1. When preparing your lunch in the office kitchen, your colleagues are most likely to:
a) Give the slightly grey-looking leftover cauliflower cheese you’re about to reheat the side eye and walk off wordlessly.
b) Exclaim “What do you mean you made your own hummus and ricotta?” before retreating with their peanut butter toast.
c) Say “That looks delicious, what is that?” and have you answering: “Oh this? It’s just a chicken naanwich,” before dropping the mic and exiting stage left.
2. You tend to judge:
a) Anyone who’ll chew your ear off for 15 minutes explaining how they managed to revive their sourdough starter last winter.
b) Anyone who doesn’t know how to laminate their own croissant dough.
c) Anyone who has enough time to make stock from scratch, but not enough for waiting in line for their own flat white.
3. When you’re home alone, lunch usually consists of:
a) Whatever’s in the fridge. Probably some Cheddar grated over 2-minute noodles.
b) Whatever’s in the fridge. Probably some of that kimchi you made, with soba noodles.
c) Your fridge is mostly empty. You’ll probably just end up getting a club sandwich [insert product hyperlink] or something from the Woolies in your hood.
4. If your hungry colleagues were to raid your desk drawer, they’d find:
a) A jar of Marmite, only slightly past its sell-by date.
b) Sriracha sauce, gochujang, a jar of olives you pickled, Maldon salt, pink peppercorns, canned white anchovies, loose-leaf sencha green tea and freshly ground Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. You know, the basics.
c) Pencils, pens, thumb drives, post-it notes, some spare change.
5. When lunch rolls around, you regularly find yourself craving:
a) Fresh avo on toast.
b) Ottolenghi’s quinoa and red rice salad with pistachios and orange.
c) Woolies’ lamb mince curry roti. Always with some chutney on the side.
Answers:
Mostly A: It’s not like you can’t appreciate a beautifully aged grass-fed steak, or an amazing piece of flourless chocolate cake, but you don’t discriminate against a well-timed burger or supermarket doughnut either. You’re no Philistine; you just don’t obsess over food.
Mostly B: You are the Mother Theresa of virtuous eaters; the class captain of food-nerd school. You’re on a first name basis with most folks at your farmers’ market, you read cookbooks and food blogs compulsively, and enjoy cooking almost as much as you like talking about it.
Mostly C: We get it. You’re super busy and important. You don’t have time to cook, but you like to eat well. You’re on a first-name basis with most cashiers at your Woolies, and get ridiculously excited when a new ready-meal is launched.
For more easy lunch ideas and food to grab on the go, visit www.woolworths.co.za.