18/09/2026
You are allowed to assemble lunch instead of cooking it.
Cooking lunch requires an impressive chain of events:
Decide what to make.
Check ingredients.
Prepare ingredients.
Cook ingredients.
Wash evidence of ingredients.
At 1.42pm, when breakfast was six hours ago and your brain has begun issuing emergency biscuit instructions, that may be several events too many.
Try building a proper picky plate instead.
Choose what you have—not one item from every category under threat of arrest:
🥚 Something with protein
Eggs, cheese, hummus, yoghurt, leftover chicken, tofu, beans or lentils.
🥖 Something starchy
Bread, oatcakes, crackers, pitta, leftover potatoes or rice.
🍎 Something colourful
Fruit, tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, sugar-snap peas or yesterday’s roasted vegetables.
🥜 Something extra
Nuts, seeds, olives, avocado, chutney or the nice dip you were apparently saving for visiting royalty.
Put it on one plate.
Sit down if possible.
Eat enough food to recognise the experience as lunch.
A balanced diet is about the overall pattern, not achieving nutritional symmetry at every individual meal. Different needs, medical conditions and digestive tolerances may require different choices.
This is not a diet platter featuring three cucumber circles and an air of moral superiority.
It is food.
You assembled it.
Lunch has occurred.