ReNe: tar-pow

Unless I can arrange a free meal (and that subject on free meals is near and dear to every graduate student's heart, right down there at the stomach, something I should write about later), everyday I pack my lunch to school.

That is because (1) I haven't found any cafeteria on the medical campus yet, and (2) even if I did, it's probably tastier, healthier and cheaper to pack. Observation (1) is probably not true; I did hear that there was a cheap canteen in the Barnes and Jewish Hospital. Observation (2) is based on the one cafeteria I tried on the Danforth campus; the chinese food was rather expensive and not too good, and everything else (the western food) seemed the same. The local students think that paying $5 for a lunch is rather cheap...

Some days I pack leftovers. That picture above showed enough fried rice for 2-3 days worth of lunches -- I normally bring in the smaller purple-topped container. Sometimes I also bother to chop up a salad as well (left a bottle of salad dressing at the lab).

Some days I'm too lazy to prepare something and just throw whatever I find in the fridge into a bag. In this particular bag, there is a yoghurt cup, a packet of korean soy milk (black sesame flavored), a doriyaki and a peach.

And probably one of the best ways to save money -- iced coffee. I make my own cold-brewed coffee on Sundays, enough for the week, and then leave a bottle in the lab's bar fridge. There is a coffee pot in the lab pantry, but it's not coffee; it's sludge that's been sitting there for the past few hours. There's Starbucks but it's $3.10 a cup and I don't even need that much. I really should work out how much a cup of home-brew costs, but I should think the ballpark figure is around $0.70. Maybe $0.80.

All this tar-powing of lunch reminds me of school days, and I mean like secondary and primary school... I haven't eaten packed lunch in years and years... But I guess, monetary issues aside, it is healthier to pack. The chinese food I tried here? It's one-third rice, one-third overly seasoned meat and one-third overly sauced vegetables. At the biochem happy hour last week, where the menu was chinese takeaway, one local student was commenting to me, "Wow, I guess there's a lot of fried food in chinese cuisine." I pointed out that, no, dumplings, wantons and spring rolls back home aren't normally deep fried.