I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world. Mastodon Verification Link	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Lunch can be a problem. Work-week lunch, to be specific. I mean, in case it wasn't clear, I like to cook and I like to eat. The cooking part becomes harder if there's no kitchen to hand. Some folks just buy lunch, or have a cafeteria available. Some lucky few work from home or can go home for lunch. Leftovers in a microwave safe container is an acceptable solution, but requires leftovers. Packing a lunch is alright, but for me it's ultimately unsatisfying, for reasons which I can't quite articulate. So over the years, I've explored various strategies.

The key to victory in any office lunch implementation, I think, lies in the condiments. Salt and pepper can be kept for long periods of time without fear of spoilage. Hot sauces last for a good long while without refrigeration, so they are another good weapon to add to your arsenal - especially if you go through it quickly enough. With nothing more than those three, and maybe a little vinegar (and a microwave) a wide array of options present themselves. Frozen vegetables with a little water can be nuked up and seasoned. Potatoes can be nuked up and coated with hot sauce. Ramen noodles work just fine in a microwave. And so on.

My secret weapon for office lunch, though, is a steamer. I've got two steamers. One is a rice cooker/steamer that lives at home and which is used almost exclusively for steamed vegetables and, obviously, rice. The other is a two tiered model that lives at work and I use it to make lunch almost every day. Various types of oriental noodles cooked in the steamer and topped with soy sauce or hot sauce have kept me going through many a cold winter's day. Potatoes can be steamed rather than nuked. Barley done in the steamer, sometimes with milk or some powdered chicken bouillon, or both, is great, too.

If you've got an office fridge, though, then a world of one pot, steamed lunches opens up like the proverbial oyster. Here's what I've been doing for the last week or so, and which I'll probably vamp on for another week or two before moving on.

• 1 egg
• a few slices of cheese
• hot sauce, salsa, salsita or what have you
• 1/4 cup or so of grits, bulgur wheat, cracked wheat, barley or an unsweetened multigrain hot cereal mix
• whatever else takes your fancy

Make a bit of a hole in your water and grain mix and gently put an egg into it. Cut up some cheese and sprinkle it gently on top. Pop it in the steamer and fire that bad boy up. Again, your steamer mileage may vary, but I find that about 10-12 minutes will cook the grains and leave the egg yolk just runny. Longer is unlikely to hurt, though; since you are using steam, it's hard to dry out the end result too much. Cover with hot sauce (or whatever) and serve.

If you're using whole grains, it will probably take a lot longer to cook. Grits or cracked wheat should work beautifully. I'm using, as is probably visible from the pictures, a "10 Grain Hot Cereal" mix of cracked wheat, rye, corn, triticale, oats, soy beans, millet barley, brown rice and flax seed. It works a treat.

So give it a try, think outside the steamer box ...

P.S. You could also steam "boil" the eggs separately in their shells if you'd rather. I've not tried eggs en cocotte in the steamer, but it ought to work ... perhaps another article for another day.