Work Lunches

My wife and I usually make double of whatever for dinner and take the leftovers for lunch. If that doesn't happen, I usually have a sandwich...my wife usually takes a salad.

I'm making southwester stuffed baked sweet potatoes tonight...I'll make four instead of two so that we have lunch for tomorrow.

So it's about $1.50 per day in cost... compared to when I used to go out to lunch daily costing $10 bucks a whack...

I do the left over thing too or like today have taken in some roasted chicken breast and 2 steamer bags of veggies to pop in the microwave.

90% of the time it's leftovers. I make extra and then I divvy out a smaller lunch portion for the next day.

On days that I don't have leftovers, I always take a frozen meal such by Evol or Luvo which taste much better than Lean Cuisines and are often better on the sodium and preservatives depending on what you get. I try to do that no more than twice a week.

I'm not much of a "pack a sandwich" person. They just aren't really good to me. I did make a High Protein Chicken Salad recipe that I got off this site that I really like. Made with a rotisserie chicken, greek yogurt, grapes, apples, etc. that's pretty tasty.

Today I brought bread, mayo & a perfect tomato from my garden I sliced the tomato and made a great sandwhich. Plus an apple. And, I usually bring an extra apple for the afternoon.

I'm going to make some turkey deli meat wraps and freeze them for fast lunches when I don't have time to fix something.

Usually baked chicken breast in some kind of marinade and some sort of legume/veggie. This week its lentils I prep all 5 lunches on Sunday, that way I just grab it from the fridge and go!

So many people have leftovers! I barely have enough time in the day to cook dinner. I mean how does everyone that works, work all day, I get home at 6pm- then workout by 6:30-8 - by then its too late to cook a meal so i usually just eat something like a baked potato or a fruit cup. My main eating is at lunch. Its hard to come home-workout-then cook dinner-and get ready for work the next day. I usually pack my lunch in the morning before work, apples, yogurt, and some baked chicken that i make batches of on Sunday.

I do all my cooking on Sunday. I cook all my lunches for the whole week. By meal prepping, I am forced to eat whatever healthy lunch I have packed for that day

Packing lunches is so difficult for me too! Right now, I've just been taking a lean cuisine to work and I'll add a side salad with some fresh veggies and that keeps me full and satisfied. I also like doing just big salads with nuts and fruit or an avocado with some salsa and a few chips.

I'm another one who usually takes leftovers. Veggie curries and pasta are my usual fare. In the past, if leftovers weren't available I'd usually take a Sunrice microwave meal, but those usually have a huge number of kilojoules in them (2,200-2,400 if you trust the packaging...) and if I want to stay under goal they don't leave me much room for dinner. So... I started to make sure I always have leftovers!

When I'm going to uni and don't have access to a microwave (at least not without a massive queue) it's a different question! I've taken lots of bagels with cream cheese and bananas. There was one day I was really organised and was able to take a lemon chicken and salad wrap - I got lots of compliments on my lunch that day But usually I don't have pre-cooked chicken on hand to do that. I've started to stock up on cans of tuna though, so tuna and salad wraps might be a worthy substitute.

Some things my partner and I do (we have very different calorie and dietary limits):

- make a double or triple batch of dinner, often in the slow-cooker so that our active cooking time is minimal, and take the leftovers for lunches
- batch-cook meals at the weekend and portion them out for lunches (good examples: stew, chilli, enchiladas, pasta or pasta bake, macaroni and cheese, soup, frittata, risotto)
- salads (lettuce, crunchy vegetables, proteins like egg or chicken or tuna or chopped deli meat, nuts, seeds, dressing or crispy toppings like croutons or onion straws in a separate container if you want them); you can also make mason jar salads with the dressing at the bottom and the ingredients layered through
- overnight oats with Greek yoghurt, fruit, and you can supplement with chia seeds and protein powders and so on
- jacket potatoes with toppings (chopped steamed vegetables, baked beans, cheese, turkey bacon, Greek yoghurt)
- sandwiches (chicken, tuna, deli meat, cheese, roasted vegetables, hummus, egg, peanut butter, jam, Marmite); you can make them on sandwich thins or bagel thins if you want fewer calories
- wraps (just like sandwiches, but you can usually cram in more vegetables and sometimes sauce or dressing)
- snack foods (either to supplement, or take several as a full lunch: cut fruit, cut vegetables, dip if you want, yoghurt pots, cereal bars, small baked goods, hardboiled eggs, jerky, chicken snack packs)

While I prefer the weekly meal prep idea, my life is just insane right now and out of my control. So I have had to compromise to avoid eating out of the vending machine every day. I brought a loaf of light bread, a pack of lunch meat, a pack of cheese, a jar of PB, a box of crackers, individual hummus containers, and a small jar of mayo and jelly to work and leave it there. Every day I go make myself a ham sandwich or a PBJ sandwich or crackers and hummus. Its not the most nutritious but healthier than the ho-hos I was eating every day out of the vending machine and way cheaper. Someday I hope to be able to get back to actually prepping at home and just bringing in one day at a time, but this is working for now at least.