Great packed lunch ideas
It is the pesky question that haunts millions of people every day before they go to work (or the night before, if they’re proactive people): “What am I going to eat for lunch tomorrow?”
Some folks buy lunch at a cafeteria or restaurant five days per week. They don’t cook, or they don’t have time to pack lunches, or they just aren’t concerned about the financial or nutritional affects of dining out that often. That’s cool, but that’s not me.
I like to eat lunch out about once per week — it gives me an opportunity to try new restaurants, which provides fodder for my blog and columns. On those other days, I’m standing in front of the refrigerator scratching my head just like a lot of other people. Lately, I’ve been pretty good about packing big lunch salads with leafy greens, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, any other vegetable I have on hand, kidney or garbanzo beans, and some cheese. Another great summer option is the good old tomato sandwich – I had one of those yesterday, washed down with some cucumber water.
But even those gorgeous salads will get a bit old if I try to force myself to eat one 4 days per week, and the fresh tomatoes will not last forever, alas. I imagine if I had to pack lunches for children every day, as well, and my head explodes.
I’ve been wandering around Pinterest and some other sites lately and I’ve seen a few ideas I thought I’d share:
* Easy Lunchboxes – This is a site designed primarily to sell you reusable, three-compartment lunch containers. But if you click on “Neat ideas” and then “Yummy lunch gallery,” you’ll find that there are some 150+ pictures of packed lunches submitted by users.
A couple of my favorites: Cold grilled chicken strips (finger-friendly!); egg salad wrapped in a lettuce leaf; a yogurt “sundae” topped with fresh or dried fruit; a few chocolate chips and a few mini-marshmallows; cold pasta salad; meatballs; and mini muffin quiche.
A great hint from this site: Use silicone muffin cups as reusable ramekins to corral stuff like goldfish crackers, cheese cubes or Jell-O.
* The lunch gallery at Lunchbox Limbo offers moms some different options for frugal organic lunches. She’s good about cutting fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses and breads into shapes to make lunch more fun for the kiddos.
* The woman who writes the Lunch in a Box blog offers lots of ideas for packing Japanese-style bento box lunches. There is some unusual food in her lunch boxes (Tuscan squid, anyone?) but it might be a fun place to pick up some ideas that range far beyond bologna sandwiches and chips. Bentolunch.net is a similar blog.
* Try a Mason jar salad by dumping all of the ingredients you like in a big Mason jar. It’s easy to carry to work or school, can be popped in the fridge or chilled in a lunch box, and then dumped on a plate or eaten straight out of the jar.
* Make a “lunch loaf.” You don’t have to use this recipe, just pick the ingredients your whole family likes on a sandwich and stuff it in a crusty bread loaf. Slice off pieces to suit the size of the eater’s appetite.
* One of my favorite food sites, Chow, has a thread about packed lunches for grown-ups. There are no pretty pictures, but there are some good ideas here. For example: antipasta lunch; make a big batch of fajitas one night and use leftovers for wraps, mix with beans or rice; bagel with cream cheese and smoked salmon; baked potatoes with any topping you like; lentil or grain salads; slices of leftover quiche or frittata.
* Finally, this is a small one but I’ve started to bring cold cereal to work for breakfast, and some people like to eat cereal for lunch or dinner, too. I wanted to find a special container for bringing cold milk and cereal to work, but here’s what I did instead: I had a couple of those short, fat canning jars with lids sitting around. I washed them out well and now I fill one about halfway with cold milk and screw down the lid. I bring my cereal in a plastic baggie or reusable plastic container and dump the cereal in the jar with the milk when I get to work. Take jar home, clean and repeat.
Do you have any favorite packed meals, even if they are just sandwiches dressed up with unusual toppings? Know of a lunch idea blog or site I didn’t mention?
July 24, 2012 - 5:03 AM
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I’m lucky that my daughter will eat half a bologna sandwich for lunch every day! Add some goldfish and a yogurt and she’s good to go. I need to mention that she’s very picky – doesn’t like fruit or vegetables. I pack my lunch every day – it’s almost always dinner leftovers. We use a lot of ziplock baggies, I re-use them during evening walkies with our dog.
