I was quite excited when I saw this...

Well, relatively excited, or maybe as excited as I could be seeing a new product in a supermarket that I don't care that much about. Anyway, I thought this 'panini pizza' looked like it had potential. (Roasted veg, mozzarella, panini/pizza - great!) Sadly, I was wrong. Ok, I know pictures on ready-made food boxes aren't always to be trusted, but really... this only had about 2 bits of veg in it, and a load of cream cheese (it says creme fraiche but I think they are lying).

I griddled it, as instructed 'for best results'. It was pretty horrible and I wouldn't recommend it.

You may ask, I suppose, what was someone like me who usually cooks using fresh ingredients doing even in the pizza aisle? Or maybe you wouldn't ... as I reckon quite a lot of my blog disproportionately shows me to be a bit of a fast-food eater. I'm not. At least, I don't consider myself one. Just occasionally. Anyway, it's the Christmas party season and the fridge is bare. And I had to get some food in that my boyfriend would consider cooking if he was home, hungry and in a hurry and I wasn't around to force him to eat healthily. So I bought a couple of pizzas as I could shove them in the freezer at the end of the week if they weren't eaten.

Some days you just need cheese

And today is one of those days. I had a knackering day yesterday and I am feeling it today. I knew that what I need for lunch is something, anything, with melted cheese. Too weary to leave the office before getting some calories down me, I went to the cafeteria, which has chicken and roasted peppers paninis on special at £2.25. Tempting. But I needed cheese, so, lacking inspiration, I got one of those with extra mozzarella. Yes! Cheesy! I held the warm plate in a bag in my hands as I came back up to my desk, the earthy smell of cheese and chicken wafting up on the steam.

On Thursdays they do a special - with a deli sandwich you get a free piece of fruit or packet of crisps. Normally I go for salt and vinegar hula hoops, but today the fruit looked quite nice, so I took a banana. Healthy. Well, kind of.

And... the panini is ok. It's certainly filling - I like the roasted peppers a lot, but I swear I get more if the sandwich is made in front of me (the specials are prepared and waiting to be cooked) and I love melted cheese in virtually any form, but while some of the chicken pieces are fine, most of it is pappy. Why is that? Why can't all places serve quality chicken? Is all chicken so intensively farmed and shoved full of drugs that it loses its texture and flavour? Perhaps I just want too much of the office cafeteria - they can't be expected to provide organic, free-range chicken all the time on the sort of budgets I assume they have. But I wish they did.

[photo to come]