Lunch Packing

For the last few months, I've been diligently packing Lincoln's lunch. I may have mentioned this. Anyway, since the cooking muse abandoned me (send her back Sea-of-Green!), I totally forgot about tuna fish. Before I knew how to cook and was a poor intern, I used to make myself a hard-boiled egg and Bumble Bee (in water) over greens for lunch a few times a week. When I learned how to cook and had a few more pennies, I used higher-end canned tuna to make an Italian pasta dish that a cooking boyfriend learned from Joyce Goldstein's Cucina Ebraica. Those two reasons might have caused some memory block, but apparently I didn't stop buying canned tuna (just eating it) because I found several cans in the pantry the other day. "Oh, yeah," I said to myself or maybe Bartleby or the ghost of the cooking muse (can a muse have a ghost?), "This is the other thing that goes in lunches besides cold cuts."

I was ready to make traditional tuna salad because I had gherkin pickles and celery and mayo. But, at the last second, my pantry revealed garbanzo beans and kalamata olives and from the fridge lemon-tarragon dressing and spinach leaves. I don't remember buying any of it (I think the fridge and pantry took it upon themselves to go grocery shopping in another dimension) but it meant I could make a more healthy Mediterranean tuna salad over greens. So, I did. Lincoln said it was a perfect lunch (it came packed with a supplemental cheese stick, banana, cookie and nut and dried fruit snack) and I was very happy. It was about the best thing I did all week. Maybe all month.