Monday: two papercuts by 10am and the first of many cups of tea I was too busy to remember to drink. Behold, my raggedy, generously filled sandwich. I went to MYO and stuffed a white bread roll with roast chicken, fresh mushrooms, cucumber, lettuce and slices of swiss cheese. I spread yummy fruit chutney on the bread roll – that stuff is delicious and terribly addictive. You know, it would be nice one day for me to make a sandwich at MYO that doesn’t look like it’s spontaneously exploded on the tray – though I’m sure the MYO staff now expect all the sandwiches I make to look like this.

As I paid for my sandwich I spied some rather tempting thick slices of banana and walnut cake on display at the counter. I bought a slice to eat after I’d demolished my messy sandwich. The cake was extremely moist and pleasingly walnutty (a very good thing when a cake is called something and walnut). I was disappointed in the banana part though – the cake tasted more of flour than banana, a floury nothing taste rather than what should’ve been a distinct bananary taste. It was pleasant enough as far as cake goes, but not a great success as a banana and something cake. Oh well. Despite all this, I ate the whole thing. I probably wouldn’t rush back to have another slice though.

Wednesday: Teriyaki chicken and rice and those satisfyingly crunchy green pickles and a Japanese potato salad, from Nippon Fare. This is one of my favourite lunch combos – I probably have it at least once a week or every one and a half weeks. See this previous post for a photo. I did take photos of my lunching companion’s food though – she had vegetable tempura and an assortment of sushi.

Thursday was Goz Day. This has become my standard order now – goz with lamb, spinach, sundried tomatoes, mushrooms and eggplant. Although I am hands down a chicken person, I reckon the lamb at the goz place has a lot more flavour than the chicken. I forgot to ask for the minty salad or hommus, so I had the goz on its own. I never use the slice of lemon – I don’t like squeezing fresh lemon juice on anything – not on fish, not on pancakes, not on salad, not on gozleme, nothing!

Friday: a hellish day which had me feeling like I would have to crawl to my weekend. After a decadent morning tea (a workmate’s going away morning tea, post coming soon), tummy screamed that she must have deep fried chicken for lunch (really, she did!). Decision time: KFC versus Saigon crispy chicken rice. The chickens were an even match, but on this occasion salty fried rice with little bits of fried egg won out over the normally appealing KFC chips. I really love this fried rice. I wish they used larger takeaway containers instead of these shallow ones.

My scrumptious deep fried crispy chicken, with sweet chilli sauce. Actually, the outside was a little overfried on this occasion. Beneath the skin however, the chicken meat was, surprisingly, wonderfully succulent and juicy. Around the table, my goz-eating workmates watched hungrily as I ripped into the chicken. Greasy, greasy chicken. Sticky, syrupy sweet chilli sauce. Why didn’t they use sweet chilli sauce as an example liquid when teaching us about viscosity in science? The brown paper bag the chicken came in made me think of Dr Nick Riviera from The Simpsons advising Homer on how to put on weight – “And remember, if you’re not sure about something, rub it against a piece of paper. If the paper turns clear, it’s your window to weight gain!” Mwahahahahaaaa. Brain grumbled quietly about the slightly overfried chicken skin, but teeth worked on automatic pilot, and tummy was happy enough.