Recipes for take-to-work lunches?

Cafe Society
1

I’m hemorrhaging money to the sandwich shop across the road from my office, and I’d like to start making tasty lunches at home to bring in to work. Unfortunately my takeaway cooking skills extend to, pretty much, the following:

<li> lentils and rice
<li> paneer and rice
<li> chickpeas and rice

Which are all fine, but I suspect they’ll grow tedious very soon! So I’m trying to find recommendations for cheap, healthy recipes that I can pack in my bag and take in to the office.

It would be especially nice to find some things I could make on Sunday and store in my fridge/freezer for a few days, as I’m usually busy Monday-Wednesday evenings.

2

Are you vegetarian or vegan? Adding curried vegies and rice to your original list will stay within your apparent cooking experiences, yet provide some variety. Some of my favorite lunch items are the simplest - boiled eggs, yogurt, sandwiches. I also use lunch as an opportunity to use up leftovers. Hope these thoughts help. - I’ve been taking lunch to work for about a year and a half now - definitely an improvement for both the budget and the palate!

3

Leftovers.
Pasta - just cook a little extra and put the leftovers aside. Any sauce or pesto will do.
Risottos.
My standard .99 cent lunch - a 95gm tin of tuna, two slices of bread, some lettuce or baby spinach and Cholula hot sauce. Put together at my desk.
Soup.
Microwaved stir fry.

4

I’m not a vegetarian or vegan, just unimaginative!

Leftovers would be great, but I don’t cook dinner much, either – if I’m not at a pub session with sandwiches provided, I usually just do a quick vegetable roast or fry-up, and I haven’t found those to be very good the next day.

don’t ask, do you have any recommendations for specific recipes for risottos or soup? I don’t think I can overstate how fundamental my kitchen skills are.

5

Well I don’t know about where you are but here in Australia any decent supermarket has dozens of pre-packaged, heat up to serve soups. They range from the exceedingly drab to the pretty damn good and only cost a few bucks. Most packages feed more than one so you can split them. Check the canned food aisles (but don’t get canned ones) and the refrigerator section for fresh ones.

Actually in the fridge area in Aussie supermarkets you can get fresh pasta and pasta sauces that would make up 2 to 3 meals for $10. And they are good stuff.

A risotto is just gently cooked arborio rice with whatever you like added to it. Buy a packet of arborio rice, follow the directions, have fun, maybe just add some frozen peas or mushrooms for the first one. Once you know how to do it you can create anything. I recently invented Thai coconut curry risotto and it is ambrosia.

6

I missed this. I did something similar a few weeks ago. I had some leftover vegetables, some leftover mashed potato and some left over chicken curry. I chopped up the veges and the chicken curry, combined them all, added a beaten egg and made patties that I fried and had as burgers. I took 2 to work with bread and salad for lunch. They attracted quite a bit of attention.

7

I like the recipes at Just Bento and Lunch In a Box; they’re very definitely lunchbox-oriented and often consider calorie counts and the like. The latter has both kid lunches and adult lunches.

8

Thanks a lot. They are very cool sites that I have never heard of. Love the SDMB.

9

I used to saute or barbeque a few chicken breasts, then cut them up and refrigerate them. I would cut up lettuce for salad and bag that too (or stoop to those grim bagged salads that taste a bit like bleach). Then, I could take a fresh chicken salad to work. Works with left-over steak too. I also took lots of left-over stir frys to work.

Sandwiches from home may not be as fancy, but you can buy the same ingredients for less and get lots of sammies out of them!

:slight_smile:

10

One of the tricks to think about is how to maximize efficiency and variety.

You should give serious thought to investing in some (re-usable) plastic containers and spending your Sunday making multiple batches of stuff, much of which you will want to be freezable. If I were serious about doing this, I’d get the slow cooker and a couple of pots going in parallel with 6-8 serving batches of:

spaghetti (yes, including the noodles);
beef stew;
chili;
Dominican chicken soupy rice;

Then I’d be broiling a couple of chicken parts and/or pork chops with either simple spices and herbs, some of the spaghetti sauce, or garlic butter.

Then I’d do a few portions of sauteed vegetables.

Then I would portion all of these out into about 48 of the single-serving plastic containers.

