Red Alert! Zone Emergency!

I’ve been craving Ethiopian cabbage for about a week and a half. Last night, I finally got it together to make some, and then I assembled a delicious lunch: Ethiopian cabbage and sauteed zucchini topped with shrimp and sliced black olives, with almonds and strawberries for dessert.

Awesome, right?!

This morning, I grabbed my lunch and packed it into my messenger bag, along with yogurt, an apple, and some 2% string cheese for snacks.

Zone: locked and loaded.

When lunchtime rolled around, I popped my plastic container into the microwave, my mouth watering in anticipation of the spicy cabbage and shrimp.

My place at the table was set: napkin, fork, knife, water bottle, dessert. The microwave dinged that it was done. I opened the lid of the container and… mwah mwah mwah.

Lunch FAIL.

I was looking at about three cups of plain, sauteed zucchini. I’d grabbed the wrong container out of my home fridge. My delicious lunch languished back at the ranch.

But thanks to my pal Stacey, I rallied.

My new lunch went like this:

• 1 cup zucchini
• 2 oz. chicken and steak fajitas (stolen from the client lunch going on in our big conference room)
• 2% string cheese (from my snack stash)
• 1 sliced cucumber (intended to be a snack on Monday and forgotten in the work fridge)
• 1 tablespoon lite Ranch dressing (“borrowed” from the work fridge)
• strawberries and almonds

Crisis averted. Lowering to DEFCON 5.