An Introduction

I am unemployed. Have been for almost two years now. Not by choice and I find myself in two new and pretty uncomfortable positions. The first is that I am now a housewife and stay-at-home mom. These are not titles that I wear with joy. I've always been much more comfortable in the role of breadwinner while the husband stayed home and did dishes and dealt with the teachers and other parents. I am not what they call domestic and other parents tend to make my skin crawl. I am also extremely poor. Not that we were wealthy by any means when I was working but we definitely had enough to eat every day and pay all the bills mostly on time. And have a Christmas tree. And buy presents for our son. Even in lean years we were able to buy something to make it fun. This year it looks like I'm knitting him a pair of gloves and my husband and I will have to make Christmas morning a game instead of a present filled fest. So that is who I am.

I've been adrift in this weird structureless world of sporadic housework, intensive reading sessions that last days, and bouts of computer gaming. And not eating. During the day while the husband is at work and my son is at school cooking for myself just seemed like too much work so if I didn't have something I could just throw into the microwave, I just wouldn't eat. People who know me would be shocked. Not about the not eating, maybe, but about the microwave. Cooking is the one household chore I can do. I love to do. I make everything from scratch. No processed foods in the house if I can help it. And I turned into a Stouffer's French Bread Pizza, frozen dinners, Ramen noodles eating woman. Ok, so I got a little depressed.

But then something happened. We got even poorer than we were when I stopped eating. And I had to budget every meal down to the penny. Plan ahead, cook ahead. And I never planned lunches for myself but I was so conscious of not wasting anything that I began to have the best lunches of my life from the leftovers of dinners. And I wasn't restricted by the food whims of my family opening me up to trying things I would never have been able to try for family meals.

I was enjoying my lunches alone so much that I wanted to share my ideas for leftover lunches with others who maybe cooking for themselves alone during the day and wanted to avoid the prepackage foods or just popping last nights dinner in the microwave. I'm hoping to be able to take pictures because I really believe in the whole "eating with your eyes" thing and I try to make my lunches as appealing as possible. I hope you'll join me and maybe you might have some stories about lunching alone to share as well.