Season: Summer
Weather: no idea. No window. In hospital.
Day of the week: Wednesday
Date: 8th February, 2024
I'm supposed to be making boxed lunches and lunchroom snacks for the boss floor this morning. Unfortunately, I'm stuck in the hospital. The surgery last night failed, I almost died, what else was new?
Since I'm so frustrated, let me plan some new lunchbox ideas to try and calm myself down while I'm still awake.
It'd be interesting to try something new and oriental. Something the bosses can eat quickly and a bit at a time.
How about Japanese onigiri in the shape of pandas, using seaweed sheet cutouts? Hmm. Pickled, salted plum flavour with a sort of creamy salmon. Make it a bit like a tartare. Sprinkle some meat floss for a bit of reddened panda fur. No. That sounds messy. Just make a tuna and mayonnaise onigiri ball. With chopped pickles or pickled capers in the mayonnaise. Yeah. That sounds good. Two flavours are enough for one lunchbox.
A coleslaw salad on the side with sweet corn kernels. Small sticky rice balls stuffed with chestnut cream. No. The sticky rice balls sound so troublesome to make. Let's go with tofu skin wrapped spring rolls.
And fruit salad for dessert.
For snacks, a bag of freeze dried fruit chips for morning tea. And a savoury cheese and chives scone for afternoon tea.
Let's have a look. Will those flavours and textures blend well? I think so, but some people might disagree with me.
For the second lunchbox, let's be pirate ship themed. Make frankfurt sausage octopi attack a baguette ship. The baguette could have smoked salmon slices, salad, capers and tomato sauce for the blood of the fallen. Let's throw in a few crunchy Indian noodle snacks bits or crushed potato chips for a crunch that can be broken wood or the bones of the fallen. A cheesy potato mash stuffed back into a baked potato skin could be the rock on which the pirate ship has crashed into, covered in a good dousing of spinach bread dip for seaweed. Or course, the dip would have to be packed separately so as not to soggify the baguette. Plain crackers with the dip for morning tea would be good enough.
Apple wedges carved into the shape of dead pirates and maybe include a maiden in distress would round the meal off. Maybe I should encase the apple wedges of the slain in a mould of jelly.
How creative I feel.
However this lunchbox probably needs a little more thought to go into it.
I'm tired. So, very tired. Why do I want to keep writing?
Maybe when I go home, I'll try my hand at steamed buns and steamed breads as opposed to the baked goods I usually do. Now that I have ingredients, I should try something new and diversify my usual repertoire.
Maybe I should come up with a few varieties of lunch boxes and write them down. Then I'll have lists of options that I can do. Things I can chop and change. Mix and match.
Or rather than be creative, I should be more substantive. For example do a lasagne one day and all the lunchboxes will contain the same meal. Mass production. It just doesn't sound very fun or creative. Maybe I should give people the option of choosing the mass produced lunches or receiving the creative, personalised lunchboxes? Or individualise each lunchbox with the mass produced pieces by way of creativity and garnishings?
I could surprise them all with a savoury trifle one day. Would that be too off putting for people who don't like to try new things? I don't know. I'd need to chat with the bosses more some time to figure out their preferences.
One of the lady bosses dropped by to tell me that my food and snacks were greatly missed. They couldn't wait for me to get better. How kind of her.
Unfortunately, I was apparently not going anywhere until the surgeries were done. And the doctor said it needed to be urgently done. As soon as my body could bear it.
In the meantime, the lady boss asked me if I wanted to do an online course so that I wouldn't always have to remain a lowly worker on the floor. Apparently the bosses were fighting over me and my potential, so that they could have my minute writing and cooking skills to myself. A few of them had even said they wanted to marry me.
A head scratcher. It was really a head scratcher. Amusing and silly. I didn't see what they saw in me. It was all said tongue-in-cheek anyway. Nobody truly meant it. After all, there were no positives in me that anybody would really want me. I had too much baggage. All I was good at was being meticulous to the point it was a weakness, so my team leader had once told me. Too much perfection could be a weaknesses to the development of other skills and detrimental to social order, apparently.
My team leader told me that the people in our team who dislike and were jealous or envious of me for whatever reasons were starting to spread rumours. Although the managers and bosses who knew better were quick to step on those rumours, people will attack a person when they were already down.
"Nevermind," I sighed to my team leader. "Let it be. I'm used to it now."
"Used to it? How can you be used to people spreading rumours and slandering you all over the place?" my team leader had seemed affronted and angry on my behalf. "You need to hurry up and get better soon that you can return to work and slam those deranged accusers of the innocent into the mud."
"Maybe I'll just quit and go find somewhere to bury myself," I murmured. "What's another death? Then we can say they bullied me to death."
That had earned me a flick on the forehead and a lecture.
I could only smile bitterly.
It was so hard to find beautiful and nice things to focus on these days.