Lunch all week

goal06082021 wrote: »

Hello! This is what I do for my lunches every week. I have a 6-week rotation of recipes - I don't mind eating the same thing five days in a row, and in my personal experience, the food I prep on Saturday or Sunday is still good to eat come Thursday or Friday just being kept in the refrigerator, I haven't found it necessary to freeze the servings for the latter half of the week and thaw them on Wednesday or anything like that. Some people do, I personally haven't seen a need to, YMMV/do your own research/commercial food safety rules are much stricter than they need to be for public-health reasons. I pack my lunches in glass containers like this or this. I found mine at Homegoods, but you can get them basically anywhere these days; I recommend glass over plastic.

Here's my current rotation:

Week of 5/3: Japanese chicken curry over rice, made with box-mix roux (basically the Japanese equivalent of Kraft Dinner, as I understand), although it isn't hard to DIY the curry spice blend if you have a decent variety of spices in your cabinet. Cook rice however you normally do, pack servings into your lunch containers (I gave myself 100g), and then top with the curry. The recommended recipe calls for onion, carrot, potato, and your protein of choice. I used chicken, and added some broccoli and spinach for color. I made eleven 300g servings, which came out to around 300 calories each (plus about 130 cal for the rice).

Week of 5/10: Cabbage rolls. I make 20 and pack 10 servings of 2 each, they also come out a bit under 300 cal for a serving. I usually need to pack a few "side dishes" to round out this lunch, as it's quite light. I usually go with DIY fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt cups; I buy the big quart-size containers of plain Greek yogurt and pack it into little 4-oz containers, along with my own diced fruit or syrup. Berries work well for this, as well as mango when it's in season.

Week of 5/17: Salisbury steak, mashed potatoes (use your favorite recipe), and steamed broccoli (recipe: take some broccoli, steam it). I make 20 little tiny patties, about 60g each raw - roughly chicken-nugget sized, maybe a little bigger. Each serving gets 2 patties. I put the mashed potatoes in the bottom of the container in an even layer, then nestle in the two patties and a scoop of broccoli on top of that, and then a ladle of gravy over the patties. I have the gravy entered as a separate recipe in MFP because I never use all of it.

Week of 5/24: Greek chicken thighs with lemony rice and orzo and Greek-style green beans. I found this recipe on Reddit for the chicken and the orzo rice; I skip the potatoes since we're already doubling up on carbs with the rice-orzo mix, no need to triple up, as good as Greek-style potatoes are. I use this recipe for the green beans (although you can safely use a fraction of that amount of green beans, that's nuts).

Week of 5/31: DIY Chipotle bowls. Most recently I made carnitas in my Instant Pot, and served that over cilantro-lime rice with fajita veggies (onions and peppers sauteed and seasoned with cumin and chipotle). I crumbled some queso fresco over top of that and packed some salsa in my little 4-oz containers.

Week of 6/7: Oven-roasted kielbasa and veggies served over barley. I used zucchini, broccoli, onions, peppers, and mushrooms, all roasted at 350F for about 40-45 minutes (including the kielbasa, cut that into little quarter-coins about a quarter-inch thick). Rotate the pans every 15 minutes or so. I cooked my barley in beef broth for a little extra flavor. You could also serve this over pasta or include potatoes among the roasted veggies. Add cheese (Parmesan, gruyere, something hard) if you feel like being extra, I seasoned my veg with a splash of white balsamic and found that lent a nice funky flavor without needing cheese.