Thanks for the ideas! I’m in a packed lunch rut myself so I’ll have to check out these sites for ideas. With my job, I never know where I will be from one day to the next and keeping food chilled in 90 degree weather in a van is challenging. Plus microwaving leftovers is a risky operation because I can’t guarantee I’ll have access to a microwave. I’m really tired of ham sandwiches and salads just don’t seem to hold up well, even in a cooler.
If you have access to a microwave at work, you can make your own frozen meal with stir fry veggies, pre cooked chicken and some sauce or seasonings.
Put it all – about 2 handfulls veggies, 1 serving of chicken, sauce and seasonings – in one of those Glad steamer bags you can get at the store. Keep it frozen and microwave per the instructions on the steamer bag.
My sister cannot comment on my blog from her work computer so she emailed me this:
Lately I have been addicted to wraps instead of sandwiches. You can turn most any sandwich into a wrap and depending on the contents it can be made the night before and not be mushy by lunchtime. My favorite is a grilled chicken caeser wrap. On Sundays I will grill several chicken breasts and then cut them into strips for use in wraps or salads for lunches and dinner during the week. I use a whole wheat wrap, grilled chicken, lettuce, grated parmesan and a dollop of caeser dressing. I wrap it in plastic wrap followed by foil and it is not soggy when lunchtime rolls around.
Hubby likes a lot of condiments on his sandwiches so what he’ll do is make the base of the sandwich with his meat and cheese the night before. Then he’ll place his lettuce and tomato in a Ziploc bag or container and we have small Tupperware containers that fit pickle slices perfectly. That way he can build his sandwich at work instead of it being premade and soggy.
My kids loved lunch meat roll-ups. I would take the paper thin sliced lunch meat in the bags and spread each slice with softened cream cheese then roll them up. My daughter didn’t like bread so these were perfect for her. This idea was given to me by my sister-in-law.
Something else I like for lunch sometimes is a grain dish, such as brown rice cooked in chicken broth. You can add cooked veggies and eat it hot or let the rice cool down and add chopped raw veggies such as cucumber, tomatoes, onions and celery. And a little feta cheese is good. These kinds of dishes are very filling and nutritious, and I love the nutty flavor and chewy grains.
I think the secret to good packed lunch during the week is good menu planning during the weekend. A few specially-prepared lunch things alternated with leftover-friendly dinners can get you through.
When my oldest son was in K, I chaperoned a field trip to the park. We lived in NJ and there were lots of Japanese students in the school whose dads were working in NYC for a few years. Well, me and the other moms stood there and watched those Japanese students open their bentos at picnic time and were blown away by the beautiful rice balls, pickled veggies…everything, beautifully presented and tidy, including a placemat and other accoutrements. Our kids, meanwhile, busted open the Lunchables or smashed PB&J sammies.It was very, very humbling.
My kid is FINALLY getting better about having some variety in his diet. He loathes cafeteria food and would rather go hungry than eat whatever’s been prepared by his school’s kitchen. His favorite lunch is a peanut butter and Nutella sandwich, yogurt, and ice cold water. Yes. His thermos always has water with ice. I make his lunches the night before so the thermos stays really chilled for lunch.
I pack every day for work. I’ve been eating chopped salads almost every day – a head of green cabbage, one of red cabbage, carrots, and plenty of fresh parsley and cilantro. Like your sister, I make chicken breasts on Sunday night and use them to throw in some protein. My food processor makes quick work of the cabbage and carrots. I use different rubs on the chicken breasts so that I can create different dressings – BBQ dry rub, pineapple glaze, orange and soy, etc. After losing a ton of money on the salad dressings I had in my fridge during the power outage, I decided that I’d only eat homemade dressings. I use a small canning jar to quickly mix them up.
I love bentolunch.net! What’s for Lunch Wednesdays will give you lots of links to all kinds of lunch packing blogs.
I try to pack something different every day and avoid sandwiches, and I usually do some kind of re-envisioned leftover. Still, one of my favorite lunches is pinwheels–tortillas and hummus or cream cheese and veggies, or deli meat and cream cheese–with cut fruit, veggies and some kind of dip (usually a yogurt-based ranch dressing), and, if I’m not using tortillas, some crackers.
It’s interesting how willing children are to accept ‘different’ foods when you give them no other choice. On the opposite end of the scale, when you wilt to the demands of small children, it’s amazing how many foods they suddenly cannot eat.
Funny how that works…