Italian egg hash ranchero

Yeah, yeah, yeah I know: I'm posting pretty sporadically lately. Look, my repertoire of food is pretty limited, and my coworkers and I have fallen into a rut of always going to the same restaurants for lunch. 

Actually, last week, my coworkers finally went to a different place for lunch. They had sushi with bread on it. But I was absent, having to stay home with a sick toddler. So no pictures of an empty table that once had bread sushi. And no, they're never going back there again, so there will never be any pictures of that empty table. (One of my coworkers said he preferred the tables at the bread sushi place over the tables at any other restaurant, by the way.)

To make up for the bread sushi, I present to you Italian Hash Ranchero!

So about two months ago, I went to a brunch place where I ordered something called Huevos Benedictos Rancheros, which was eggs benedict with guacamole and fresh tomato salsa instead of hollandaise sauce. It was pretty fucking awesome. It was so good that I resolved to eat my eggs with avocado and salsa from then on. It was an interesting experiment.

My first attempt to add avocado and salsa to my egg universe (eggiverse?) was with scrambled eggs. Let me tells ya, scrambled eggs do not go well with avocado and salsa. Scrambled eggs with avocado and salsa kinda tastes like random mush. It was not good.

However, eggs over easy, eggs sunny-side-up, and fried eggs in general taste really good with avocado and salsa.

But the best type of eggs with avocado and salsa is Italian Hash! 

Italian Hash is so oily and salty and cheesy that it practically begs for salsa and avocado. Seriously, the salsa and avocado totally take Italian Hash to an entirely new level. You know how on Top Chef sometimes the judges say things like, "I felt this needed some acid to break it up" or "It needed something fresh"? Yeah, well the salsa is the acid that breaks it up, and the avocado is the freshness. 

It is the best breakfast ever, even if it's probably 6 zillion calories. On the upside, though, you will not be hungry at the office, and you will not stuff your face with veggie straws from the snack closet.

Six Zillion Calories of Pure Fantastamagoliciousness.

Veal, Broccoli, and Weight Loss

Apparently veal cutlets are a nice, tender meat. Apparently they're easy to cook. Apparently they're hard to fuck up.

And yet.

And yet my veal cutlets were chewy. I am pretty sure that I expended more energy chewing these cutlets than I actually got out of them. In addition to the veal, there was also barely-cooked broccoli which, let's face it, is pretty indigestible. So I'm guessing that I lost a couple of pounds eating my lunch.

Too bad that I made up for the calorie deficit with a ginormous helping of veggie straws. At least it was better than last week's Cheetos fest that I *ahem* forgot to take pictures of.

-546 Weight Watchers Points!

Award My Tuna!

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Tuna Fish Sandwich! 

But not just any tuna fish sandwich! It's a tuna fish sandwich that was entered into a contest! Yes, you heard right: this is an award-submitted tuna fish sandwich!

The remains of the andwich-say

Spousal Unit saw an ad for an online sandwich contest sponsored by our favourite makers of crunchy granola, ultra-healthy, super-chewy bread. He decided that he should enter his "recipe" for tuna sandwich. Granted, his tuna sandwich, which is made with avocado instead of mayo (because I hate mayo) is very tasty. But whether or not it's award-winning is another story. Spousal Unit hasn't mentioned it since, so I'm guessing he didn't win squat.

Anyways, after the tuna, I tossed back a variety of crap: veggie straws, Doritos, Peek Freans Digestive Cookies, and these weird flattened pretzel things. Oh, yeah, and an espresso. An espresso made with Silvia. Because Silvia and I have made peace.

Don't think twice, it's alright.

It's Oatmeal and Vegetables, It MUST Be Healthy!

The snack closet was full of Veggie Straws again.  After many weeks of having only multigrain crackers and granola bars (not the tasty ones, the healthy ones) and Motts Fruitsations, today the snack closet offered up Veggie Straws.  You could actually hear people give little cheers upon opening the closet.  They'd open the door, expecting some kind of high-fiber hell, and instead exclaim, "Hey!  Veggie Straws!  Awesome!"

It's a very sad day when Veggie Straws cause that much excitement.  Of course there were also revoltingly bad-for-you "granola" bars.  You really didn't want to read the ingredient list before taking one.  I did and discovered that they contained shortening (SHORTENING!). I put the bar back, thus depriving myself of a "yogurt dipped" "chewy" bar.

I can feel myself getting healthier.

I ended up just having my homemade oatmeal-chocolate-chip muffin.  And some Veggie Straws, because you need your veggies.  I had actually wandered into the break room when Burton, the Senior Product Manager, was telling Arthur, the Senior R&D Manager, that the Veggie Straws must be healthy because it said right on the bag that they were "Garden Vegetable" flavour.  Then he started reading the ingredient list: They're made with potatoes, spinach powder and tomato paste.   We all agreed -- well all except for Arthur, who eats only whole grains and no animal fat -- that the Veggie Straws were very healthy.

And  of course I had coffee.  I've finally figured out how to bend Silvia to my will, but more on that another day.

Philosophical Food Blogging: Guess Who's Not Coming To Dinner?

If you're not imaginary and you have actually read this blog regularly (as opposed to accidentally landing here because Google went berserk and returned this as the top link when you searched for "winter gazebo maintenance"), you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything lately.  That's because I had a deadline looming, I had to move cubicle and I was spending my free time with the Silvia.  

Cup of mystery

But now I have time to tell you what I ate, but you probably don't care.  Nor should you.  Because I could totally be lying to you.  How do you know that I'm not totally making up what was in these empty plates and containers?  For example, I ate some Veggie Straws in this paper cup the other day.  (Veggie Straws are what you eat from the snack closet once the chips are done.  When the Veggie Straws are done, you eat the Ritz crackers.  When those are done, you start prowling the cubes for random food on people's desks.)  But maybe I didn't.  

Maybe I'm just pretending that this cup was full of Veggie Straws to make my life seem more mundane.  Because you'd be more likely to believe that I ate Veggie Straws out of this stupid paper cup while discussing memory leaks with a developer rather than the truth:  That it was full of marshmallow and popcorn Jelly Bellys that I ate while discussing the Cirque Du Soleil with a guy in Support who's also an amateur opera singer (he's a "true tenor").

Bad dahl or a clever decoy?

This other container contained red lentil dahl with rice and yogurt.  There wasn't enough water in the rice and it came out gloopy and partially burnt.  There was too much tomato in the dahl, so it looked like globs of orange stuff.  The yogurt was OK, though, as it was store-bought.  But maybe I'm actually a better cook than I'm letting on and the dahl was super-flavourful, the rice was perfect and the yogurt home-made.  You will never know.