In my very first job out of college, for lunch every day for at least six months I ate ramen noodles. Not the nice big souper bowl ones, but the ones that come in the little styrofoam cup. Every day at lunchtime, I would walk into the break room and get a plastic spoon and fill up my electric kettle with water. At my desk, I would turn on the kettle and walk away. A few minutes later I would come back, open up the ramen noodle cup, add water up to the fill line, and lay the plastic spoon over the top of the paper lid to hold it in place. Two minutes later, super el cheapo lunch. Like I said this went on for months. One day, I picked up my freshly prepared lunch opened the lid and stuck the spoon in and sitting there looking at the noodles, I suddenly felt so sick. I threw the noodles away, and said, “I can’t eat this crap.” My coworker said something sarcastic, and I’m sure it was funny but I don’t remember what it was. Then I went out and picked up something else for lunch. I don’t think eating ramen every day for months on end made me insane, but on that last day, maybe if I had eaten it one more day it would have. I don’t know. That day was the end of a food rut. I wish it were my last.
Fast forward a few years, same company, different position, and I had gone through a number of different lunch ruts. There was the pizza roll/bagel bites rut, which admittedly I do still fall back into from time to time. There was the peanut butter and jelly rut. To this day I cannot eat grape jelly. There was the grilled chicken and broccoli rut. This one was probably the worst. I was trying to lose weight and be more paleo. I don’t even remember what paleo means. It totally backfired though cause the boredom of eating this every day would cause me to sneak candy or something else totally unhealthy in the afternoon.
It’s not just at work either. I struggle at home too. I can make a few things: buffalo chicken, though I call it orange chicken, spaghetti, pizza, eggs in several ways (fried with cheese, over easy, scrambled, hard-boiled), tacos, hot dogs, etc. I make a good taco soup and an occasional turkey stew. On the weekends for breakfast, I’ll either make an omelet, french toast, or pancakes.
I find myself in an all meal food rut. I am bored of the every morning smoothie. I am tired of the whatever I had the night before leftovers for lunch the next day thing. And I am super tired of the whatever I made for dinner thing. I am probably the worst person when it comes to leftovers. I almost never eat leftovers. I look at them, ultimately decide I don’t want that and throw it into the back of the fridge. The next time I see it, I am tossing it in its Tupperware straight into the trash cause it’s growing something new and I don’t even want to deal with it.
A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to one of my weekly podcasts and they had a $30 off coupon for something I have looked at before but had dismissed because it’s too expensive. But stuck in this mega food rut, I decided to give it a go. I’ll have to make the cost difference up somewhere else. So, I signed up for #BlueApron.
I signed up for the 2 meals a week plan. It’s supposed to be 2 servings in each meal. So, in theory, I could eat one serving for dinner and the other for lunch, but I am very unlikely to do this and really so far, the portion sizes to me don’t seem to really be big enough for two people. I’ve posted on facebook the pictures of the stuff I have made so far, and I have gotten a lot of questions. So I have made the decision to dust off this old blog and make individual posts for each meal. Maybe this will help me get out of the other rut I’ve been stuck in, which is coming home, making and eating dinner, and then watching Netflix or youtube until its bedtime. I don’t know how it will go, but we’ll see.
Incidentally, its now after 9 pm and I still haven’t made or picked up dinner. Why? Because nothing sounds good. Stupid rut.