Soggy-Free and Safe Lunches

I’m a conscientious lunch packer and I want my food to taste awesome. After all, if I’m going to put this much effort into foods it should be worth it. But what kinds of foods work well for Good 2 Go? Aren’t there rules about how to make things that travel safely and reheat well? What about containers? I discovered about an hour after I decided to do Good 2 Go that I was really asking for trouble.

Foods are inherently a little bit dangerous because they can harbor bacteria and nasty little germs to make us very very ill. I’m not a fan of poisoning my family (even though occasionally I’ve brushed past that thought in regards to my husband) so I did some research. I want the lunches to be safe and I thought about what kinds of foods travel well. It helps if you think about picnic foods. These need only a little refrigeration and minimum packaging. Some of the broad categories I picked up on at first:

• · Raw and cooked vegetables

• · Cheese, especially harder cheeses like cheddar and gouda

• · Breads like tortillas or heavy grain breads so they don’t get crushed

• · Salads

• · Cous cous or lentils

• · High acid foods like tomato sauces

• · Well-cooked and well-refrigerated meats

Ultimately I know that my husband has a refrigerator at his workplace, but there will be that inevitable day when work gets overwhelming and lunch gets left on his desk. I’d still like for him to eat well on those days.

My theory on planning lunch was simple (I thought): Don’t make anything I already make for dinner. This would make sure that lunch was a new and interesting dish. The added bonus here is that I’d have new skills in the kitchen and be learning something too. Of course, the second week I got busy and suddenly it was Sunday again. I really needed something fast so I grabbed my remaining eggs and emptied out the leftovers. Some cheese, ham, sautéed spinach and a couple of premade pie crusts = quiche in my world. I dashed together the eggs with herbs and such and set it aside. I cut the pie crusts (or in my case croissant dough I had leftover) into rounds and shoved them into muffin tins. A little chopped cheese, ham or spinach and I spooned the filling in. This will be a great way to stretch ingredients and gets my guy eating vegetarian at least one meal.

I knew the protein was locked down with the mini-quiche, but what about vegetables with those all important vitamins? What about fiber? I wasn’t going to add a starch because I’d already used the crust. I grilled some asparagus with olive oil and garlic which I thought would work well. Later I ended up using steamed broccoli, but really any green vegetable would work. For the other side dish I decided to try something new: Samosa-like lentil snacks. I found these delicious treats on http://www.justhungry.com/2005/06/samosalike_lent.html and whoa.... are they tasty! This unique little snack packs a very big flavor punch. I tucked 3 of these balls with a light dipping sauce made of low fat yogurt, spring onions and dill.

Putting Good 2 Go in a container should have been simple, but the practical side of me wouldn’t rest until I found a solution for sending the sauce with the lentil balls without it getting heated in the microwave. Fortunately, it was about this time that I was wandering lost in thought on aisle 8 of the grocery store. I happened upon a little bento-like box stashed to the side of the regular plastics. Since I got lost looking at all the bento on www.justbento.com, I thought surely this was the universe helping me out. So I snatched up a set of two and the large compartment just held two mini quiches. The smaller sections held the asparagus and lentil balls and I put a tiny kid’s snack container on the side with the dipping sauce!

I even had a little extra so I shared with a vegetarian friend, who might want me to make lunches for her as well!

Fiscal Food

We’re cutting our budget, trimming our tasks and cinching in that waistline too. This started with our yearly sit-down at a lovely dinner to review the family budget. Yeah – budget isn’t as tasty a word as I’d like to discuss normally, but I’ve learned a new-found respect for those budget hounds that tout their happiness. I’ve run in fear from money all my life and now I’m finally standing my ground. This year I’ll be doing that through food.

One of the largest expenses for my partner is lunch. He grabs food through windows and shortened lunchtimes at his high pressure job. These bags and boxes average $8 if you include the fast food burgers and the Thai lunch specials. Over the course of a month that’s $160 that he could use to go to school or go on vacation with us. Or better yet, to add to his credit card payments and beat that debt back down.

I’ve always been about taking little steps rather than leaping off a ledge, so it seemed simple to just start packing lunch for him to take to work. But I know enough about how food and our minds interact to figure out that a few sandwiches and a few leftover spaghetti lunches would quickly send him out at lunchtime. I also realized that I had the perfect opportunity to influence how long my guy gets to hang around.

If I am fixing lunches then I can fix yummy food that just happens to be healthy and tastes good enough to keep him out of the drive-thru. Healthier food might mean a longer life, but really I just don’t want to be left alone with all the stuff we want to do.

But what kinds of food can I make that are:

• Tasty
• Healthy
• High in fiber
• High in protein
• High in vegetables with antioxidants and vitamins
• Low in simple carbohydrates
• Satisfying for my big eater
• Different from my regular fare
• Travels particularly well
• Challenges my cooking skills to grow and develop

Just so we’re clear – that list of requirements means that I’ve set myself a huge challenge. In short – I’m insane. But once an overachiever, always one, right?

Since the main idea was to save money and get healthier, I needed research on some awesome recipes and fast! Ideally lunches needed to be cheap as well as good for you, so I’ve kept the cost to under $10/week.

My first foray into these lunches, which I nicknamed Good 2 Go, was driven by the bits of vegetables I had on hand. Vegetables? Leftovers? I immediately thought – Chinese food! I tossed Bok Choy, carrots, onions, corn, water chestnuts and just a bit of low-sodium soy in a wok while a batch of brown rice was cooking. I think there were other ingredients, but I was cooking late on Sunday and I don’t remember every one of the details!

To keep the meat and potatoes crowd happy I made salmon to go with the stir-fry. All of the teriyaki sauces, one of his favorites, seem to have a lot of salt, high fructose corn syrup and MSG. I’m not a fan of these chemicals so I did a little research and combined a few recipes to make my own unique teriyaki. I have to pause because one of my challenges became clear right here.

How much salmon should I send? I wanted him to feel full and satisfied, but not uncomfortable or over fed. Apparently America and my partner have a strange sense of what is a decent size portion! I made sure the salmon (and a couple pieces of chicken) were about the size of my palm. Slicing the chicken makes it seem like it is much more meat than is actually there (but don’t tell him that!).

A few leftover Chinese takeout containers were repurposed for Good 2 Go and I sectioned everything off so the rice didn’t get overly soggy. I did eventually find miniature Bento-type boxes at the grocery store with cute little sections and just enough space for a proper size lunch.

The results? So far, so good! Lunches have been met with rave reviews and no claims that he gets hungry in the afternoons. Better yet, a few extra pounds have slipped unwittingly from his waist. As a non-diet, this seems to be working very well.

I know Chinese works really well because he loves Oriental flavors and leftovers are generally tasty, but next week I need to kick it into high gear and really understand what makes food travel well and reheat well. Oh, and of course I must keep up the interesting foods!