Lunches Last Week: $5 Foot Longs, $5,000 Salads and Cavatappi

My sincerest apologies for not posting last Friday about the Paperwork Department’s lunches, but I took off for the weekend and was busy yesterday with, surprise surprise, stacks of paperwork and had to put off the lunch report for another day.

Nevertheless, it’s back and here is what we all ate last week…a quick note, we were off on Monday thanks to Presidents’ Day, a wonderful free day off to celebrate absolutely nothing!

Tuesday

ManMeat and BLD/HG didn’t bring their lunches on Tuesday so they went on a lunch date to Subway to pick up some $5 foot longs.  I was too lazy to get out of my chair to take a picture of BLD/HG’s sandwich, which appears packed with vegetables from the unzoomed picture, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt that it was generously healthy.  The Subway cup is a long-standing fixture of BLD/HG’s desk and not purchased with the 12-inch wonder.

ManMeat was much more prepared for his picture, as you can see on the extreme zoom that he used to show the full texture of the bread.  I believe I see some turkey on that sandwich, along with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, cheese, either hot peppers or pickles and something that looks like avocado.  I didn’t know Subway had avocado as an option, so who knows what it really is in that sandwich.  I believe ManMeat only took down six inches during lunch, then ate the other six for dinner that night.

I brought leftovers of a lemon pasta with string beans and chicken, which I ate cold because I think 15 straight people used the microwave when I was going to use it.  I am usually pretty quick to eat pasta cold if it’s with a non-marinara sauce, so doing so with the lemon pasta wasn’t out of the norm for me.  There was some discussion in the office as to what kind of pasta it was (BLD/HG guessed fusili, which somehow ultimately led to a conversation about Giada de Laurentiis) and many were surprised to find out that it was called cavatappi.

Wednesday

Hump Day became Salad Day for ManMeat and BLD/HG, with a strong effort to not cross the 2,000-calorie mark which becomes easy to achieve at these “create your own salad” places in New York.  BLD/HG’s looks surprisingly bland with only lettuce, chicken, tomatoes and cucumbers in the picture.  I have no recollection as to what type of dressing there is, but the salad actually looks pretty dry in the picture (I can assure you it wasn’t undressed):

ManMeat’s salad was a little more action packed with lettuce, tomatoes, chicken, hard-boiled egg, celery, black beans, chick peas and peppers with a sesame ginger dressing.  There appear to be some olives in there too, although they weren’t on the list of items that ManMeat emailed to me with his picture.

Based on the number of ingredients, I can conservatively estimate that the salad cost $5,239.25.  However, he did find a rogue piece of carrot in there, so at least he got something for free.

I stayed on the leftover train and brought in a stuffed pepper with asparagus that my wife made.  In a word, delicious.

It’s no wonder that the stuffed pepper was good – it’s basically just ground beef with some seasoning…how can you go wrong with that?

Wednesday Night

ManMeat was so excited about what he was going to bring for lunch on Thursday that he actually sent me two pictures on Wednesday night to whet my appetite for what was to come the next day.  According to ManMeat, De Lorenzos Pizza in New Jersey is the best pizza in the state and he took a picture of the full pie to prove his point.

There are a ton of toppings on that pizza and I’ll get into more detail later on.  The other picture he sent me was a salad that Mrs. ManMeat put together that ManMeat would also get to enjoy on Thursday.  While the chop sticks were included in the picture for aesthetic purposes, ManMeat assures me that the Mrs. could eat the salad with them if she wanted to.

Thursday

BLD/HG went back to the salad well on Thursday, possibly because he is still full from his BBQ business trip down south last week.  The lettuce looks a little more exotic than his Wednesday special and I believe I see a few crutons in there.  And, well, that’s all I have to say about that.

I brought some leftover pasta with marinara sauce and sauteed spinach, which I did heat up because of my rule of heating up tomato-based sauces.  I believe the pasta was technically Rotelle, not to be confused with its skinnier cousin Rotini.

And now for the Lunch of the Week: ManMeat’s Pizza, Salad, Yogurt and Orange extravaGANZa.

If you’re curious, the ziploc bag with the brown liquid in it is salad dressing and not a small bag of heroin, which certainly would have changed this lunch in a big way.  While I don’t necessarily think this is the best lunch of the week, the picture clearly says otherwise.

Friday

As I mentioned before, I was out of the office on Friday, but ManMeat was so disappointed and impressed at the same time with what BLD/HG brought in for lunch that he had to take a picture and send it to me.  In the shot below you will see bags of blueberries, raw almonds, celery sticks and cucumbers, and a plastic container filled with tuna salad with chopped pickles, onions, celery and dill.

BLD/HG was so happy with his lunch that he did this later in the day:

I don’t think I can add any more to that, so I won’t.