ECO Lunchbox Three-in-One #36

Applesauce with cranberry relish (I've opened the jar; you're going to see applesauce for a while), some homemade vinaigrette, a little cup of Bac'n Pieces, carrot "noodles" in cashew butter dressing, and shredded iceberg lettuce topped with red onion.

Continuing in the trying-to-escape-a-rut theme, I bought iceberg lettuce. The irony of this is that iceberg lettuce was the rut growing up. Nearly every night my mother made a salad of big chunks of iceberg lettuce and tomato wedges that she served with our choice of bottled Italian or Thousand Island dressing, neither of which I liked. So I thought, well into my teens, that I just hated salad. And it is still something I haven't fully embraced, despite how much salad you've seen me eat lately.

Later, in graduate school pre-blog, while working on my very first graduate degree not at the school where I ultimately got my Ph.D., an easy, cheap dinner consisted of shredded iceberg lettuce and various toppings, usually including a hard boiled egg for protein, and bottled ranch dressing.

Iceberg lettuce has been absent from my fridge for years. But I'm de-rutting myself, and that doesn't need to mean expensive fare. So I had this old cookbook, Culinary Craft, that had a version of iceberg salad in it, and this is sort of like theirs, substituting the Bac'n Pieces for their almonds and the onion for shredded carrot (because that with this carrot and cashew butter would be redundant). The dressing was strictly according to their recipe. It was lovely. You're going to see more iceberg lettuce in my future, and not just because I still have most of of a head of it.

I bought a spiralizer a while ago and finally got around to spiralizing something. I think I would prefer shredded carrots. Though I followed a recipe here, this dressing was way too salty.

But anyway. Out of the rut. And also, as it happens, vegan--because Bac'n Pieces are, weirdly enough, vegan--and gluten free.