Bento #46: Rice is nice! But it's just a grain.

We love to eat rice.  Let it be said, this is a grain-loving Kingdom.  But We cannot always eat Our rice fried.  The heart rebels.  The heart says, Please, another application!  So We return to a much-loved format: the rice pudding.

This particular rice pudding is brown rice, in an egg-heavy custard pudding, flavored with blueberries and nutmeg.  It is a delicious, delicious pudding!  In the background, you can see some grapes and pineapple, to offset the heaviness of the pudding.

And here is a full photo of the bento jar.  Cute! The insulation is not all it's cracked up to be, but it is so adorable, We can't bring Ourself to fault it. 

We love--just love--that in this photo, the carrying bag has a tiny beefy arm emerging from it, Trogdor-style. 

And the lunchbox comes in the niiiight!
Lunchbox!
Lunchbox!

Bento #24: TMT and Pudding

Continuing to wade through the lunch backlog, here you see a closeup of a very similar lunch to the one We ate in the science library.  It is not the same exact lunch in material existence, We assure you, because We at this one in Our office, but it's the same lunch concept.  Although, come to thnk of it, there was an apple in that lunch and the pudding was a snack for later.  Either way: TMT on Shame Bread with spinach, carrot bits, and chocolate pudding.  And coffee, because We had not yet had Our catastrophic moment.

More gratuitous pudding shots!  (Ew, We have just grossed Ourself out.)  But We think this one is cool, because if you look closely, you can see a blurry, upside-down image of the King in the bowl of the spoon!  Yes, We Snuck into this picture!  Hooray!  We are so clever.

Back to studying.  We are making a quick "cheat sheet" of poetics.  Anyone care to know anything about Coleridge's Biographia Literaria (a complete mess of a text) or how it prefigures Frost's and eventually people like Olson and Ginsberg's poetics and finally all the way through to LANGUAGE poets by suggesting that the poem, rather than the poet, provides direction for the work, thus establishing (or at least reifying) a tradition where the poet is not the guide/sage/ultimate knower, but rather just a conduit for the forces of language to act upon/through?  No?  No one's interested?  Okay then, We will save it for Our committee. 

Bento #23: King Off the Radar, now with Extra Sneaky

Dearest readers, devoted fans of the Sneaky Kingdom (all two of you--hi guys!), We apologize.  We know that there has been a dearth of lunches demonstrated here lately!  We assure you that no one has been going hungry in the Sneaky Kingdom. We have just gone a little--well, Sneaky--lately, because as We believe We have either mentioned or intimated, We are currently in a PhD program. Next week--TWTr--We will sit our preliminary exams. As a result, We are going quietly and determinedly batshit crazy in the Sneaky Kingdom, and thus almost everything We do on a regular basis that isn't sleep, eat, and read has been taken off the table. 

Allow Us to demonstrate with a lunch vignette:

The lunch itself is hard to see.  However, We assure you that it is nothing you haven't seen before, and you'll definitely see that action again: a TMT on Shame Bread, carrot sticks, and an apple. 

Over on the side there you'll see a tumbler w/ coffee, which is alarming: We are normally a low-caffeine Kingdom over here.  We used to drink crazy tons of coffee.  We used to be the kind of person who gets up in the morning and drinks a Diet Coke while We waited for the pot to perk.  We had a problem.  We did a beverage fast at one point, to get out of it: nothing but water, milk, green tea, and beer--very basic, very little processed drinks.  It was awesome.  We loved it!  We felt so much better.  And that's basically what We still drink--today, for example, We have had three cups of tea (one is herbal decaf and is at Our elbow right now) and water.  Oh, one of the cups of tea had soymilk in it. 

But studying for prelims has meant that, at times, We must be awake with full brainpower ready to go Right Now.  And sometimes that is hard, because We have not been sleeping so well--worry, worry.  Fret.  So We have started drinking coffee.  And abruptly stopped, because Tuesday, We drank too much.  We thought Our heart was going to come rocketing out of Our chest, all Aliens style.  Our resting heart rate is usually about 60 or so, maybe 65.  Tuesday it was 117.  We tried to run the energy off, which has worked in the past with sugar, but may have been a mistake here: We sweated and barfed (!) and generally got very dehydrated and had massive tummy troubles for about two days.  We are done with caffeine!  Whoo.

So here you can see where the cubicle is located: The Library.  Not just any library, but the science library.  We love the science library for its "Shut the hell up" culture.  It is not cool--Not Cool!--to make noise in this library.  Because people are working!  How unlike the main library, which is basically a meat market for undergrads looking for dates, and thus is sort of loud even on the "quiet" floors.  If people want to talk here, even if it's very quiet and just for study buddy purposes, they check out one of those closed, soundproofed rooms. 

While We were there that day, a girl sitting at a table answered her cellphone, which, to her credit, rang on vibrate, and started to talk on it.  After about two or three minutes, a really strung-out looking dude wearing medical scrubs walked over to her.  He leaned down and said something very quietly that We couldn't hear, and then walked away.  When he walked away the girl frowned, gave his back the finger, and hung up his phone.  He glanced over in Our direction and We gave him a thumbs-up.  He nodded grimly and went back to his study cube.  We love it there!

At least there was pudding for a snack. We love pudding but 1) pudding cups are expensive and often taste like plastic, and 2) that goes double for soy-based puddings.  Sometimes milk-based puddings are not cooked puddings but magically-insta-whatever thickened, and they trigger Our gentle milk-straight-up-causes-some-inner-workings-problems issues.  So We make Our own pudding snacks sometimes.  It is easy and delicious!

We have told you this mighty saga in order that you might understand why We have not been posting lately.  Also so that you might understand why We keep eating the same ridiculous lunches over and over.  It is because We are panicky about Our exam.  In fact, We are going off to study right now!