The Baron's Lunch is Sent Packing

Packed lunches.
From post on my Anth Mum blog

'Kay yah, there was a time I used to always make the Baron a packed lunch. 'N my friends on and off line were all like, "WTF! You are up to your eyeballs in cooking breakfast, hanging out the laundry, getting Piglet dressed and her dinner money counted out. You do not need to be making a sandwich every day as well! Tell him to do it himself."

Yah, yah, that is very rational and sensible. Totally Enlightenment. And of course the reasons I was making the packed lunch were totally MILFy and nonsense. But the reason I gave it up in the end was not because I did not really have time. I am a Noodle Mom. I will cook food for anyone who wants it as long as there are hours in the day.

'Kay yah, how I came to be doing a packed lunch for the Baron in the first place was like this. The Baron wanted to eat lunch in the university refectory and have a small sandwich when he got home cuz he figured that was a healthy way to eat. 'N I was like, "Well, yea-h. But Sunshine, if you do that, you will not see your child from dawn to dusk cuz she has to eat at 5.30 and be in bed by the time you are putting your first pint ve-e-ery gently on its beermat." I said the Baron must come home and eat sit-down dinner with me and Piglet, or why had I given up my job to move and live like family with him in a place he didn't have a long commute home? And I offered to make the packed lunch cuz it would be cheaper than the three course deal of the day with chips in the refectory, and much much nicer than the sandwich oozing high fat mayonnaise available from the narsty campus cafés.

Walnut Whips available to ship round 
the world from Brit Store.

'Kay, you know me by now, LOL. I liked making the packed lunch. I would go to my favourite butcher n' have a li'l flirt with the cub who makes the cooked meat. (He is my favourite butcher cub, LOL.) I would buy the best and nicest cooked meat: tongue, salt beef, ham off the bone. I would make one granary bread sandwich and a pot of pasta salad and the salad would be made of star-shaped pasta with carrots cut into flower shapes. I would sometimes make healthy delicious sushi which I packed in beautiful Japanese bento boxes. The Baron was bemoaning his tendency to bulge in the middle so I did not often put in those adorable little packets of biscuits and cake that you can buy for packed lunches. Just sometimes as a special treatie I put in something nice. Like Mondays were OMG, I have to go back to wo-o-ork. I work so ha-a-ard and none of my colleagues appreciate it. So on Mondays I sometimes used to put in a Walnut Whip which I would buy special in Marks and Spencer. You cannot get them anywhere else these days, my dear. The Baron is v. nostalgic about them, having noshed on them as a little piglet himself.

Some of my collection of bento boxes. 

No no, that one on the floor is a 

Schrödinger's kitten box toy. 

Those boxes at the front are from Paperchase

'N I liked making the packed lunch cuz it was a way to say I cared. I would nourish the Baron and try to make something a bit special and nice - and good for him, even when he was away from me at work.

So-o-o although I grumbled and moaned about 'having' to make the packed lunch, 'n everyone sensibly told me to stop bothering, I carried on doing it for a long time.

Then there came a time when I agreed to make the Piglet a packed lunch once a week. The Baron often did not want a packed lunch on that day, so I felt like, Why can you guys not have your packed lunches on the same days then I might get a break from making it just occasionally? And then there was a run of days when I got up early, made a lovely packed lunch, and the Baron said: "Oh sorry, did I not mention that I am going out for a slap up meal with my colleagues so I do not need the packed lunch." Sometimes the little pot of pasta salad came home evidently uneaten - although it was the healthiest part of the meal. (The Walnut Whip never came home, LOL.) The Baron would say, "I did not have time to eat the packed lunch."

Well, I started to feel fed up - literally! cuz if the packed lunch was not being taken into work I had to eat it, 'n it was not the sort of thing I like to eat. There were very rarely oysters, cream slices or leftover risotto made into crispy pan-fried ricecakes in there. The packed lunch had been designed lovingly for the Baron with meat sandwiches (bit of salad sneaked in to keep the five-a-day going).

Image from 123RF

We had a list up on the fridge of days when Piglet had her activities, so I said: "Tell you what. If you want a sandwich, you put an S against the day. Then I will make you one on that day. No 'S', no sandwich."

Now the Baron never of course told me what he wanted in his packed lunch. I knew what he wanted and what he needed, totally in that Master/Slave dialectical way that I was posting about the other day. The Baron suffers existential angst and inferiority complex. He does not know why he is on this earth or if he really exists so it is kinda hard for him to ask for a packed lunch cuz prolly he does not exist and if he does he is a worm in the scheme of creation so does not deserve a packed lunch.

And so - as I had suspected would be the case - the Baron never managed to put an 'S' against any day on the list. I have never made him a packed lunch since then.