Pillsbury Doughboy

As Zager and Evans so prophetically sang in 1969: "Everything you think, do, and say, is in the pill you took today." Judging from my breakfast I had quite a full day ahead of me. If I said something offensive, it was probably one of the pills talking. The colourful one keeps me from bashing my head in with an econometrics textbook.

Snow White and the Seven Dumplings

Battling and loudly complaining about an inflammation of a salivary gland, I lost what little colour I had managed to gain under Zurich's april sun and became almost translucent over the holidays. On Easter Monday I finally took retaliatory action and devoured a total of seven smoked ham dumplings over the course of the day leaving only one meagre dumpling to be sacrificed to Fertilicius, the god of compost.

The Yellow Resurrection

Christ's return from the grave is too important an event to shoot purely in monochrome. The Gatterer family celebrated Easter Sunday with an assortment of coloured eggs and brand name products from Lindt chocolate easter bunnies to Schärdinger cream even though - despite his being stabbed with a spear, burnt with gall and vinegar, and ultimately crucified - there are no accounts of Jesus being branded.

Three Cups

I did not take pictures of the last few meals I had as I was fighting Sialoadenitis Glandulae Submandibularis. From what I understand it is some sort of face AIDS that only befalls really attractive people. At any rate, as a substitute I took a picture of the cup of tea I just had, but without the actual tea. Moreover I could not recall which cup was mine so I had to include all three used cups in the shot. Isn't this all a huge letdown? Splendid!

An Inhuman Dish

When you get up at 1:15 p.m. on a workday, you might as well have lunch at home. I already felt like a bum anyway, so I did not even care to ladle my leftover pasta on a plate. Eating directly from the pot can have a special allure. Granted, after the first spoonfuls you start feeling more like a pig than a bum, but pigs, bums, and humans are all very much alike anatomically anyway. Did I just dehumanize bums? Don't tell the NGOs about this!

Anti-Catholic Aggression in a Bowl

Coop has apparently discontinued its line of overpriced lemon-flavoured pasta, forcing me to prepare this springtime-conform pasta dish with overpriced Strozzapreti ("priest strangler") noodles instead. The result, heavily seasoned with paprika, was alright nonetheless. I even managed to pull the vegetables off the hearth before they turned into a uniform mush.

Culinaria ETHsiana (II)

Another quality Asian-style lunch on Clausiusstrasse, including fried bananas for dessert. Actually, more like two fried pieces of a banana, but what can you expect for CHF 2,80? I read in the papers that Switzerland is about to experience a water shortage due to insufficient rainfall, so I decided to take two glasses of precious H2O. Why leave the last drop to a Swiss?

Fig Leaf Apple

Nothing like a healthy afternoon snack to prolong post-lunch inertia until it is time to go home. While the coffee is ready for sipping, the chocolate croissant is still in its protective cover. I have concealed the logo of the abominably expensive deli where I bought the croissant with a portrait of Donald Trump to make one thing explicit: No free publicity here!

Culinaria ETHsiana (I)

This first image in a potentially very long series of meals served in the ETH Zurich's "Asian Mensa": a vegetarian dish called "Laos". The take-away: while Laos is poor and underdeveloped, they can still afford to douse their cuisine with bizarre amounts of soy sauce. It might be a way of fending off the hordes of Western backpackers out to "find themselves" there. I found myself very thirsty afterwards.

A Bowl of Fruit

I had to make peace with my stomach after waging war on it with the Sandwich of the Gods. That is why I treated myself to this fruit salad at eleven in the evening. The strawberries tasted like battery acid, the orange like lead paint, and the apple like burnt styrofoam. The banana was good though.

Sandwich of the Gods

Carrying this tasty blasphemy from the kitchen I felt like Moses coming down the mountain with the ten commandments. The Lord of all snacks consisted of an entire loaf of white bread, two kinds of melted cheese, fried chicken, fried beans, pickled red peppers, and some ketchup. The chicken came in the form of "mini chicken breasts", which were hocked dirt cheap at Migros, presumably because they stem from the more typhoid animals. On the minus side stands God's wrath in the form of stomach troubles for the remainder of His holy day.

Preliminary

Follow Walter's picaresque journey into culimaginaria as he supplies you with pictures of the exciting meals he consumes day by day. Share the stunning visual experience of nutrition, from glinting white rice to milk-soaked oatmeals, and comment on your favourite lunches, dinners, and snacks. Join Walter as he climbs the culinary peaks of his Grandma's cooking and ventures into the abysses of Swiss mensa food.

Finally, help Walter build the global credibility that he can one day profitably whore out to Nestlé and Unilever in an effort to shift towards a more caviar-heavy diet. In this spirit: Bon appétit!

Postscript: "Devoranda" is Latin for "What must be devoured". Arguably "Devorata", i.e. "What has been devoured", would have been a more suitable name, but it was taken already. Sink or swim. But don't swim after lunch!