Thursday, February 23, 2012

It is not a simple sandwich

It has been so long since I've had a tuna sandwich.

I can't eat pre-made tuna sandwiches, the kind you find in bakeries or delicatessens, because their tuna is usually mixed with onions and I HATE onions. HATE. Yes, I know onions are an important ingredient in most Chinese dishes and feature prominently in Italian cuisine. And yes, I partake of both types of foods on a fairly regular basis, especially Chinese, as I happen to be Chinese. But I refuse to eat onions.

"A few of them won't kill you," a friend has been known to comment. Hah! MUCH YOU KNOW.

So now I have my own home with my own kitchen (and running water! -- always a plus) and my own dining table. I still don't have a gas tank, that's on the To-Do list, so I haven't started cooking, but I've been making sandwiches to bring to work with me. There's nothing like munching on your very own yummy sandwich to start the day.

Last week was Ham-and-Cheese sandwich week; this week is Tuna week.

On the first day of the endeavour I realised that although I had finally remembered to buy a knife, I had completely forgotten the accompanying chopping board and so couldn't cut my tomatoes. (Or I could have, with probably a bit more mess.) And when I went to wash the lettuce leaves, I discovered I had forgotten the need for a colander with which to drain the water from my poor drowned lettuce. D'oh.

Knife-buying is not as straightforward a process as you might think it is. You go to the store with but one thought: I need a knife. Then you find the aisle with cutlery and kitchen implements and there are about a billion types of knives: paring knives, utility knives, chef's knives, bread knives, carving knives, slicing knives, and God knows what else. It's just like when you go to Starbucks and you just want a coffee. There is no such thing as "just a coffee". Apparently there's also no such thing as "just a knife", either.

After going through a bout of knife anxiety (I am buying something I'm going to be using in my kitchen for years to come and what if I buy the wrong knife and can't cut the things I need to cut to cook the food I need to cook to eat the food I need to eat? How will I survive?), I finally got my knife. Only to discover, when I reached home, that I had no chopping board. Which necessitated another trip to the store a few days later: yay, more shopping! Fortunately, a chopping board is a chopping board. All I had to decide was whether I wanted it made of wood or plastic; no agonising necessary!

Hence, last night I was finally able to dice some baby carrots to add to my tuna. Tuna + carrots + mayonnaise + NO ONIONS = hella winning combination, if you ask me. With extra leafiness provided by the lettuce, an abundance of fresh crunchy veggie goodness which you can never find in store-bought sandwiches. I love me veggies, even though I am carnivorous. Real sandwiches have veggies.

Mom used to pack food for me to bring to school, but in all my years of working I can barely remember packing anything from home to bring to the office. It's really great that when I'm hungry I can reach out and my sandwich is there, right there, and it's ALL MINE: made by me, with all the ingredients I love the most, and NO ONIONS. What more could a person ask for?

5 comments:

siehjin said...

sis, you're crazy. onions are DELICIOUS! nomnomnom. =D

Ted Mahsun said...

Onions are the food of the devil! Ginger as well.

Where do I sign up for this Anti-Onion Club?

Sunflower said...

Blink: You can have all of mine! :p

Ted: We could form one :D

Alvena Weezles said...

opens mouth...closes...shakes head...walks away

Sunflower said...

What? What? Cannot ah?! :p