Today I wanna talk about packed lunches – how to plan them, how to make them healthy using whole foods, and I’ll mention a few different ideas for them. This could be for your kids’ lunches at school. It could be for your husband’s packed lunch if you do that for him when he goes off to work. It could be for your own packed lunch if you go out to work or to anywhere else during the day, maybe for when you’re sitting in the car waiting for your kids from ballet or whatever it might be. It can even be for at home – sometimes it helps to have meals prepared in advance, although those would more likely be something you’re going to heat up at home, and that you’ve prepared beforehand. A packed lunch, however, would be something that can be eaten cold, and would generally be very hearty, nutritious, and delicious.
We recently got a heatable lunch box for my husband and son who go to the office once a week. It’s very useful, because it gives you so many more options for things to do, and it’s just like a steamer. You add your food to little stainless steel dishes, and then you put a little water in the bottom of the box, and you let it steam for half an hour to an hour to heat up the food. That way, there’s no need to use a microwave or whatever else might be there. You can just warm it at your desk. This is useful because then you can pack any cooked ingredient that just needs heating. For today, though, I want to talk about items that you can put in a lunchbox that will be eaten cold.
The first thing I recommend is that you draw your lunchbox on a piece of paper. Take the lunchbox that you’re going to use – one that has a few compartments is very helpful, because then you can separate all your food items. Draw the shape of the compartments on a piece of paper, and then down the side you can write ideas for each category that I’m going to mention.
You’ll want to have a category for the main method of holding the food. Is it going to be bread for a sandwich, maybe some nice sourdough? Is it going to be a wrap? Is it going to be focaccia that you can use for a sandwich? Is it going to be pita bread that you can put food inside, maybe cut in half, or is it simply going to be like a charcuterie board in a box, where there are all kinds of finger foods? Remember with your sourdough, your wrap, your pita bread, or whatever you’re using, you can toast it either before you fill it or after. If it’s bread, you would toast before. A wrap is sometimes nice to toast in a pan after it’s wrapped, as it helps you seal it, and it gives it a nice crispy outer crust. You can even use focaccia bread, and give that a little toast.
If you’re gluten-free, other than gluten-free bread, you could use something like polenta. Italian polenta is amazing. You just cook it in a pot with water – the instructions are usually on the packaging – and you have to softly stir it until it’s a nice consistency like porridge, and then you spread it on the counter or on a tray. Once it’s set, you cut it into wedges, and then you toast those, and they’re amazing. Then you just put your toppings on them, or use them as sandwich slices.
Then look at your lunchbox, or at the drawing of your lunchbox shapes, and think about where you’d put the main part of the meal, whether it’s a sandwich or a wrap, et cetera. Like I’ve mentioned, list all the items that you might possibly use for the sandwich or wrap part of the meal in that section on the right.
Then we’re gonna look at what kind of protein there is in the meal, and let’s say protein and fat can be one category. This would be things like deli meats and cheeses – try to use different kinds of cheeses. Mozzarella has lower protein, but it’s delicious. Aged cheddar is very good. It’s got a high vitamin K2 level, and it’s a fermented food, so it’s good for the gut, et cetera. Find your favorite cheeses. There are also soft cheeses that you can either put on the sandwiches, or put in individual portions, like laughing cow cheese. Write all those items down as possibilities. You could also call that category meats and cheeses – that’s simpler. There are other options like grilled chicken that you’ve pre-made, and that you cut into slices. There’s also tuna mayo and shredded chicken mayo.
Another good thing to put under the sandwich items is a croissant. It’s delicious if you make a croissant with ham and cheese slices or something similar, just as an alternative to bread. Of course, there are buns such as burger buns; different styles of rolls, longer rolls – any of those work great. Is there anything else you can think of to go in either of the first two categories? Add that.
Then let’s talk about some raw veggies to add to the sandwiches or to the lunchbox. Some great ones are sliced cucumber, sliced tomato, sliced red pepper or even lettuce with a bit of salt – anything that fits on a sandwich. It’s great to add those to make it crunchy and more interesting. You can also add things like mayo, tomato sauce, and barbecue sauce to the sandwiches. These items could be placed separately in your lunchbox. Look at your lunchbox picture and plan, and decide “Okay, this section’s going to have a bit of cheese. This one’s gonna have a piece of fruit. This one’s gonna have some kind of salad or vegetables.”
