Piquant undertones
Over the years, this blog has served many purposes: political rants, angsty diary entries, random essays, trouser fixations, media reviewing, meme-sheeping, link-spamming, inexplicable sharing of minutia, and so on. But I've never talked about my cats or my lunch. Today I'm going to break one of those "nevers". I would've broken both at once, but the furry little bastards wouldn't sit still in the marinade.

There's a good reason I don't talk about my meals. Well, there are many, most of which are some variation on "Why would anyone care about the fact that someone else managed to eat with some unremarkable degree of success?". But my meals in particular generally don't lend themselves to comment. I don't cook for myself. At all. It's not an unusual meal that starts and ends with noshing on unadorned bread products or grazing on uncooked, unpeeled, and oft' unwashed produce. Tools and processes beyond "chewing" are suspiciously self-indulgent, to my mind.

That notwithstanding, I'm a better-than-fair cook when I choose to be. I just don't choose to be when it's just for myself. Except last weekend, when for no particular reason I whipped up a lunch so simple yet perfect that I had to photograph it.

That's a pita with humus, sprinkled with paprika and cayenne, covered in slices of cucumber and daikon sprouts (the sweetness and crunch of bean sprouts, plus a delightful radishy sting). The salad is simply arugula and roasted beet slices (as well as the rest of the cucumber, which wasn't bad but just wasn't quite right in this context, and won't be repeated), tossed with olive oil, coarse spicy mustard, flaked parmesan, and toasted sesame seeds. The beverage is store-brand root beer-- hey, I never claimed to be highbrow. The background is my new futon, which I got to sleep on now that I'm getting divorced.

Okay, so it's not exclusively a lunch post. Still, it was a mighty tasty lunch.