I want to give you some ideas for lunches and snacks on the go. These are great for if you’re a mom that’s fetching and carrying your kids to and from school, extra-mural activities, or sports games, or for anytime you want to take food with; sometimes for your kids as well, and sometimes just for you. Sometimes you need something to eat in the car while you wait, or maybe you’re just going to be away from home and you’ll need to eat.
Even if you’re just at home working, sometimes it’s better to prepare food the night before, or in the morning, so that when you’re hungry and you want to grab something, it’s there ready for you to eat. Somehow, if food is prepared in advance, and if we’ve put a little thought into it, we’re less likely to grab something unhealthy, or something that doesn’t have enough nutrients.
We need to plan carefully to get the right nutrients when we’re always busy like most moms are, or often on the run. Somehow we always end up eating crackers, some healthy version of corn chips, plantain chips, or jerky or some other kind of meat sticks. Those things may be fine sometimes, but we need to make sure that we’re getting a good variety of food, that our food has good nutrition, that we’re eating enough, and that we’re eating regularly; at a time when our body expects the food.
All of these things are so important, and they affect our metabolism long term. They affect the amount of nutrients we can absorb. They affect all the systems in our body – our hormones, our immune systems, so it’s very important to be on top of food before you need it. It’s good to eat three regular, nutritious meals that have variety, and contain all the macros you need. We need good fats, good protein, good fruit and veg, good fiber, and the right kind of carbohydrates – all those things. So, let’s talk about some ideas for lunches and snacks on the go.
Wraps are great because they’re easy to transport and easy to eat. They’re not too messy. Get the wraps you like – there are so many different varieties. You can get gluten-free or wheat wraps, you get all kinds of cauliflower- and beetroot-enhanced wraps. There are corn wraps – just buy what you like.
You can fill them with chicken or turkey slices, and add some cucumber or lettuce. Make sure you dry it really well before adding it to the wrap. You could do hummus with any kind of meat that you like. You could do shredded chicken with mayo, or even slices of chicken. There’s grated or shredded carrot, or you can do chunks of chicken with mayonnaise, and then add baby tomatoes, little pieces of cucumber, lettuce, and some sprouts.
Add anything you’d like to your wraps, and then roll them up and slice them so that they’re in almost bite-sized pieces. They you can easily pick up and eat them without having to grab and eat the whole thing. That’s really key because if you try to eat the whole wrap, it becomes rather messy. Somehow the rolled up lunch meats help it to stay together, so you can slice it into small swirls to eat.
Pita pockets are great carriers for food. You get gluten-free pitas, and you also get sweet potato ones. Take a pita bread and cut it in half – that’s the easiest way to open and fill it. Then you can add shredded rotisserie chicken. It’s easy to buy a rotisserie chicken and shred a whole lot of it. Add some mayo, add some celery or cucumber, or whatever you like to make a chicken salad. You can add grapes, or whatever you prefer, and then stuff it into the pocket.
Take those filled halves and stack them upright in your container. Then you can eat half at a time without it being too messy. These are also great cold or at room temperature. You could also use croissants to stuff with chicken mayo or chicken salad.
Then there are bowls. Bowls are great, and often you can get ones that are takeout style, made out of cardboard, or some kind of material that is environmentally friendly if you want, or you could use a plastic bowl with a lid. We like to use bowls made of sugarcane because they’re better for you than paper plates. You get great plates and bowls made from sugarcane. Once you have a bowl, look at the size, and decide what to put in it. Think of it like a takeout from your favorite restaurant. What would they do?
A section of it can be meat – again, you can do shredded rotisserie chicken, or tuna salad or tuna mayo. You could do some kind of cooked beef, either shredded or sliced. I wouldn’t recommend using mince or bolognese because those are rather messy. You can even do pulled pork, flavoring it nicely.
You can do another section with some rice if you want to, or leave out the carbs and just go with vegetables. You can do slices of cucumber or tomato, or avocado. You can do something like haloumi cheese or feta – dairy is great to add to the meat. You could add pitted olives. Just fill in sections. You can do grated carrot, or anything that you enjoy that’s good raw or that works well cold, and that’s not too messy.
You could also do something lin the bowls ike quinoa or rice in one, and then add some chicken and roasted vegetables. Take red pepper, zucchini, and brinjal or aubergine, and roast them in the oven with a little bit of olive oil and salt. Then add that to your chicken. That’s a great option for a gluten-free bowl.
Put the lid on your bowl with a plastic spoon inside. You can eat some when you want, and then put the lid back on. This is a great option for if you want to go lower carb, and just go with meat and veg, or fruit and dairy. Of course, you can add lots of fruit. You can add blueberries, sliced strawberries, or citrus wedges that you’ve pulled apart. If you’re doing dairy, there are small mozzarella bowls which taste amazing.
Then there’s bento boxes. All the things I’ve mentioned for the bowl can also be used in a bento box. You can also add beans. If you have any kind of beans, add them to your chicken bowl. A bento box or any kind of divided lunchbox is always helpful. Again, you can add some dairy like feta or mozzarella balls. You can have a meat section, a fruit section, and one for things like carrots, cucumber, olives, baby tomatoes, and that kind of vegetables.
