Work lunches
My plan is to eat less deep fried and “bad” foods for lunch, for as long as I can keep it up. Regular readers will know how much I love bad food. I don’t plan to make any radical changes – there’ll still be burgers and pies in my diet, though perhaps not as often. There’ll be more grilled lean meat and fish and vegetables and salads. And of course I’ll still be eating loads of rice and noodles – I am Chinese, after all.
17/01/2008 – SRM and I went to Han’s Cafe. He ordered the V. N. Beef Noodle (AU$8.95), rice noodles with Vietnamese stir-fried beef topped with chilli sauce and chopped peanuts.
It’s been a while since I’ve had Han’s Stir Fried Noodles (AU$8.95). They are great when you have a craving for savoury, saucy noodles.
18/01/2008 – Chad, L and I grabbed lunch from Nando’s. Chad chose the Chicken Breast Pita (AU$6.95) – grilled chicken breast with iceberg lettuce, cucumber, tomato and mayonaise. Chad ordered mild peri-peri basting for her chicken. She took one bite and found it surprisingly hot! Uh-oh… I’d ordered hot peri-peri basting for my chicken!
I chose the Classic Chicken Wrap (AU$5.95) – grilled tenderloins with lettuce, tomato and mayonaise wrapped in a tortilla. As I’d ordered hot peri-peri, my mouth was just about burned off by the time I finished, but I loved it. I still think Nando’s wraps could use a lot more filling. You have to eat your way through quite a lot of empty tortilla before hitting the good stuff.
L’s meal looked the best. She had the Chicken Mediterranean Salad (AU$10.50) – lettuce, tomato, cucumber, capsicum, red onion, fetta cubes and olives, topped with sliced grilled chicken breast. L chose lemon and herb basting for her chicken.
21/01/2008 – Chad went to Woolworth’s to pick up some tinned tuna, goat’s cheese, fresh tomatoes and Ryvitas for her lunch (see this previous photo). I was planning to pop next door to Toraya and grab some takeaway sushi, but while I was in Woolies I saw packs of sushi for sale. I presume sushi bought off the shelf at a supermarket wouldn’t be as good as sushi bought from a Japanese restaurant, but they were right there, all colourful in the case and looked surprisingly good. The mixed sushi pack I bought consisted of vegetable sushi (carrot, cucumber), cooked tuna and cucumber, California roll (seafood extender, egg and cucumber) and teriyaki chicken with avocado.
I was intrigued by the tuna and egg sushi sandwich and had to try it.
Black nori “bread”! It’s tasty enough with the sushi sandwich filling, but if you hold it and take bites as you normally would with a sandwich, you do end up with slightly blackened fingers. The black’s easy enough to lick off though. :)
The cooked tuna sushi sandwich was fantastic! You can barely see it, but there’s a very thin sliver of cucumber on top of the tuna.
The egg sandwich was less successful. The thick slab of egg was disappointingly bland and rubbery. I didn’t finish it.
22/01/2008 – in the mood for a big bowl of noodle soup, I ate by myself at Hans Cafe. The chicken rice noodle soup (AU$8.95) is great for a noodle soup craving. As usual, the beansprouts were buried under the noodles.
23/01/2008 – Toraya Sushi. I had been craving chicken karaage like you wouldn’t believe. Yes, yes, I know I started this post with my resolve to eat less deep fried foods. I did! I compromised – instead of having my favourite, karaage donburi (AU$9.00), where I’d get a bowl of rice topped with five pieces of succulent deep fried chicken slathered with chilli mayonaise, I ordered the entree chicken karaage instead (AU$4.00 for two pieces… of succulent deep fried chicken :)).
But of course two pieces of chicken wouldn’t be anywhere near enough for lunch. I also ordered the tuna salad (AU$6.00). I can’t believe I never thought to order this before – it was soooooo good! The cooked tuna mix had a little mayonaise in it (not that much – the dominant flavour is tuna, which is great!), and finely chopped onion. The dressing on the salad was made from soy sauce, sesame oil and garlic, three of my favourite flavours and smells (well, maybe not so much the soy for the smell aspect).
24/01/2008 – Toraya Sushi. I enjoyed the tuna salad so much I went back to Toraya the next day to have it again. This time I ordered a serve of teriyaki chicken sushi (AU$4.00 for 4 pieces) to go with the salad. You can choose to have cucumber or avocado in the sushi. I chose cucumber.
The tuna salad was just as good second time around.
25/01/2008 – Nippon Fare. More cooked tuna! I grabbed takeaway tamago (omelette) sushi, mini cucumber sushi, cooked tuna sushi and potato salad. I can see there’s going to be more Japanese cooked tuna in the week ahead. I’m always getting totally addicted to something for lunch. Japanese cooked tuna mix is it currently.
