I was going to throw in the towel on my Daily Lunches project on January 1. My meals were a little bit sad and I really didn’t have the energy to pull it together. I really wasn’t feeling it anymore. I was boring myself. I was in Total Lunchtime Limbo for a while but I kept slogging on. Just as I was going to call it quits I looked through the Flickr set of all my accumulated lunches and I thought, THAT IS A LOT OF LUNCHES LADY.
And then I took the time to look through a few that included lunch with friends and family in fun places:
This project isn’t about food, it’s about me, and collecting the memories that go along with each meal no matter what.
It is a self-indulgent project, but the way I see it, just because I was suffering a mental low doesn’t mean I should abandon it. In fact, that was part of the deal I made with myself when I started. It had to be an honest look at what I was eating every day whether it was healthy, junky, pretty, or ugly.
I’m not objective enough to step back and speculate about what my lunches say about me. What do other people eat for lunch every day? I really have no idea. Do people generally take the time to make a lunch or not?
When it’s taken as a whole, the Daily Lunches project takes on more significant meaning. It’s a visual journal, it’s a recipe book, it’s a slice of history that hasn’t quite become historical. (Think about this for a moment. Would you like to see what your grandmother ate every day? I would!) And so, with that, I’ve decided to keep this collection going a bit longer.
This was one dish I made recently that some of you might appreciate:
This lunch is a keeper for sure. (It’s based on this recipe.) I made the black bean “base” salad – with the dressing – the day before and added different toppings over the next couple of days. You could probably add a grain in there too, such as quinoa. Avocado, cilantro, tomato, chopped lettuce, diced peppers all made great additions to this. It was filling, and healthy, and full of flavour.
Now to figure out what to eat today… ;)
