This article is about food. Before we get started, I’m going to machine-gun some disclaimers at you. This is not a food advisory, simply an example from which you may formulate your own best practice. I am not a doctor nor a dietitian. The food mentioned in this article may not be considered healthy. It works for me but it may not work for you.
Many years ago, when working from home was far rarer than it is today (especially in the aftermath of COVID and quarantining), people took real lunchbreaks. As in, they stood up, left their cubicles/offices at an appointed time, went and got something to eat, perhaps sat in the lunchroom with their packed lunch or at a nearby cafe or similar. And then they were back in the saddle 30 mins or maybe an hour later.
These days many of us work from home. Many upsides to that are also downsides. You no longer need to commute to work, or from work. You no longer need to make a show of “leaving for lunch”. Less people actually realise you’re AT lunch because they can’t see your work chair/cubicle/office with you not actually in it. So because we don’t need to spend an hour in the car in the morning, or when we head home in the evening, we are often expected to work longer hours and we get zoom/teams/webex/chime meeting invites at all times of the morning, afternoon or evening. Techs work like absolute dogs dealing with all sorts of tickets AND we are often on-call 24×7 and expected to hit the ground running when a critical issue is submitted at night, when we might even be asleep.
When do you get time to eat? You’d imagine that you could take a 10 min snack break here or there or at least a 30 min lunch, but so many of us just have so many meetings to attend – in particular when timezones are at play and the east-coasters want a chunk of a west-coaster’s time at noon – that we are forced to bring our food to the meeting and chow down. It’s not rude. You simply tell the other participants to keep talking and you’ll answer them when your mouth isn’t full. Leave your webcam on during the meeting, or turn it off – nobody really cares. You can still solve their computer issue. And maybe you ramp up their respect for you as the guy who works through his lunchbreak.
What this all means is that your mealtimes have to be flexible and often of a reduced duration. You might finish one troubleshooting call only to have to join another one and now you only have a few minutes. Do you pour a bowl of cereal? That’s an option, of course. But here’s what I do, because as a habitual breakfast-skipper, I’m starving at lunchtime.
I’m going to break down the parts of my quick meals. There’s what I’ll call the “base”, and then there are “addins”.
Base
For me this is either rice or noodles. I have several packets of microwave rice in the pantry. Most are just plain basmati, because it goes with everything and it’s not “clumpy”. Some of them are flavoured in case I want some extra taste. These generally take 90 seconds in the microwave. Next, I have a lot of quick noodles. Best choice here is Top Ramen or Maruchan. You can stock up on your favourite flavour, I like beef but you have chicken, shrimp and other flavours if you like. Noodles have to be boiled and take a little longer to prep than rice, but they’re still only a few mins until ready. All these noodles are the same, differentiated by the flavour sachets, so you can leave those out completely if you just want a plain base. Plain noodles on their own still taste great (in my opinion) and are under ten minutes prep, arse up to arse down. Splash of sriracha on top – bam. For a tastier noodle variant, I love Nongshim Shin Black noodles – 4 min boil time, come with dehydrated vegetables, spice sachet and bone marrow soup broth base powder.
Addins
Here’s where we can use the microwave again. There are a huge range of 60-second prep time sachets. I’m partial to the Tasty Bite Indian packets – they are vegan and very flavourful. I also enjoy Trader Joe’s Yellow Tadka Dal, spicy yellow lentils. You can get potato, lentil, garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas), eggplant puree and more, all ready in 60s. There are two other quick prep addins that I enjoy. One is a simple roast chicken – you can get a delicious rotisserie chicken for about $5 from Costco, and that’ll last you 2-3 days in the fridge. Rustically rip off some chicken from the carcass, throw it in a bowl and zap it for 30 seconds, then drop it on top of your rice, or noodles – done. The other which goes REALLY well with the aforementioned yellow lentils, is beef sausage or Polska kielbasa. I buy one or two on the weekend, dice them into “coins” and have them in a ziplock. During the week I will quick-fry them on demand in a small saucepan, takes a few minutes. Jasmine rice, yellow lentils and beef sausage coins. Super hearty and delicious.
In summary – I have my microwave rice and Indian (or Thai or any number of other cuisines) handy in the pantry. Have my cold roast chicken or sausage coins ready to go. Then I let whoever’s begging for me to get on a call know I’m going to take a few mins to make lunch – I ping them when I’m back and have a piping hot meal to wolf down while I’m working.
Obviously there’s a billion more things you can zap in the microwave than just rice and noodles. I just wanted to share how I get through my busy day, sometimes with only minutes between events.
