Easy lunch ideas for a single person?
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tomatoey
Posts: 5,446 Member
Here's what I'm like:
- Hate frozen food and freezing food and batch cooking especially. I've tried it, hate it for texture and taste reasons. Prefer food made fresh for one meal. I'm not even that great with defrosting meats that I've bought (wind up doing something else and letting it go bad, as happened with a lovely steak today/yesterday. I do like the savings on choice cuts when I can manage things better.)
- I don't really even like left-overs the next day. Though I do that sometimes, when I make hamburgers.
I'm ok for breakfast - eggs & cheese or yogurt & a tomato and .5 or .33 a slice of bread (I'm on 100 g carbs) & coffee.
Dinner's ok, too - pan-fried steak or fish, or a bit of roasted chicken from the hot counter of the grocery store + veg and maybe a couple of baby potatoes.
Lunch is a pain. Right now I'm home, but I don't want to cook in the middle of the day (time, dishes, pain in the rear). I just want to get the food into me. I also don't want to buy a grilled chicken salad every day. Sandwiches are easiest, but yeah. Going out to eat for less than 10 bucks is a world of carbs. Unless someone's got some go-tos, for chains? I'm in Canada.
What do you guys do for lunch? (Especially if you don't do batch cooking or leftovers and are single.)
- Hate frozen food and freezing food and batch cooking especially. I've tried it, hate it for texture and taste reasons. Prefer food made fresh for one meal. I'm not even that great with defrosting meats that I've bought (wind up doing something else and letting it go bad, as happened with a lovely steak today/yesterday. I do like the savings on choice cuts when I can manage things better.)
- I don't really even like left-overs the next day. Though I do that sometimes, when I make hamburgers.
I'm ok for breakfast - eggs & cheese or yogurt & a tomato and .5 or .33 a slice of bread (I'm on 100 g carbs) & coffee.
Dinner's ok, too - pan-fried steak or fish, or a bit of roasted chicken from the hot counter of the grocery store + veg and maybe a couple of baby potatoes.
Lunch is a pain. Right now I'm home, but I don't want to cook in the middle of the day (time, dishes, pain in the rear). I just want to get the food into me. I also don't want to buy a grilled chicken salad every day. Sandwiches are easiest, but yeah. Going out to eat for less than 10 bucks is a world of carbs. Unless someone's got some go-tos, for chains? I'm in Canada.
What do you guys do for lunch? (Especially if you don't do batch cooking or leftovers and are single.)
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Ok, wow. I just took some estimates of my body fat % (tape measure, home scale). Scary but useful to see. I think I need to bring my calories way down, to 1500-1700. Amending my question to ask, does anyone have meal ideas for that range?
(Man, I don't know if I can eat that little, though, seriously. Very frustrated that I can no longer burn as much as I used to.)0 -
I like lettuce roll ups with deli meat, cheese, mayo or mustard. they also wok great with tuna or chicken (or egg, or ham) salad as filler. just make sure the lettuce is really dry. you could have quite a lot for 4-500 calories.0
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I buy a few cooked meats from the deli (or cook myself at the weekend) - poached chicken fillets, salmon fillets, interesting sausage - then add a baggie of mixed leaves, avocado, precook end bacon bits, olive oil etc to jazz it up each day. Quick and easy.0
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I buy rotisserie cooked chickens
Buy Cobb salads already made
Packages of mixed greens with spinach
Add greens and to Cobb salad mix.
Weigh out bags of chicken I pull off the bones.
Cut up cucumbers and tomatoes ahead of time and add vinegar put in bowl
That carries lots of lunches and the chicken is flexible for whatever since it is weighted and bagged.
Protein portions already in my desk in those little plastic salad dressing sized bowls
Pre planning has saved be so many times!
And bacon cooked in a lunch bag for a single slice snack!
I do have a few Lean Cusine dinners in the freezer so I can grab and go if running late!0 -
Thanks, you guys! Great ideas
Much appreciated! 0 -
I take whatever sandwich meat, pepperoni, cheese...stack it on a plate with mayo and mustard and eat with a fork. I call it a sandwich stack. Works for me. Hope this helps. We also will chop left over steak (the only way ill eat left over steak) up into bite size pieces and heat in a skillet then cover with cheese and eat. Hubby cuts up onion in his. I have learned that my body doesn't like onions.0
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Cold meat like ham or chicken, pickles, olives, radishes, cherry tomatoes, boiled eggs, cheese.... I like to have lots of different foods to nibble on tapas-style.0
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Avocado filled with tuna salad. 0
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Nice ones! Thanks 0
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If you have Heinz dill relish and mayo and some net carbs wraps all you need is those 1 serving punches of tuna ( now they have various flavours) and make tuna salad wraps. It takes 5 minutes.
Also the canned chicken breast makes great chicken salad wraps.0 -
Good ideas.
I just finished eating some lunch meat and cheese. Today the lunch meat was actually prosciutto cotto, and the cheese was some fancy overpriced gouda, but...yeah. Some days it's just sliced turkey or chicken with mayo and cheese.
I also will sometimes make 2 pork chops at dinnertime and save the second for lunch. I pop it into a microwavable container with one of the following:
riced cauliflower with creamy (mushroom) pan gravy
broccoli with cheese. And butter.
Shredded parmesan.
I also make home-made chicken salad with rotisserie chicken, mayo, more mayo, celery, chopped rosemary marcona almonds, extra rosemary. That's the whole meal right there.
-T.
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I'm on Day 12 of a 21 day Soft Foods Diet (having had a molar pulled on June 11) and you guys are killing me! I want to eat your lunches each and every one of them! I am subsisting on egg salad, tuna salad, and hamburger with curry sauce (yes, a processed food but I'm desperate here) all mashed into swallow-able size -- and I would kill for a salad right now! Or a piece of meat. Or anything I could actually chew!
The only bright side is I go in Thursday for a second follow-up appointment, and depending how I'm healing, I may be allowed to start eating more normal food earlier than a week from Thursday.0 -
I'm on Day 12 of a 21 day Soft Foods Diet (having had a molar pulled on June 11) and you guys are killing me! I want to eat your lunches each and every one of them! I am subsisting on egg salad, tuna salad, and hamburger with curry sauce (yes, a processed food but I'm desperate here) all mashed into swallow-able size -- and I would kill for a salad right now! Or a piece of meat. Or anything I could actually chew!
The only bright side is I go in Thursday for a second follow-up appointment, and depending how I'm healing, I may be allowed to start eating more normal food earlier than a week from Thursday.
That's easy--smashed tuna salad with smashed avocado. Problem solved. 0 -
It's the smashed part I'm so tired of! I never knew how much pleasure chewing gave me...0
