Lunch is ready

 

Everything has a story and this is the story of lunch. Accidental delight. I'm not a great one for lunch to be honest but when I gave up smoking 5 years ago I tended to eat more maybe as way of compensation. Even that over time has calmed. I went from not eating until dinner time to having breakfast and lunch every day but over time I calmed to breakfast or lunch or mostly neither again. The plus side was I was underweight smoker so now am back to well over my ideal BMI weight which for me is a positive given most of my life I have been underweight. Its very much a psychological win to be carrying a bit of timber.

Anyway the story of lunch or in particular the chance delicious salad sandwich. My brother sent me a video about two of our great loves: football and food, entitled "The food of the gods". It involved Adam Richman (of "Man v. food" fame) going to Napoli to take in a football game and more relevant to him take in the food pre-match. As you would expect some of the food in that part of Italy is mouthwatering. Anyway he visits L'Atica Pizzeria da Michele which was established in 1870 and still going strong as the most famous pizza house in that part of the country. The other amazing thing about this pizzeria is that unlike all the UK pizza houses who serve up a large menu of different pizza toppings the choice at da Michele is one of two. You can have Marinara which is tomato, oragano and garlic or Margherita which is tomato, basil and garlic. Simple.

What should have led to a hankering for pizza actually got me thinking about something else: soup. I remembered having a can of tomato and basil soup in the cupboard and how much I enjoy my favourite soup which I had not had for a while. So at the shops I bought a small store baked farmhouse loaf for 79p and it done me for chucky bread with butter along with my soup yesterday. Most enjoyable. Today I was once again hungry around luchtime and after searching about I found a half used salad containing lettuce, cucumber and tomato. I also found some spring onion and salad cream. Normally not enough to go on but with the remainder of the loaf inspired by a video I was able to knock up a couple of sandwiches which I thoroughly enjoyed by accident. As great as they were I still would have swapped it for sitting in the pizzeria eating authentic pizza. Maybe one day.