A Lunch Story: Lentil and Sardine Soup at the Bottom of My Backpack

I started getting worried the other day that all of you might start thinking I was some sort of profound person who only writes about deep philosophical issues. So, I decided to share an example of how medical school has made my life plummet into chaos. I no longer seem to be able to concentrate on simple tasks such as grocery shopping and fitting into normal society.

A (True) Lunch Story: Lentil and sardine soup at the bottom of my backpack

This weekend I was stressed out trying to study for classes. Saturday night I stopped studying to make dinner, but looking over the contents of the refrigerator (half a bag of very slimy carrots, a spoonful of month-old yogurt, some mashed potatoes growing a scary layer of green something, an egg, and some broccoli turning a beautiful shade of yellow)I realized that I had very few groceries left. Med school had kept me so busy I hadn't been shopping for several weeks. Through a careful analysis of the situation, my medical student problem-solving brain reached the conclusion that it was time to make a trip to the grocery store.

I briefly considered making a list, but decided I was too busy. (BTW this is never a good sign). I decided if I just bought stuff to make sandwiches and the ingredients for soup that would be good. I disembarked from the 48 bus with my empty backpack only to find that this Safeway had been remodeled! I wandered the aisles of the 'new and improved' Safeway in a disorganized daze. My chain of thought bounced between being worried and stressed about med school, to which items I should be purchasing, to trying to review the amino acids in my mind, to trying to figure out where things were in the new Safeway, to thinking about which subject I should study next when I arrived back home, to trying to keep track of how much money I was spending. I arrived home and put away the groceries. I figured out I had forgotten a few things:

For sandwiches:
I successfully purchased:
- pickles
- tomatoes
- cheese
But had somehow had forgotten to buy:
- bread
- lunch meat

hmmm....Oh, I also managed to buy another container of relish. I guess I really had pickles on the mind between thinking about med school stuff.

While in the store I made another freakish/impulsive purchase - a tin of sardines. While we were working in the Potika IDP camp and eating mostly beans and rice (and small animal that was essentially cat) someone got out a tin of sardines. We split the tin equally and I remember that spoonful of sardines being so wonderfully good. While in the grocery store I remembered this experience and decided to buy a tin of sardines.

After discovering that sandwiches were off the menu due to forgetting the 2 most important ingredients, I decided to make lentil soup. I started by adding some lentils and a small piece of steak to a pot of water. I added the slimy carrot and the yellowing broccoli (I hate wasting food ever since returning from my trip). I added some seasoning and tomato sauce and it was turning out to be quite the special dish. While expressing my amazing culinary expertise, I decided to open my tin of sardines and try a bite. It wasn't quite the pleasurable experience I remembered sitting on a dirt floor of a mud hut in Northern Uganda. I decided the sardines would probably be easier to consume if they were diluted by the soup, so I added them to my boiling lentil soup concoction. However, instead of the soup diluting the sardines, the sardines seemed to have taken over the soup. The finished lentil soup emitted a very sardine-ish odor and had an intense taste of sardines as well.

I have a lingering problem of not being able to cook a small amount of food. (I am not sure of its true origin, but I think it might have something to do with being raised in a family with 15 people). So therefore, I did not have enough sardine lentil soup for one person for one meal, but I had enough to feed a medium sized family for a number of days.

On Monday morning I decided that my only option for lunch was to take a portion of my lentil and sardine soup store into school. I picked a trustworthy looking container and tossed it in my backpack. At lunch break I pulled out my container of soup to find it very much less full than when I had packed it that morning. A quick glance in the bottom of my backpack confirmed the location of the missing soup. I tried to clean some of it up, but quickly ran out of time and had to return to class. At the beginning of class a student in front of me said, "What is that smell!? Is that someone's lunch?" I realized that he was smelling my backpack. Before running to choir practice I left my contaminated backpack in my locker on the 5th floor of the health sciences building. When I returned, a very familiar sardine-ish smell was emitting from the locker area. I guess my soup was pungent enough to fill an entire section of a floor in the health sciences building with its lovely fragrance. I wonder what people were thinking when they walked by the lockers that evening.



The remaining lentil and sardine soup goodness in the guilty leaking container. The soup doesn't taste too bad, it just smells a little bit.