You can even add some chocolate chips or some little snacks like that. Meat sticks are great – you can break them up and put them in there. Try to have variety, and try to fill each part of the lunchbox with something different that’ll be nutritious. You can add broken-up hard-boiled eggs, and nuts like almonds or cashews, et cetera. We’re going for food that’s easy to eat without being messy – we don’t want to have too much messy marinade or sauce. It should be an easy meal that you can snack on without it being too cumbersome.
You could also do a mason jar if you like that kind of thing. It depends on how easy it is to transport, you can do a salad-type thing in a mason jar. Maybe add chickpeas or something like that. You can put the dressing at the bottom so that it doesn’t make all the cucumber and et cetera soft.
Then, when you’re ready to eat it, just shake it up and eat it from the jar – the pieces of feta, cucumber, tomato, maybe sprouts, or whatever you’ve got in your salad. The easiest way to eat a salad without it being too messy is with a mason jar. Take a long fork or something, maybe even a fondue fork, so that you can eat easily from the jar without it being messy.
In a similar way, you could do a yogurt jar or a smoothie jar. In a yogurt jar, you could put some Greek yogurt or high protein yogurt, and then add some granola and some chopped fruit or berries with a little bit of maple syrup. Then mix it just before you eat it. Make layers – the yogurt first, then maybe the granola, the fruit on top, and then maple syrup. Mix it just before you eat it so that nothing gets too soggy.
You can also make a smoothie. I’ve got a machine that’s similar to a bullet, but the plastic container that you blend in with the blade becomes a cup. You just have to change the lid. It’s very well sealed, and it’s easy to eat or drink from. When you want a smoothie, make your favorite one and take it with you in a smoothie jar or a mason jar. I like to make one with a combination of coconut cream, blueberries, and honey. If I want more protein, I’ll make one with nut butter, some fruit, and maybe some chocolate chips. You add banana, or apple, or whatever your favorite is.
Speaking of apples, you could put together a little container with a few apple slices and some nut butter. You just need some pre-sliced apples, and you can dip them into the nut butter for a good snack. For this, you need a small plastic container with a lid. I prefer glass containers, but those are always heavier, and obviously, they’re breakable, so perhaps for outings it’s easier to use good quality plastic containers.
Similar to the salad jar, you could make a taco salad jar. Layer salsa, black beans, and seasoned meat – ground beef, turkey, pulled beef, or even chicken. Then add a layer of cheese and some lettuce. When you’re ready to eat, mix it up or scoop it out with tortilla chips. If you’re doing that, it might work better to make this one in a shallower container than a mason jar.
Baby skewers are great. You can put grilled chicken on them, perhaps with some feta or some peppers. You can put zucchini on skewers. Just meat by itself on skewers is great too, with some kind of sauce like tzatziki to dip it into.
A Caprese salad is always great. You can do slices of fresh mozzarella with cherry tomatoes or sliced large tomatoes, basil leaves, and maybe a drizzle of basil pesto or balsamic vinegar.
Muffins are always great. You can make egg muffins by just whisking up some egg, adding chopped vegetables, cheese, pieces of bacon, and et cetera, and then baking them. Grab one of those for on the go.
Another idea for a gluten-free wrap is to use lettuce. Wrap your sliced meat; your sliced chicken or turkey in a piece of lettuce with some avocado, tomato, et cetera, and then roll it up. This is a bit messier than the wrap version, but it’s still good and nutritious, and that’s what we’re going for.
Remember to keep things cool. It helps if you have a small cooler bag in the car that you can stick your containers in. Make sure you’ve also got good water and juice with you on the go. Also, maybe you can batch prep some food on a Sunday, or have something for dinner that you use for the next lunchtime.
Here are some more little snack container ideas. You can do veggie sticks like cucumber sticks, carrot sticks, or celery sticks, with a dip like hummus, almond butter, or tzatziki. You can also put these in part of a divided lunchbox or bento box. You can do mini cheeses and crackers. There are rice crackers or wheat crackers, and you can get some Babybel cheese, some soft cheese like Laughing Cow cheese, or some packages of cream cheese that you can scoop with the crackers.
You could make your own trail mix. Do a pack with nuts and fruit. There are almonds, cashews, raisins, pretzels, dark chocolate chips, small seeds like pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and whatever you enjoy. Combine them with a few little treats and some delicious, nutritious things.
You can also make energy balls. These can contain peanut butter, almond butter, oats, honey, chocolate chips, chia seeds, et cetera. You could also do rice cakes or corn cakes with toppings to dip them into or to spread onto them – things like almond butter with honey. It’s better to dip it, as it’s slightly less messy. You could also have the rice cakes sandwich style.
Try to start off with some good, nutritious whole foods for a packed lunch, even if it’s in parts. Start with something like a bowl, a wrap, or a Pita – something filling that’s got a good variety of foods, good protein, et cetera. Then add some small snacks in separate containers, or in a divided container. You can do things like small pieces of salad, crudités, small chopped fruit pieces, dairy, nuts and seeds, and et cetera.
So, I hope this has given you a few good ideas. It’s so important to plan these things in advance, because if you’re like me, you’ll end up buying something like a packet of chips and not eating properly. Or you’ll forget to eat and end up getting a headache, and getting somewhere without food. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Once you get into the rhythm of it, it really works well.