For the salad or vegetables container, you can do something simple like sliced or chopped cucumber with sliced tomato and feta cheese mixed up in there. You could add a little olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette to that, or if you have one, you could put a tiny sauce container with a little bit of balsamic and olive oil in it for the person eating the meal to shake up and add to the salad. You could do a little salad kebab – on a salad stick, you stick a baby tomato, some feta, a chunk of cucumber and a pitted olive. You get olive pitters, which help with that.
Or you could do just one kind of vegetable, maybe some sliced red pepper, some cucumber with a bit of basil pesto on it, or some sliced up artichoke hearts with a bit of salt. You can do anything that’s a good vegetable. You could do a little carrot salad with a tiny bit of orange juice; just grated carrot with orange juice mixed in or kept separate in the little salad dressing container. You could do a few carrot and cucumber sticks, and maybe some celery sticks, to go with some hummus in a small container. Alternatively, you could just put the hummus in the bottom of the little compartment, and add little carrot, celery, and cucumber sticks on top of it. So, write down all your ideas for your vegetable compartment.
Then it’s great to have some fruit. It adds a bit of sweetness, and a little treat to the meal. You could do blueberries or chopped strawberries. You could do chocolate covered strawberries for a treat. You could do a fruit kebab that has a grape, a piece of melon, a berry, and anything like that on a little cocktail stick. You could do a few of those, or you could do melon balls; sweet melon ones, or various others. You could do watermelon or grapes. You could do sliced apple, perhaps with a little bit of almond butter to dip into. Again, you can put the almond butter in the bottom of the compartment, and then add the apple slices above. Squeezing a little bit of lemon juice over the apple helps it not to get brown. You can put in any fruit that you love; maybe chopped mango or papaya, those are all amazing in a lunchbox.
You could have a compartment for nuts or seeds. Write down your favorites. I would add some pecans, some cashews, and maybe some sunflower or pumpkin seeds. Do whatever you or your child or hubby enjoy.
You could have a compartment for dairy, which will be different from what you use on your sandwich or main part of the meal. The French often end their meal with some kind of cheese or yogurt, and I believe it helps with digestion. I hope that nobody’s intolerant of dairy. If you are, perhaps you have other non-dairy products that you use. So, you could have some little wedges of cheese like cheddar. Little mozzarella bowls are delicious – buffalo mozzarella. You can do a little bit of yogurt with honey on top. It’s best to use unsweetened yogurt if we’re talking about whole foods. Anything dairy-wise that fits into that small container is great. You can make it easy by using pre-portioned cheese packages. As I said earlier, you could put a laughing cow wedge or block, but it’s obviously better to use the fresh, hard cheese, goats cheese, or whatever cheese you enjoy.
Then you can do a little dessert or treat – maybe a small wrapped chocolate or some chocolate chips sprinkled in one of the containers, perhaps with a fruit, or in their own place if you have space. Anything that’s quick, easy, and delicious to end the meal with is great for this.
In the salad section, you could do mozzarella bowls with baby tomatoes, and then tear up a few basil leaves or get some basil pesto and a little bit of balsamic vinegar to put on top of those. I mentioned the croissant with the ham and cheese, but it also tastes great with chicken salad. For that, you cook the chicken breast and shred it up, add some sliced celery and a little bit of mayo, and put that on the croissant. That also works very well.Think of creative ways to cut up your sandwiches, your croissant, or your wrap so that it fits easily into the lunchbox, but also so that it’s easy to eat in bite-sized pieces, rather than one big thing, where if you bite into it, then the insides fall out. French toast slices are also a good way to get more protein if you’re going to put bread in the lunchbox. You can pre-cook French toast with some egg and milk, and then slice that and put it in the lunchbox.
Creating a lunchbox can be fun and enjoyable. It’s not easy as a mom because we have so much going on, and to find the time to do it creatively is not easy, so don’t have too high expectations. Keep it simple, especially when it’s an extra busy day or afternoon, but if you can carve out half an hour to enjoy making it, that’s great. If you plan it in advance, knowing what you need to buy and to prepare in advance, for example, cooking up the chicken breasts, then it really helps when you’re putting it together.
So, next time I’m going to talk about some actual ideas for these, using these categories, and then planning a set of meals in the lunchbox that you can do on repeat. That way, you don’t have to think creatively at the time, but you’ve already got the plans. I’ll give you some actual examples of what to use, what I’ve used, and what other people use in all these categories.
