Perfect School Lunch

Today I made the best pasta salad(if I do say so myself). A fabulous blend of penne pasta, salami, marinated artichokes, fresh ball mozarella, greek olives, diced tomato, fresh basil, red onion then finished off with a delicious basil pesto and extra virgin olive oil balsamic vinaigrette sauce. Lately I've been on this pasta salad kick. I've already made three so far this week. Even though they all taste incredible, I don't know if I like the the taste better or just looking at how simply beautiful they all turned out (Eye Candy). I was hanging out with my 13 year old niece Kaylee the other day and we started talking about school lunch. She was telling me about how some of the kids at school bring these really delicious looking lunches every day all packaged up in the perfect tupperware containers. While she's sitting there with her wonder bread sandwich with the permanent fingerprints in it, all smashed down and sogy looking. I told her that I knew all about that. How they bring sandwiches that look more like it came from Panera than their mothers kitchen. And the perfectly cut up carrots and celery with the tiny little circular tupperware container holding the veggie dip inside the larger tupperware container. And the Pasta salads. Don't even get me started on those delicious elaborate looking pasta salads their mothers make. Kaylee told me that the other day she was salavating over her friends Thai chicken pasta salad. She told me she couldn't take it anymore and broke down and asked her friend if she could taste a piece of chicken from the salad. Her friend said yes. She told me that it was absolutely delicious. We both both shared a few more lunch stories and then laughed about it. It seems like such a small thing but I guess I'm not the only one that noticed these perfectly packed luches. Even though I've been out of school for over 20 years now I still remember feeling jealous over not being one of those people with the perfect lunch. Which even now seems alittle bit strange to me being that I was the popular one with the perfect friends and the boyfriend that everyone wanted. Yet there I was jealous over someones LUNCH! I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. For me it was Alexis Huterra (even her name was perfect) she kind of looked like an adult even back then, kind of like a lawyer that stiff but perfectly put together look. She was in the smart group, the smart group that weren't nerds but not popular either. Everyday at lunch she would open up her lunch bag, take out a napkin and place it ever so delicately on her lap and then carefully open up each piece of tupperware containing her lavish lunch. It was EYE CANDY for me everyday. I wanted so badly to taste it, but I never got the chance. It wasn't that I had terrible lunches or anything but it always the basic run of the mill sandwich with packaged meat or PB&J a juice box and some sort of snack, like a fruit roll up or something. Now at 32 years of age I find myself still trying to live up to the Alexis Huttera lunch that I used to see so many years ago. While I don't have any children to pack lunches for, my fiance takes a lunch to work everyday that I make for him. I just love to make it perfect. it makes me feel good, like somehow I finally got that perfect lunch myself . If it"s a sandwich, it's always on special bakery bread, and all meats and cheeses come from the deli counter, not packaged. Crisp green leaf lettuce thats so pretty it looks fake, bright red firm tomatoes,a thin layer of dijon mustard, real mayonaise and a thin crisp stacker pickle. If I'm making pasta salad it always looks like it came from a specialty food market when completed. I never really cared if my fiance noticed his lunch or not. It was more for myself. Recently we were out to dinner and he was talking about work and happened to mention how all of his coworkers stare at his lunch and ask him where he gets it. He told them that I make it for him. He said "they are so jealous you should just see them staring at my food". I guess there is way more people than I had origonally thought wanting that perfect lunch. I know my fiance wasn't just telling me that to make me feel good either because I never told him about my obsession with the perfect lunch. When he told me this story I just kept cool like I didn't care, but inside I was like "Yes!" I have really become the Alexis Huterra of lunch. Now other people are salivating over my lunch.