NOTE: I wrote this about a year ago, and found it saved in my drafts. It’s a pretty good post, so I’m sharing it with you now!
I hope you all have enjoyed the previous two installments of “What’s For Dinner?”! I may make these a more regular feature later on, but unfortunately I’m “plum” out of ideas for the time being. So for now, this one will be the last.
So I hope you’ve been able to successfully implement meal planning and the “heat and eat” mentality to your life. This will probably be a lot shorter than the others, but hopefully just as informative. I know some people prefer to just buy lunch everyday while at work, but this can really become expensive. A five dollar meal can total up to $100 a month! And that’s if you are lucky enough to be well fed for $5. Armed with some planning and some ideas about healthy snacks are all you need to be able to make it through the work day without feeling the 2pm crash or the tummy rumbles.
First, lets start by figuring out equipment you might need. These are common sense basics and hopefully you are all covered here, but you won’t get far without them. Most importantly, you need an insulated lunch bag. I prefer a tote style because I can sling it over my shoulder and it doesn’t look like a lunch bag. However, if you do a Google search for “lunch tote” they have a wide assortment of neat styles to choose from, aside from the regular Insulated Lunch Cooler Bag
If you’re a snacker like me, you’ll also want to come up with a plan for that. Bringing snacks from home is definitely a better idea than raiding the vending machine on a daily basis. Not only does the vending machine not have much choice, but the snacks are unhealthy and expensive. (If you do go for the vending machine, plain pretzels are your best bet.) I like to get a good variety that usually includes fruit, yogurt, and some kind of cracker or cookie. I also keep some unsalted mixed nuts on my desk (but to be honest, I never eat them). I try to bring fruit that requires little preparation. (No whole apples or oranges for me!) I also prefer to bring Go-Gurt yogurt because a) I’m really picky and prefer the taste of kids’ yogurt and b) it’s really convenient packaging. As far as cookies and crackers go, I really like the 100-calorie packs. Now there’s a lot of bad talk about these packs, but I find them worth the extra money you pay, personally. Of course, if you have the time and inclination, you can portion out your own, but I just don’t have the patience for that. I like to bring a variety of snacks every day.
Now for the actual lunches themselves. There is, of course, the old sandwich standard. My husband brings a peanut butter and jelly sandwich just about every single day. One week I livened things up by buying 12 fresh bakery submarine rolls (the slightly crusty kind… mmm…) and a selection of deli cheese and meat. The trick is to get a tiny bit of everything so you don’t end up 6 pounds of deli food, but in our case we still had lots left over with only 1.5 pounds each of meat and cheeses (after 11 sandwiches!). I also picked up some pre-shredded lettuce to make things even easier. A little mayo and extras (cucumbers and tomatoes for us) completes the meal, and you have plenty for the week. I wrapped mine in saran wrap and was good to go.
I also like a hot meal on occasion so I bring a lot of leftovers to work. The basic leftover structure is simple and hardly needs an explanation. You find plastic container, put leftovers inside, snap cover on and heat while at work. Of course, if your office has no microwave this can be a problem. Pretty much any hot meal requires a microwave (unless you have a hot pot at your desk, but you’re on your own for that one). To avoid getting a splattered microwave, set the cover loosely on the dish or use a splatter screen.
To avoid embarrassing myself by over-explaining how to properly reheat leftovers, I’ll share some tips on tricks I’ve picked up over the years in getting leftovers to taste better or work more conveniently without the use of the stove. One of my favorite things to eat is pasta, and most favorite would be spaghetti. However, reheated spaghetti noodles taste horrible to me. I get my noodles to taste great without cooking them fresh at lunchtime by cooking them in the morning and then immediately running them under cold water to stop the cooking process. Then I put the noodles in a baggie and store them in my lunch box along with a separate storage container for the sauce. At lunch time, I transfer noodles to the dish with sauce and heat. Another trick I like to use is quickly steaming food in those Ziplock bags I mentioned in the previous post about meal planning. I wasn’t joking, you CAN cook hot dogs in those things. 2 dogs takes 45 seconds. Bring some rolls and tiny jars of condiments (or bring fast food packets) and you have an entire meal ready to go. But you can also use them for their intended purpose and bring fresh vegetables to steam as a side to last night’s chicken. What I like to do is set aside a small portion when I’m prepping for a recipe and then just store it in the baggie in the refrigerator until I’m ready to bring it to work.
And to wrap things up here, a few things that I like to keep at work so I have them on hand. I always keep salad dressing, a small tub of butter, jam, tea and hot chocolate, coffee creamer, and a couple snacks at the office. If you don’t have a cool place to place things that must be refrigerated, then you may need to go the dry goods route. The dressing, butter or jam can be replaced with individually wrapped pats found at any discount warehouse or restaurant supply store, and there is non-liquid coffee creamer (which is horrible in my opinion, but some people like it). Sometimes I like to bring in some soda or juice, but if you are watching your caloric intake or budget, I would stick with the water.
This should give you some ideas to be able to eat well while at work without having to go out to lunch or be stuck with the dreaded sandwich on a daily basis. Try to remember to do what works best for you, and fits best within your schedule. You don’t want to pile on added stress but at the same time you need to consider your dietary and budgetary needs.
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I hope that you have found the past 3 What’s For Dinner? posts interesting and helpful. I promised that I would include a short list of my favorite cookbooks at the end, so here goes. Don’t forget you can also check out my RSS feed or create your own from your favorite cooking websites.
- Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: Feasting with Your Slow Cooker
- New Cook Book, 75th Anniversary Limited Edition
- The Taste of Home Cookbook- New Revised: One Recipe four ways
