Water Boils: Demystifying Brown Bagging

I am finally reunited with my childhood tiffin tin. I can’t exactly recall when I took lunch to school with it, but I know it was mine. From the wear and tear I can tell that it was very much used and loved; but knowing that my mom only cooked 3 dishes in her whole life, I am seriously wondering what I was carrying with it. The tiffin is a mystery, an important reminder of of my childhood amnesia and I accept this. When my parents visited me a few weeks ago, the only thing I asked them to bring here was my old childhood tiffin, just for the sake of nostalgia of things I don’t even remember. “There is everything here”, I said. I was lying.

The tiffin is perhaps the most common lunchbox in the planet. Through middle east and southeastern Asia, workers, students, state employees and travelers have used these tiered boxes to take lunches to work. In certain parts of the world tiffins are also sold at roadstops for travelers who are looking for a quick snack.

My tiffin is a part of a forgotten Turkish tradition, a symbol of old world romanticism. There were times the working men and women took their leftovers, or freshly prepared meals to work. There were times all kids were sent to school with a homemade lunch, even if it was a sandwich with a slice of feta cheese. There were times grandmothers made dolma, cold pinto beans in olive oil, and borek for this sole purpose, because they are the most perfect lunchbox foods. There were times, that a cartoon strip depiction of a civil servant wouldn’t be complete without a tiffin on hand, because it was the most recognizable accessory of the man. Well, not anymore.

While the Turks didn’t get richer, for various reasons some stopped taking lunches and started paying for takeout or delivery. Indeed there is still affordable and decent street food, but most people who couldn’t afford restaurant takeout decided to opt for bland cafeteria lunches. More importantly, they never bothered to bring last night’s leftovers. When I was in high school, it was almost an embarrassment to take lunch to school. Cool kids ate out at establishments with questionable food but attractive clientele, uncool kids (like me), ate at the cafeteria and worked out their gag reflex. Noone I knew bothered to bring food from home. Well I didn’t, because there was never food at home (that’s another story); but what about the others?

The tiffin recently became a central metaphor to protest the slow destruction of Turkish culinary heritage. Part slow food organization, part lunchbox activists, the Sefertasi Hareketi (tiffin movement) brought a minority together, those who liked their food to be made of real food. Not many people paid attention. They were too busy with the drama of big corporate chains opening stores in Turkey. Those who didn’t want to throw money on the street, or couldn’t afford a three dollar latte, continued to eat decent-but increasingly homogenized-street food.

I had such high hopes for taking my tiffin to work. But bewitched by $2 lahmacuns and bahn-mis, I really didn’t have any reason to take lunch to work. After escaping the Midwestern casserole-town with only a few dependable cheap eats that are walking distance to school (and most are closed after 5:00 or in the winter anyway), I wanted to eat everything in sight in this city where real people cooked for real people. I was hungry, and there was a buffet the size of a city.

Then I remembered one thing that that no takeout lunch, even the ones cooked by grumpy old Lebanese men, could provide: variety to the extent of decadence, affordable luxuries such as a great piece of chocolate or bergamot “Cyprus delights” (oh oh, here comes another world war). A bento / lunchbox / tiffin/whatever you call it, isn’t just a hunky sandwich, or even some “salad bar” takeout with ostensible variety. It is a small buffet, made by you or someone you know, lovingly. So I promised myself to make a brown bag lunch once in a while, even if it is once a week. With a little box of cucumbers that were bought for a mere 99 cents and a reasonable interest towards cold foods due to summer heat, I decided to make a cold soba noodle salad. I put some grapes, some Cyprus/Turkish whatever delights from a corner store, almonds, and crackers and I was ready to get on the subway with my 20 year old tiffin. And I assured myself that I will look cool carrying it.

Ingredients:

• 1 cucumber, peeled and diced
• Some dried wakame (a tablespoon perhaps). I decided not to reconstitute it in water, because I know that the cucumbers will release some water overnight and wakame will soak it. Next day it will be perfect. At least this is my hypothesis.
• 1 bunch of soba noodles, cooked, washed and drained
• 1 tablespoon of mayonnaise
• a pinch of cayenne, a pinch of wasabi powder (you know, the fake one)
• 1 tablespoon of soy sauce

Mix last three ingredients, well. Add the rest and mix until everything is coated. Put in the fridge overnight and hope that the wakame will be all right next day.