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How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

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Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#241

Post by piva00 »

collyw wrote: post #194
username90 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being happy eating boring food is a superpower, lets you focus on more interesting parts of life.

Eating good food is one of the interesting parts of life for me.

It definitely is for me also but I've changed from "I need to eat something good for every meal" and being enslaved by that to "I can eat my boring, cheap and quick food just for sustenance and save time and money to enjoy a proper food experience" the older I get.

No idea how that happened, I used to be really really into having nice and fancy team lunches now and then, nowadays I save those times for a nice date in a pretty good restaurant.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#242

Post by pedanticlawyer »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #50
opdahl wrote: post #16

I'm a Norwegian, and where I work I have the option of eating a big warm lunch, but I very rarely do. I've noticed that eating a big lunch makes the following hour extremely unproductive, so for the last year I have made a matpakke with 3 slices of bread. Normal _pålegg_ is liver paste, cheese or peanut butter. I can easily go through my lunch in just few minutes, and even while working at the same time. My thought p…

No offense, but honestly your lunch sounds depressing as hell. I never understood this nordic lifestyle I saw in Scandinavia, Benelux and Northern Germany where people refuse to take a proper lunch break and just eat some random cold food in front of their computer for the sake of productivity for their employer. It's just depressing to see and unhealthy in the long term. In southern Europe(Austria) having a walk to…

> No offense, but honestly your lunch sounds depressing as hell.

It's just food, it doesn't have to be a party.

No offense, but only kids need to be entertained to eat, most people need food only because they get hungry.

If I want to have a nice meal, I go out at night with my girlfriend in a restaurant we like.

> In southern Europe(Austria)

That's a bold statement! :)

Austria is Mitteleuropa (middle Europe) its traditions are very similar to those of Germany, southern Europe is radically different.

In Italy we call "germans" the people living in Südtirol on the border with Austria, because they are different from average stereotypical Italians.

Anyway you can walk to a bistrot (it's a French thing, not Austrian) and have warm lunch with fresh cooked quality food (it's a southern tradition, historically northern countries had problems growing fresh food in their long winters, except for apples, that grow abundantly in south Austria) in Berlin or Stockholm as well.

If you leave Wien and go to the Austrian mountains, for example Innsbruck, you can experience typical Tyrolean food, which is equally good, albeit not exactly light.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#243

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

swarnie_ wrote: post #166
camillomiller wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Italian, I am profoundly offended by this statement and most of the comments in this thread :D

I've worked in Italy a few times and i just can't get my head around it. One sleepy little town basically shut down between 12:30 and 14:30 every day. Everyone went home for lunch but also the majority of the local shops shut too. How do you get anything done??

In the Mediterranean, where we pretty much all have a variant of the siesta, it gets very hot [1] around the middle of the day. At that point, you have two options:

a) You can stay on and try to work in the heat.

b) You can go home, have lunch, take a little nap and return in the evening when it's cooler.

Option (a) means you spend the next three or four hours in a zombie-like state with your brain addled by the heat and your productivity severely reduced. Basically, you will do no real work at that time, you'll just be filling your chair and pretending to work.

Option (b) is the optimal allocation of resources. You work when you're in your most productive and when you can't be productive, you don't work.

I'm speaking of very recent experience. I spent August and September in Greece, working on my PhD research(80% coding, 20% paper writing, should probably have been the other way around). I'd have lunch around 14:00, then go for a nap around 15:00 when the glycaemic spike would hit (often just from a bit of salad, but with lots of olive oil). I'd set my alarm to 15:20 to make sure I wouldn't oversleep. That's just a quick nap- but I would wake up invigorated and work 'till night time, when friends would appear unsummoned and drag me off to drink and celebrate life like only we in the South know how to [2].

____________

[1] "Very hot" is over 30°C most of the year, near 40°C in the summer (which lasts most of Spring and half of Autumn, too). That's _on average_.

