lunch when it’s rain­ing cats and dogs

You know, when you look out the win­dow and the lit­tle sub­con­scious hope you had of lunch out fades in the face of the del­uge? I had real­ly promised myself a bit of time in my local cafe, drink­ing a decaf lat­te and eat­ing some­thing I had not labored to pro­duce myself. Alas, I just could­n’t bear the thought. So after rum­mag­ing through the larder and the fridge, I came up with a fright­en­ing­ly good sal­ad, and with a lit­tle advance plan­ning, you can eas­i­ly have every­thing on hand, all the time. The only fresh ingre­di­ents are things you prob­a­bly pos­sess any­way: lit­tle toma­toes and sug­ar snap peas.

Every­thing Tuna Salad
(serves two eas­i­ly, as in me, two days in a row)

190g jar of tuna fil­lets, the most pre­ten­tious and expen­sive you can get, packed in olive oil
1/2 cup black beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup lentils, rinsed and drained
hand­ful sug­ar snap peas, sliced on the bias into bite-size pieces
hand­ful lit­tle toma­toes, sliced in half
hand­ful pit­ted olives, sliced in thirds
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp peper­on­ci­no olive oil
1 tbsp olive oil drained from the tuna (dis­card the rest)
fresh­ly ground black pepper
salt to taste
2 hard-cooked eggs, quartered

Sim­ply mix every­thing togeth­er but the juice and oils: shake those up in a jar, sea­soned to your taste, and pour over the sal­ad. Arrange one of the quar­tered eggs on a plate and place a nice mound of the sal­ad beside it. It is sat­is­fy­ing­ly pret­ty, and with a piece of Ryvi­ta (or toast if you’re feel­ing self-indul­gent), it is quite the per­fect lunch.

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Alas, I DID have to go out. It was Wim­sey’s day for his sort of month­ly shot of anti-crazy steroids, and he was def­i­nite­ly look­ing crazy so it was no time to be self­ish. I wedged him into the car­ri­er and set out with him over one shoul­der and an unwieldy umbrel­la over the oth­er, and felt dis­tinct­ly sor­ry for myself. We were soaked by the time we reached the vet, which is that annoy­ing dis­tance away that is too short for a taxi (if such an appari­tion were to man­i­fest itself in my neigh­bor­hood, which is unlike­ly), and slight­ly too long to walk in the down­pour. I had set­tled him down on a chair beside me when the wait­ing room door opened and admit­ted a heav­ing, hurl­ing, snarling canine thing that sim­ply LEAPT at my poor cat, near­ly knock­ing the car­ri­er to the ground and com­plete­ly ter­ri­fy­ing the poor soul. “Geor­gia!” shout­ed the own­er, grasp­ing her by the col­lar and drag­ging her away. He was a pic­ture: a huge, beefy, tatooed, tooth­less old sol­dier type, grunt­ing and strain­ing to con­trol her. Geor­gia? For heav­en’s sake. With Geor­gia and her lov­ing own­er was a sec­ond man, a shriv­eled, tiny Japan­ese fel­low smil­ing shy­ly and look­ing as if he wished he were wear­ing a bathing suit. I think they were a cou­ple, and Geor­gia their lov­ing off­spring. For good­ness’ sake.

Wim­sey put up with his shot and we came home. I felt quite, quite mar­tyred. Now as a reward for my good behav­ior, after school I must shut­tle Avery to the den­tist to have two teeth extract­ed. I can tell you with absolute cer­tain­ty that she has spent the entire day at school suf­fer­ing in advance of this ordeal and I can­not say I blame her. Poor child. Do you think a per­son who’s lost two teeth by pro­fes­sion­al inter­ven­tion can eat lasagna for din­ner? It’s the only thing I could think of that was com­plete­ly soft and yet with nutri­tion­al val­ue. So in order to have it ready after the den­tist and the com­pen­sato­ry trip to the swim­ming pool, I have under­ch­effed it and the dish repos­es proud­ly in the fridge, ready to be slipped in the oven when we get home.

I’ve spent the day glued to my desk, absolute­ly deter­mined to make some­thing of my next book chap­ter: but it’s hard going. I am begin­ning to think that when a chap­ter is suck­ing, and suck­ing bad­ly, it’s time to aban­don it and move onto anoth­er top­ic. While bela­bor­ing and tin­ker­ing and per­se­ver­ing may work for writ­ing a dis­ser­ta­tion (actu­al­ly I did­n’t bela­bor that one much either), it does not seem to work for more expres­sive, cre­ative projects. The piece has to FEEL right, there has to be a sort of heart-pound­ing, “I’m lov­ing writ­ing this” feel­ing, a sparkle. I have felt it often enough to know when I’m not feel­ing it. So I’m going to walk away, try not to beat myself up too much, and come back to it lat­er. You know it’s bad when you’ll do ANY­THING: fill out Christ­mas Fair raf­fle tick­ets, clean the lit­ter­box, make a dish of lasagna: any­thing to avoid writ­ing that *&^* chapter.

Right: I can delay it no longer. The den­tist beck­ons. Wish me luck.