Then I would freeze them, and bring one in to work to microwave every day for the next few weeks. All of the above defrost and heat up without any major degradation in taste.

All of the above can be accomplished in one Sunday, while doing other chores.

For days when I don’t want defrosted pre-cooked stuff, this leaves me to make, each Sunday, two or three salads (along the lines suggested herein) and/or a couple of simple sandwiches (tuna salad, ham and cheese, turkey). If you have a toaster oven at work, you could even venture to try the batch-and-freeze approach with the meat sandwiches – they toast up nicely.

11

Ask Metafilter has some great ‘what to bring for lunch threads’ but Ask Metafilter is sick this weekend.

I brown bag it all the time. You do need lots of plastic containers.

I will cook 6-8 chicken breasts on the weekend (just done in a pan with olive oil, garlic, salt/pepper and sometimes throw in some funky seasonings on top). I like to steam some broccoli or cauliflower, too. Then for lunch, I grab a chicken breast, some of the veggies and some thin slices of cheese. I nuke it in our lunch room to re-heat and the cheese melts over the veggies. Hot and tasty!

I tend to make a lot of things that are just a mix of meat (chicken or beef) and veggies that end up like a stew or soup. Lots of times I throw in whatever’s in the fridge, add herb/garlic cream cheese or cream to create some ‘sauce’. That’s easy enough to portion into a single-serving container for lunch. Since I’m trying to lose weight, I’m leaving out rice/pasta and just sticking to meat and veggies.

I love a good sandwich on nice 12 grain bread, with mayo, deli meat, cheese. If I want a tomato or sprouts with it, I just bring the tomato and knife to cut it into slices just before eating.

There are lots of single serving snacks, too—I’m quite fond of Annie’s bunny cheddars and other little snackies. Add a packet of those and some fruit to round out lunch. If I’m starving I can nibble at my desk too.

There are lots of pre-made soups, but I like my homemade stuff way better so I don’t usually take that, but there are boxes of soup that are single serving and just heat and serve. Those are great for emergencies, as they don’t need refrigeration and they can sit in my desk drawer even. I just checked the kitchen—Campbell’s Gardennay is the brand.

Raw veggies and dip (I make a homemade salad dressing that if I want to use for veggie dip, just leave it thicker.) Fruit, fruit salad, even fruit and a fruit dip (cream cheese, marshmallow fluff in equal portions, add cinnamon. Eat with apple slices.) You want to get some protein in there, too, or if you’re like me you’ll be hungry again soon.

Crackers, cheese, pickles.

Bagels and cream cheese. Bagel sandwiches. Tuna melts on bagels.

Homemade burritos: lean beef, browned, add can of refried beans, one packet taco seasoning. Makes a nice big batch of burrito-filler. Also you can thin it a bit, heat, and dip corn chips in it.

Chili. Freezes well in single serving sizes.

Most of my lunches are leftover dinner meals, though. I tend to cook a lot of one-pot big batches of stuff that’s not really a soup, not really a stew, it’s just a big batch of… food.

12

When my priorities were cheap, quick, and healthy, I would buy bags of frozen mixed vegetables and add a quick topping. I’d usually get either winter mix (broccoli, cauliflower, carrots) or oriental mix (green beans, broccoli, red pepper). Toppings included grated parmesan, pesto, sweet and sour sauce, soy sauce, or butter and dill. Many other topping options are possible. I would divide each bag into 3 servings, add the toppings while veggies were still frozen, and heat in the microwave at work. This, plus a yogurt, a piece of fruit, and crackers or chips would make a meal. It wasn’t anything exciting, taste-wise, but it was good enough.

13

I cook a big batch or two of something on the weekends and bring single servings to work. My favorite lately is ratatouille, which I like because I can add all sorts of extra veggies and have it come out OK. (Green beans, summer squash, celery, etc). I’m trying to eat more healthfully these days and this fits right in. I generally add some protein (melted lowfat cheese is good, or a few ounces of chicken breast) and it’s very filling.

I’ve also made this veggie cassoulet (that’s what they call it; I personally would call it something else, since it’s definitely not cassoulet) and chicken chili and frozen single servings to bring. Both and yummy are freeze well.