[2] This is sarcasm.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#244

Post by pedanticlawyer »

eafkuor wrote: post #152
camillomiller wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Italian, I am profoundly offended by this statement and most of the comments in this thread :D

Me too. It's like people are forgetting to enjoy their lives.

> It's like people are forgetting to enjoy their lives.

you mean by seating in front of a table for the most part of the day and constantly talking about food? :)

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#245

Post by pedanticlawyer »

swarnie_ wrote: post #166
camillomiller wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an Italian, I am profoundly offended by this statement and most of the comments in this thread :D

I've worked in Italy a few times and i just can't get my head around it. One sleepy little town basically shut down between 12:30 and 14:30 every day. Everyone went home for lunch but also the majority of the local shops shut too. How do you get anything done??

> How do you get anything done?

By doing things well. ;)

Seriously, ask you colleagues, who has ever done anything good at lunch time, when low sugar fatigue kicks in?

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#246

Post by tambarskjelve »

Another Norwegian here. If you don't find the matpakke boring enough, I am happy to tell you that we have an even more boring culinary tradition for breakfast, namely oatmeal. Preferably water boiled with a dab of butter. Crazy Norwegians might use milk instead of water, and sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar on top. On the weekend, it is allowed to use a little cinnamon as well, but only sparingly.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#247

Post by rejschaap »

It seems there are three types of people based on what they deem most important regarding the meals they consume. There are people who primarily eat for sustanance, there are people who eat for pleasure and there are Americans.

I'm solidly in the sustance camp, I tend to go for quick, easy and nutritious. Occasionally I will splurge and eat out at a good restaurant and enjoy it a lot. My wife is in the pleasure camp and doesn't want to waste any opportunity to have a delicious meal and even hates to have a simple breakfast or lunch. My three year old son might be an American, he just wants to eat McDondalds three times per day.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#248

Post by marvin »

camillomiller wrote: post #137
opdahl wrote: post #16

I'm a Norwegian, and where I work I have the option of eating a big warm lunch, but I very rarely do. I've noticed that eating a big lunch makes the following hour extremely unproductive, so for the last year I have made a matpakke with 3 slices of bread. Normal _pålegg_ is liver paste, cheese or peanut butter. I can easily go through my lunch in just few minutes, and even while working at the same time. My thought p…

As an Italian, I am profoundly offended by this statement and most of the comments in this thread :D

Just wait until I tell you that the Norwegian word for 'cheese' also encompasses boiled whey products that are hardened and shaped into brown blocks. I've lost count over the times this discussion has shown up with my French relatives.

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#249

Post by fr1tkot »

chronogram wrote: post #206
camillomiller wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The theory goes that a power nap shouldn’t be more than 25 minutes, otherwise you risk falling in a deeper state of sleep. I tested the assumption and I find it true. Also, napping quickly everywhere is a skill one can train.

> Also, napping quickly everywhere is a skill one can train. I am interested! How did you, and how long did it take you?

You just need to operate on a constant sleep deficit, just above total exhaustion, then you can fall asleep whenever and wherever you want

Re: How to pack a Norwegian sandwich, the world’s most boring lunch

#250

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

StavrosK wrote: post #238
yiyus wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two blocks of 4 hours of work with a break of 2 hours between them is not a bad division of time. You do not need much more time to refocus after a two hour break than after a half an hour break, but the two hours break and the larger meal allows you to work until longer in the evening. In many cases, you can even spend time with your family during this middle of day break, so you do not have that necessity to leave…

Unfortunately, having to commute home again basically kills any benefit the "split" work schedule can have. This really works when your house is a five minute walk from your workplace (so it worked great for my granddad), it works less well today with the half hour drives each way.

That's true. It works excellent if you can work from home. We should catch up with the times and make working from home a lot more widespread in the South.

Or of course we could be pragmatic and have siesta booths in every workplace etc.

Finally, there's the nuclear option: air conditioning. I find that in offices where it's constantly 18°C you don't need to take a siesta (but you have to carry your coat with you in the heart of summer to avoid frostbite).

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