I’m going to be taking two weeks off from the PODCAST – for some that’s a summer break, and for other’s its winter. I’ll be back as usual on Monday 7th July! I hope you have a wonderful summer, or are not too cold during your winter!
Today we’re going to talk about what we do for lunch, and hopefully give you a little bit of inspiration if you’re struggling to figure out lunches. I’ll talk about what I do for lunch for myself as well. Sometimes I’ll eat the same as the family, and sometimes not.
We are a homeschool family of seven – we have five children. Two of them are young adults and are working, though mostly from home, so they’re still here for the meals. Our younger three are still in homeschool, two of them in high school. I do have more time available than I had when they were all young in homeschool, but I do have two businesses that I run, and a lot of things going on. We also do cooking for church on a regular basis as part of the Mercy Ministry, so there’s a lot happening. I’ll often do the online shopping or get something cooking every day in the mornings, so we need lunch that’s simple and easy. I want to tell you our general plan for lunch, and what we end up eating most of the time.
The most common ingredient in our lunches is sourdough bread. I do have a bread machine, and we do have a sourdough starter that I sometimes use, but we don’t do it very often. I’m trying to increase the frequency of that. We use freshly ground flour – spelt and red hard wheat. We like to use those fresh flours in the sourdough because of the increased nutrients. But we also have some places where we buy good sourdough loaves from. So, the most common ingredient in our lunches would be sourdough bread, and we use various things to add to that.
We’ll cook lunch every now and then as an alternative, to have something different, something new, especially when one of the kids has a cooking time scheduled as part of their day. Sometimes they’ll have half an hour or an hour to cook, and I’ll either be teaching them during that time, or they’ll do something that they’ve made before and they know how to cook. Maybe an older sibling will teach them how to make it. Most of the time it’s remaking what they’ve already learned, and some of the time it’s learning a new thing. On those days, we’ll do something different.
I’ll talk more about that soon, but let’s start with the sourdough bread. We’ll usually have one loaf of sourdough bread between the seven of us, and usually there’s a few slices left over. I don’t usually eat bread at lunchtime as I don’t usually feel like it, but sometimes I will.
Here are some of the options for what we’ll have with the bread. There’s cans of tuna. We’ll probably open between five and seven cans of tuna – the boys will eat two each – and then we’ll shred them and add mayonnaise and salt. We’ll have bread with the tuna, and then we’ll chop some cucumber, some carrots, and maybe some baby tomatoes, and we’ll get out some sprouts or avocado, and then we’ll make a meal of that. In that case, I’ll eat the tuna with the salady things, and I’ll add more items to my salad, like artichokes like in my previous episode, or little pine nuts, or olives – just various things that I like on salad.
Sometimes we’ll do baked chicken with the bread. We’ll take chicken breasts – usually it’ll be about twelve chicken breasts between the seven of us – and then we’ll bake it and we’ll shred it. Each person shreds their own chicken. Some of us add mayo or sweet chili sauce. One of my daughters adds tomato sauce – ugh! We shred the chicken, and then we’ll have that with the bread, again, with a few salady things like avocado or sprouts, et cetera.
Sometimes we’ll have soup with the bread, and that’ll either be a homemade soup or a bought soup. Sometimes on a Monday, if things are crazy, I’ll just buy some pre-made soup packages and heat that up. For that, we like things like beef and vegetable soup, pea and ham soup, sun dried tomato soup, butternut soup, or vegetable soup.
Sometimes at home we’ll make a cauliflower and cheese soup, which is delicious with some good bone broth in it, or again, a butternut and sweet potato soup with some bone broth in it. My mom in-law’s recipe for a red lentil and barley soup with a bit of grated potato and carrot is amazing. So, those things are great. We also enjoy broccoli soup, zucchini soup, or whatever works. Sometimes one of the kids will just dump the vegetables and the bone broth in to make the soup.
Then another thing we often have with sourdough is ham or other deli meat. We order from a healthy grocery store once a week, and we get ham that doesn’t contain nitrates, and sometimes pastrami – the things that children enjoy. We’ll just do the same as before with a few salad ingredients, whatever we feel like or whatever we have, and add those. Sometimes we’ll add some fruit as well, like papaya, pineapple, berries, or strawberries.
Those are the main things with bread, and that’ll be probably four times a week.
We’ll have nachos quite often; usually with ground beef, but sometimes with chicken. My middle son will often make the bolognese from the mince during his cooking time, and we’ll add a little bit less tomato puree to that than when we make bolognese. It’s a slightly different ground beef recipe for nachos.
Sometimes we’ll just do baked or crockpot chicken with it, where we just stick the chicken in the crockpot for about two and a half hours with a little bit of broth, and then it’s easy to shred. We’ll have sour cream with this meal. Some people like sour cream and some like yogurt, so we’ll have both. We’ll have a bit of salsa, some guacamole from fresh avocados, some grated cheddar, and of course, the nacho chips – lovely, salted, non GMO nacho chips. Everyone enjoys that. It’s a good warm lunch.
