Take Your Lunch to Work Day

Posted by: Michael Orey on July 15

I decided to brown bag it today, and good thing, too. The baseball All-Star parade is currently proceeding up 6th Avenue, right outside my office, so trying to run out for a bite would involve navigating security on par with a Presidential visit. For all I know, I’d end up with my sandwich getting disassembled, sniffed by police dogs, and put through an x-ray scanner. Instead, I stayed in, quickly assembling a few things from home on a plate in my office:

Truffle Tremor cheese on toasted focaccia bread
Sugar snap peas
Queen Anne cherries

Most of this meal involves locally produced food from the farmers market where I live. Focaccia bread is my default sandwich bread of choice, for reasons of both texture and flavor, and my favorite is from a place called Bread Alone, based in the Catskill Mountain region of New York. The sugar snap peas, whose season is about to run its course, and Queen Anne cherries (similar to Rainier) are available from various farmers in the region. The cheese, I confess, is from far away: Truffle Tremor is a goat-milk cheese from Cypress Grove Chevre in Humboldt County, Calif. – the same place that brings you Humboldt Fog. Both tangy and earthy, Truffle Tremor is flecked with black truffles, giving it a taste that is exquisite and unusual. It’s not easy to find — I got mine from Murray’s Cheese , one of the best cheesemongers in New York.

By the way, the Wall Street Journal reports today that the whole bring-your-lunch-to-work idea seems to be gaining ground, driven by the increasing cost of restaurant and even take-out food. As with high oil prices forcing changes in Americans’ habits, this too may have some salutary effects. Lunch from home can not only cost less, but is often healthier and tastes better than what people typically get from outside. And I even have some leftover cheese sitting on my desk – perfect for an afternoon snack.