was a crunchy lunch girl from way back. For those that didn’t know, now you have some fantastic trivia – and oddly satisfying photos of the most boring lunch in the world. A lunch that may see me back to a settled stomach and that little piece of normal I seem to need in a day.