Another one that’s easy is baked potatoes. I’ll just stick them in the oven in the morning sometime. If we have a big bag of baked potatoes, everybody has about two, and we’ll make a bolognese or chicken to go on top. If it’s a bolognese, we’ll do the kind that we do with spaghetti, with some nice tomato and some basil pesto, or we’ll do baked chicken or crockpot chicken – shred it, and add it on top of the baked potato. Sometimes we’ll have a creamy sauce with the potatoes, similar to what you’d use in a shrimp cocktail. It’s made of mayonnaise, a little bit of tomato sauce, and some lemon juice. That’s a good lunch. Again, we’ll have some carrots, cucumber, or even carrot salad with it. My daughter likes to grate carrots, and we add in a little orange juice for a lovely carrot salad.
Then another lunch is leftovers. I don’t like to leave leftovers in the fridge anymore because I found the fridge gets too full and they get forgotten about, so now if we have some leftover meat of some kind, or some kind of casserole, I’ll put it in a glass container with a lid, and stick it in the freezer. Once a week we’ll take all the containers out of the freezer in the morning, and then at lunchtime we heat them all up and everybody takes their pick from all the different meals. We have a bit of each sometimes.
We’ll do wraps usually once a week instead of the bread. With them, we’ll have shredded or sliced chicken. We’ll add lettuce, tomato, cucumber, mayonnaise, some sweet chili sauce, some sprouts, some avocado, and have nice salad wraps. We often just keep the wraps in the freezer and take them out when we need them. It’s also good to have a few left to put back in the freezer. I also have gluten-free wraps made from carrots for my husband.
Sometimes we’ll have croissants. We can buy fresh croissants and freeze them until we need them. We have shredded chicken with mayo and sometimes celery or cucumber with them, and we’ll put it inside the croissants instead of on the bread. You can do ham and cheese slices with your croissants. Cheese also goes with a lot of the bread meals – with the tuna, with the ham, et cetera – sliced cheese of some kind. Croissants are great, and then there’s a little dessert – you can dip your croissant in butter and honey without slicing it open. Use an extra small croissant for your dessert.
Another fun idea for lunch, and one that gives you a bit of a break from table setting and dishes, is to get the kids to take their lunch outside. Our kids used to love doing this when they were younger. In this case, you can do a similar lunch to what you would do a packed lunch for school or work. You can use paper plates or plates with little compartments.
You can do a little bit of cucumber in one compartment, some baby carrots in another, and the kids can make their own sandwiches using croissants or bread with ham and cheese, or anything that goes well outside. Sometimes we would have drinking yogurts or individual yogurts. Sometimes we do trail mix, or some jerky or biltong. Sometimes we do fruit like berries. Easy finger foods are great – blocks of cheese, crackers – there are many great things that could work for this. You can also use up leftovers this way, and eat them with raisins, or any kind of leftover snacky things that you have in the fridge.
Sometimes we’ll have tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. The kids will grate the cheese, slice the bread, put the butter on, and a bit of salt; make the grilled cheese sandwiches, and then warm the soup. It’s quick and easy.
Every now and again, we’ll get a couple of rotisserie chickens. It takes two to feed our family, and we’ll just add salad type sides to that. The kids can shred it, or they can eat the parts – the drumsticks, the breasts, et cetera. That’s a quick and easy lunch.
A salad that I really like to have, but that we can also use as a table salad, is the Caprese salad. You use a slice of buffalo mozzarella, or a fancy mozzarella ball cut into nice thin slices. You can use any mozzarella, but it’s extra delicious with that one. To this, you add slices of any large tomato, and some basil leaves. Basil pesto is also delicious with it. Then you drizzle it with balsamic vinegar and add a little salt to the tomato. For me, that’ll be enough for lunch on its own, and the kids will maybe have one or two pieces of it with their lunch.
I also like to have something like a whole artichoke or a little smoothie, or something else that works well on the side. I like doing corn chips with just guacamole and a bit of yogurt. I’ll often have something similar to what the kids are having, and use some of the ingredients, but not all of them.
Our Sunday lunches are usually grilled burgers. My oldest son grills them. We’ll just do grilled burger patties with sliced cheese that’s slightly melted on top. We’ll have some tomato and cucumber on the side, the burger buns, which are toasted, and some sauces – tomato sauce, mayonnaise, et cetera. That makes for a very easy, regular Sunday lunch.
On the days when we have pizza, which is usually a Friday evening, I’ll try to do something more substantial in terms of protein with the lunch. I won’t use bread on a Friday, as we’ll generally have pizza, which has bread, for the Friday evening meal.
So, lunches really don’t have to be as complicated as dinners – not that your dinners have to be complicated either. It’s good to have a five minute lunch list, or to have some ideas in your head that you do regularly. Don’t worry about repetition. It’s great for the kids – they love repetition because then they know what to expect. It’s great for you because then you don’t have to think too hard, and you can always have the ingredients on hand, or buy them each week. A regular simple lunch of sandwiches or soup is generally great, and it’s nutritious too.
So, I hope I’ve given you a few ideas. If you have any great ideas for your lunches that you do often, please let me know. I’d love to hear from you, and I’d love to get new ideas. My email is karyn@familyfoodformoms.com
