I work from home, so I can go to the fridge whenever I like to grab food, but my wife has a more traditional job that takes her out of The House for long stretches at a time. Consequently, I need to pack her lunches. I never seem to plan ahead for it, either - typically I just take a bit of everything and toss it into her lunch bag, along with one or two bigger items (sandwiches, wraps, sometimes leftovers from dinner), and she's fine with that. Could probably be more organized, but apparently I don't have to be...? Shrug. How do you plan lunches for your spouse, or kids, or even yourself? Do you cobble things together at the last minute like me, or do you plan well in advance?
I always pack leftovers for lunches. I try and plan my dinners based on what's on sale in the flyers and just make extra. One of my kids love leftovers for lunch and my other hates it. For him I bake a large batch of muffins on the weekend and he'll eat these as his main course at school each day. For him I throw in a cheese string, yogurt, baby carrots and a cookie and he's good. I always try and have fruit in the house that I can put in lunches as well. Baby carrots, grape tomatoes, cucumbers are great with hummus too. I'll cut these up and put in baggies and I jus t have to grab them and go. I think I'm organized until the morning when I'm scrambling to put all the lunches together. If I was really organized I'd have them ready to go the night before and just have to throw in a cold pack and the refrigerated items.
My Mother's friend liked to cook the night before for lunches to take the next day. The next morning all you have to do is proportion them and get it packed and it's ready for a lunch to take anywhere. I myself like to cook ahead of time that I'll need food so all I have to do is reheat them and serve. Sometimes I get so busy so it's handy to have cold cuts to make sandwiches, of course you'd have bought the bread already and have condiments for your sandwich. People love snacks so I stock up on things that I can just unwrap too especially if it's nutritious it's even better. Sale buying is easy and economical so you'll have in stock for the whole week food for lunches. Variety is important too so it's good idea to make a list of your wife's favorite things and get them in quantity when on sale if it keeps. This way your wife will have variety, good & nutritious food to eat and won't get bored eating leftovers all the time. Good luck.
We usually use leftovers. Occasionally I'll make a sandwich the night before and leave it in the fridge. But we don't plan ahead unless we know we'll use the leftovers from dinner. Or my husband just buys very cheap meals at the grocery store on his lunch break. It'd be a lot better to plan ahead and as someone said, use variety. Not the same thing every day. Make a list for a week or so in advance.
My lunch usually consists of the food that I ate earlier in the morning. I don't mind it though because I get to save money by not buying food from my university's cafeteria which costs a fortune by the way. Someone should really regulate cafeteria prices because they're causing a hard time for students who don't have any access to other food sources.
Amazon actually sells a set of reusable plastic lunch trays with lids, which come in either single, double, or triple divided designs. You could probably save quite a bit, as well as eat much healthier, by making your own frozen meals using these, as opposed to buying commercially available frozen meals on a regular basis or scrambling to raid your fridge for something to bring for lunch each day. In my opinion, the less thought and effort you put into bringing a good lunch to work with you, the more likely you're going to be to ditch it and go pay for lunch at a local restaurant, which will become costly really quickly. It's not much effort to make your own TV dinners, which are often pasta based and already use cheap ingredients to begin with. Cook off some sturdy pasta like rigatoni or cavatelli, then toss in a little oil to keep from sticking, and dump on some baking sheets and freeze them in your freezer. This will help keep the pasta from swelling too much and absorbing any sauce too much before it freezes. Then just simply portion off the pasta in these containers, along with a cheap jar or two of some pasta sauce and perhaps some frozen veggies and a little cheese, and you've already got meals that would be much cheaper than buying them all individually for a couple dollars each.
Since I'm busy mornings through to the afternoon every day, it would be inconvenient for me to, after doing all that hard work done, to home and cook some lunch. What I always do is cook the food that I'll eat at lunchtime in the evening — Supper + lunch.
As a vegetarian I do plan any packed lunch I take with me, first how it smells, how durable it is in my bag, and how long it will last. I tend to pack wraps with hummus and vegetables or an egg mayonnaise one if it will be eaten within a few hours. Sometimes I take a small pot of pasta salad instead and vary it form day to day.
It is great to take leftovers from dinner the night before for lunch, because that way it means that nothing is going to be wasted, and your partner could have something to eat that is tasty and nutritious at the same time, which of course can only be a good thing. If I was planning lunches I would make sure that everything I bought could be used, as nothing annoys me more than wasting food. I just think that it is so unnecessary in this day and age.
I think the best way to go about it is to do a good amount of research for certain tactics and recipes you could do. I found a video on youtube, for example, showing how easy it is to make premade soft tacos and burritos to put in the freezer for later use. I think this is one of the better tactics since they are easy to take out and heat up and easy to carry around, not to mention they are also easy to eat as you could pretty much get a full meal just eating with one hand if you're really that busy since the ingredients of burritos usually contain proteins and grains and vegetables.
As we have our main meal in the evening and the majority of my cooking is done then - I find it easier - as I don't have much time during the day - to prepare something for lunch the following day at the same time - especially as it doesn't take much - to either - turn an extra portion of that night's dinner into an entirely different but tasty lunchtime snack with the addition of a few extra ingredients or as I always have a good supply of previously cooked meals in my freezer - for times when I'm exceptionally busy - to transform one of those into lunch for the following day.
Like you, I eat lunch at home. I usually have leftovers from the day or two before for lunch. If we do not have leftovers readily available, then I usually make a tuna sandwich or heat up a homemade frozen burrito for lunch. Both are pretty inexpensive and quick to prepare. My husband does not care for leftovers, however he will take them in his lunch to work sometimes. One of us usually prepares his lunch the night before. He prefers to have a lunch meat sandwich with snacks, such as cheese and crackers, or cookies. His lunches are less frugal, however, I do look for coupons for such items before grocery shopping.
We do as much of our weekly meal prep as we possibly can on Sundays, so we usually gather all our groceries at that point. My husband is on a high protein diet, so he grills up his food for the week and we have 5 reheatable, divided dishes that he puts his meats/fish and veggies in so during the week he can grab one as he heads to work. I usually just bring a salad every day for lunch because it's quick to eat, so I'll buy all the veggies I need on Sunday and I usually do any chopping or peeling or slicing that needs to be done in the morning before I leave.
Lately, I have gotten in to the habit of grabbing what ever is handy for my lunch. Seems like it's an after thought most mornings lately, but it didn't used to be for me. I would plan breakfasts, lunches and dinners each week, buy accordingly and prepare well ahead of time. I need to get back to that and start eating healthier. I think I tend to burn out on certain foods and recipes and loose all interest in watching what I eat. Thanks for the reminder that prepared lunches maybe do matter.
I love lunches from home. It is cheap and you know you are going to like it versus buying something you are not sure about. On YouTube, I have watched these Asian people put together what they called a bento lunch box. It's like a regular lunch box but it has little compartments for separating the foods which are usually just left overs from dinner, vegetables and fruit for dessert. Cooking with dog is my favorite channel so if you get tired of planning the same lunch, you can look them up for some good ideas like egg rolls, salads,ect.
We usually have a list at home. Not exactly a menu or recipe but just a guide for the week like chicken for 2 days, beef for 1 day, vegetables for 1 day, fish for 1 day, etc. But for special occasions, specially marked are the food for that day like a birthday or anniversary. It is better to have a plan so that when I go to the market, I already know what to buy. That saves a lot of time on my part. Besides, I have the mind to select the quality of the food that I would buy.
