Lunch

I had grand illusions of writing a complex and revelatory essay that would elevate the cabbage from its "humble" category in your minds, and place it firmly there instead as an indomitable character in the history of the human diet, and maybe even the human heart. However, the only notable references to cabbage my initial searches yielded weren't really about cabbage, they were about brains and foul smells and weight loss. The closest thing I came to a usable introductory quote are the words of Mark Twain ascertaining that "Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education." So you see, even Twain has nothing to say about cabbage, just cauliflower. Cabbage is probably just a humble vegetable after all. And though it's a reasonably good source of several vitamins, widely consumed around the world, and was popular in ancient Rome (burnt, it supposedly treats infections of all kinds?), I'm just much more interested in talking about lunch. People have eaten lunch for as long as I can remember, and it's also a reliable source of vitamins, and I haven't met a soul who doesn't like it. And it's humble. So, folks, today it's lunch I'll talk about.

Cabbage Lunch in Kigali, Rwanda

I don't know about you, but I usually eat lunch alone. Judging by facebook statuses and tweets around the 12:30-1:30 hour, a lot of other people do too. They must not have anyone to tell about just how happy their noon-time meal made them. So they tell everyone. "Chipotle Burrito-Bowl", "Yep In-N-Out again!", etc. If we care enough about lunch to broadcast it, you'd think we'd make more time for it.  I don't know what happened to my two-hour lunch break French upbringing and it's companion the three-course lunch, but ladies and gents, it's totally gone. And I miss it. This week I felt lucky to have rustled up a plate of sauteed cabbage with an egg, and gobbled it up between two blog-posts and an interior shoot. It was warm, a little sweet, and a little spicy (thanks to my brother -- he's at 0:36 -- who's been surreptitiously angling for me to add heat to my diet by gifting me things like yucatan sunshine), and a lot satisfying. Much more satisfying than working frantically on an empty stomach and looking up to see it's already four o'clock and I want a chocolate baked good, bad.

What do you say Vegetable of the Month Club, shall we do something about the eclipse of the lunch hour?