Scavenging for food is one of the normal activities of office humans. Some of the more important meetings involving more important people tend to include breakfast or lunch or other special snacks. One can either be part of such a meeting, be more daring and pretend to be part of such a meeting, or one can just wait for the large animals to complete their meal and then rush in and scavenge for whatever is left. Office workers pack sandwiches into paper cups and carry them secretly into their cubicles or offices or devour them right there, off the plates, sometimes mixing the wraps with the wilted salad, the cold coffee, the gluey pasta and sometimes almost transparent cheese.
Such free food is free of any calories or sugars, or saturated fats. Such found post meeting food also does not need to be refrigerated.
Kings used to employ professional tasters to see if their food was in any way poisoned. Food after meetings must be such tested food and thus completely save to eat. (Unless the meeting room is littered with bodies, of course.)
I recently saw two workers in a meeting room in the afternoon, eating roast beef and tuna sandwiches left over from a long early morning meeting. One of the workers boasted that he had survived several years in China and that even if the food we was eating now had obviously not been refrigerated for more than four hours, the Chinese bacteria in his so experienced stomach would easily kill all the germs that might have anything to do with the not refrigerated "meeting food". Hmm...
Am I immune to this irresistible call of preowned and certified meeting food? Certainly not. I have had my share of meeting pasta... had some cold black coffee (there was no milk or sugar left.)... some melted brie...(the crackers were almost crunchy.)
Today my catch was just a cup of mini-pretzels. Inside of the cup however was a real gem. We all know that pretzels do not grow on trees, of course, but what I found today, between the little fish and some low fat potato chips was a genuine, a real, a little... bonsai pretzel tree.
It is not very large, that little bonsai pretzel tree. I would say that it is about 7 centimeters, perhaps? It is a little flat, there is a short stem, some roots, and the crown already bears three genuine little mini pretzels. I carefully planted the tree in a large paper cup, and instead of soil I chose paper napkins. I will need to give it some silica, so it does not suck in moisture, with its sprinkled salt. For now it is in a good place covered with one of the transparent one way orange juice cups, for protection.
I know the little tree will never grow, no matter what I'll do with it, but it is truly a masterpiece created by some slightly flawed manufacturing process over at the meeting-pretzel plant. It was dark when I found the little tree, but I shot some mini portraits, hope you'll enjoy these...
1) A total view with coffee cup and cover.
2) Pretzel tree, close-up
Do you have a bonsai anything? (And please do not provide a link to that bonsai kitten site...)