Micro-cuisine

My office is little better than a porta-cabin, and the kitchen facilities match the general level of the other amenities. Along the corridor is a 'kitchen', which has a sink, a waste-bin, and a large geyser providing hot water. In my office is a fridge, microwave, sandwich-maker, and toaster. All of these items are shared with the occupants of the other offices, so lunchtime can become a slightly irritating time as everybody squeezes in and out behind me. This is one of the reasons I am determined to lose some weight.

My healthy-eating program has had to be formed within the constraints of my surroundings. I can't broil, chargrill or roast anything, but on the other hand I can't deep-fry things either. I haven't yet explored the possibilities of the sandwich-maker for gently heating meals, because I'm not eating bread apart from the two slices of wholemeal toast that my scrambled eggs appear on at breakfast time. And I can't cook anything too complicated because of the lack of a chopping board and work surface. Everything I eat has to be prepared on my desk, in the space in front of my keyboard. It is then either eaten raw, warmed in the microwave, or put into the noodle-wok together with hot water from the kitchen geyser.

I keep a bag of spinach leaves in the fridge. Because they have to be washed before eating I use my noodle-wok as a washing bowl. It means I can only prepare small amounts of salad at a time, but the lid allows it to be used as a very effective salad-tosser. I usually make up a mixture of spinach leaves, chopped onions, and sliced peppers. This mixture then sits in the noodle-wok as a sort of low-calorie nibble-pot. I haven't advanced to adding any form of dressing yet because it would make it too messy to eat the salad directly with my fingers.

My chopping board is perfectly in place within the office, it is an old rewritable CD that failed on four consecutive attempts to burn data, so now I cut up onions on it. My kitchen knife is slightly less obvious; it is one blade in several in my pocket multi-tool. If I need to prepare anything that won't sucumb to the blade I have a saw, file, fish-descaler, or pliers to choose from.

Sadly the one essential item missing from the multi-tool is a can opener, so I have a rotary opener which I keep on the microwave. I am hoping to induce some of my thicker colleagues to open something and then put the tin straight into the microwave. It's the little things like that which brighten up the day. Unfortunately the only person who's created any interesting microwave incidents is myself, and even that one took place outside the microwave.

I popped half a bag of easy-cook rice into the noodle-wok, put on the lid, and gave it 60 seconds in the microwave, then took it out and let it stand on the desk beside me for a few minutes. I was chatting with someone else who had come in to get their lunch from the fridge, when the lid blew off the noodle-wok with a loud bang, and sticky rice was plastered on the walls behind my desk. I batted at the walls with a mop to dislodge stubborn rice grains and analysed the disaster to work out what had happened. The steam forced out from the rice by the microwave had pressurised the noodle-wok, forcing the lid to bulge outwards and create the hermetic seal. As the rice stood for a few minutes, the heat and pressure still contained within the starch continued to cook the rice, creating more steam and more pressure, until a critical point was reached and the lid cried 'enough'.