I would like to start to eat a sensible and balanced lunch at work. I am hoping for some suggestions as to what is best / easiest:
At the moment, I jump between extremes of being too busy to get lunch (maybe just grabbing a banana if I can) to going to the chippie and eating crap (like a sausage supper or something).
I really don’t need to eat this sort of nonsense food at lunch time, but it is just the handy option. I do have the option of queueing for about 20-25 mins to get a made-up sandwich or a salad box, but then I lose most of my lunch-time in the process, but this not an option if I have anything else to do, like visit a bank or whatever. And I usually have a lot to do over lunch.
At work I have only the three choices:[ul][li]Bring something with me (if I remember, or have fresh food at home)[/li][li]Go out to sandwich shop / chippie / supermarket and grab a snack (if time allows)[/li][li]Microwave something in a plastic box[/ul]I do bring in sandwiches (usually the day after I have been to Tesco’s) and occasionally bring in a serving of a pasta bake made the night before. Now, I can eat reasonably healthy at home at dinnertime, because I have the facilities to cook. What other dishes could I make the night before that require only reheating? [/li]What good options for a reasonably priced and filling lunch can you recommend?
Also, what nice things can I buy that will keep for longer than a few days to allow me to make several lunches from them. (I can’t bare to shop in a supermarket every day.)
It’s a chip shop. A takeaway hot food bar. A greasy-spoon. A burger joint, with takeaway only. It sells fish and chips (french fries), sausage and chips, pastie and chips, burger and chips…anything and chips. With chips. And salt and vinegar. And red sauce. And chips.
On Sunday, grill two chicken breasts and boil three eggs. Slice the chicken breasts and chop the eggs. Store them in separate containers. They can be added to a salad.
If you don’t mind those bagged salad mixes (I prefer buying my salad greens from the farmers’ market), make a salad and bring it to work a few times a week. You can be as creative as you like.
Instead of chicken, try some good, tinnned tuna. Buy some good olives and good feta cheese. Try some ham and turkey in your salad. Whatever you do, make sure you keep the dressing off the salad until right before you eat it.
When the salad gets on your nerves, replace the salad greens with pasta and you can have a great cold pasta dish.
Aro, I had the same problem in that I didn’t have the time or energy to make my lunch during the week, and the eat-out options weren’t great.
So what I started doing was using Sunday afternoons to cook three or four main dishes. I take servings from those to work every day and since I make several different dishes, I don’t get bored with what I bring.
I try to keep bags of salad on hand, and hey presto, I have a complete meal. I prefer to have my larger meal be at lunch so this strategy has worked pretty well for me.
I have very limited time for lunches and I grab Powerbars. They range in calories from 250-400 and carry all the necessary vitamins. They come in a wide range of flavors.
If I don’t feel like a Powerbar I grab a salad from Wendy’s.
Chili salad is my favorite. Low in fat and high in protein.
You might try stocking up on some of the more substantial kinds of canned soup. Look for things that are heavy on the beans and vegetables and light on the pasta, meat, and potatoes. They are great when you don’t have time to assemble your salad ingredients in the morning. Either keep a bowl and can opener at work or dump the contents into your plastic container before you leave. You can add crackers and a reasonable amount of cheese and/or some fruit. This would also be something you could make in quantity on evenings or weekends.
If your office has a fridge, put a couple of containers of yogurt. Keep some bread/crackers and a jar of peanutbutter in your office if you’re not allergic. I used to keep things like Powerbars but realised I wasn’t eating just the Powerbar and they actually carry a lot of calories. Soups are always a nice addition, especially during cold weather. If stored properly, a nice crusty loaf of bread will usually last a few days; add some cheese and you have a nice meal.
Now I’m wondering why I don’t do this myself more often…
I try to chop lots of fruits and veggies sunday night, so I’ll have two containers of healthy stuff I can grab quickly in the morning. Stuff that holds up well over the course of the week includes:
If I have those at the ready, it’s not much work to toss together a sandwich for a complete lunch.
Lasagne is a really good dish for making up in advance, and freezing individual portions. Also there are many variations you can make, many of them relatively healthy (e.g. use tofu or lean beef instead of sausage, add lots of spinach). Any other type of casserole will also work well in this capacity, and they’re flexible as far as using the ingredients you have on hand.
You might also want to keep a few dehydrated soup type things in your desk that just require adding hot water.
I bought a nice soft-sided lunch pail that I keep on top of the microwave, so it’s in clear site to remind me that I need to make up my lunch.
I go with the make a big pot of soup/chili on the weekends and pre-pack it into single serving containers. It’s a bit monotonous but so is what you’re doing now, probably. You can actually probably make a different soup every week and never have the same thing two weeks in a row for a couple years, if you like enough kinds of soup!
I’m a meat-eater that likes tofu, so I know that makes me an anomoly.
But if you can stand it also, my stand-by is to take a package of firm tofu and slice it up into six pieces. Marinate it in soy sauce or steak sauce or Tiger sauce or red wine vinegar or sprinkle salt, pepper, basil and garlic on it…whatever flavours you like. Good think about tofu is that it will be whatever you want it to be.
Bake it at 375 for about a half-hour on a cookie sheet, flip it over and bake it another half-hour. Temp and time don’t really matter, just remember the longer you bake it the chewier it gets.
Now do whatever you want with it. Make it into a sandwich, chop it up and toss it in a salad…my absolute favourite is to stir fry it with whatever veggies I have around.
Baked tofu will keep for about 10 days in a sealed container in your fridge, which is about eight days longer than six slices last in my house.
I’m a grazer so like a lot of other people in this thread I always keep fresh veggies and fruit, peanut butter, nuts, yogurt and hard cheese at work and a big box of sandwich baggies. All of these are good for you, need little to no preparation and help keep you full, so every morning I just grab two or three handfuls of whatever looks nummy, throw it in ziploc bags and it’s lunch!
Nym - Who is eating Italian baked tofu and grilled onions, carrots, red pepper, squash and zucchini with a side of marinara even as we speak.