Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Meal preparation in the 21st century

Working at Microsoft, I'm seeing an interesting work culture/phenomenon that I've now adopted.

Rather than go out to lunch with folks (getting off campus would involve driving), apart from eating in the MS cafeteria, 80% of the folks here eat at their desk.

Remember the days when you actually prepared a meal from scratch?  Reheating that would be gourmet compared to what some of the folks eat here (myself included).  I actually saw one of my team workers eat 6 slices of white bread for lunch (nothing else - and yes, I counted 6 slices).

I think my favourite lazy observation has got to be the microwave dinners.  They are so easy to prepare, one of the instructions on my dinner said heat on high for 3 minutes, return, stir, then heat for another minute and let sit for one more minute.  Five minutes and you are all set!  Unless you do what a lazy programmer would do and heat on high for 5 minutes straight, burn your mouth, and complain that the prep instructions are too involved.

Welcome to the 21st century...

2 comments:

Dyno said...

I know what you mean. At Dili I would typically bring leftovs from the previous night's dinner. A chicken leg and a some broccoli or whatevs, but this was always way more *gourment* than what nearly everyone else was eating. Anyways, I bet you can't wait for MREs this weekend!

Mark Kadlec said...

MREs are like Russian roulette with your stomach. Most of the time everything is good, but when you get a bad one - look out.