perfect lunch

today, perhaps inspired by my snow-shoe cohort, i took to work the following lunch:

1 peanut butter (crunchy) and jelly (rasberry) sandwich (on wheat with crust)
small bag baby carrots
cheddar cheese sticks
1 small container cinnamon apple sauce
1 apple

even though i had a mere 15 minutes to snarf it down, the whole ensemble was just ever so tasty, in that 3rd grade lunch kind of way. everything was totally predictable in flavor and each item had to be tempered by the others. i could only take a few bites of cheese without having a bit of carrot, and only a bit of pb&j without a few bits of the apple. basically, my lunch was working in perfect union. though i haven't had pb&j since living in Chicago, it felt like something i'd been eating every day for years, in a really nice way.

and i should say that right now i'm noshing on a "Congo bar," from the new cook's illustrated cookbook that everyone (everyone meaning my mother) is raving about. fresh out of the oven, it's basically a blondie with coconut. i'm sure it's named a "congo bar" in reference to the civil war that ultimately emerged after the exploitative hegemony of french colonization in congo. i mean, duh. of course! that Cook's Illustrated...it really gets ya thinkin'!