School/Work Lunch Ideas

[suzer]

Just watching the 60 mins special on trans fats. Hubs eats deli meat sandwiches and meat pies, and I eat take away (some healthy stuff some not). Am thinking we really need to start making better lunches, but not sure where to start aside from sandwiches, fruit....

What do you make? Sandwich filler suggestions? (I don't think of deli meat as healthy - would be keen to do vego a couple of days a week too.)

[kfoley0681]

my husband has pack lunches everyday and often gets sick of sandwiches so sometimes like wraps as an alturnative. i do him roasted vegtables with or without home made salsa and salad, ceaser salad, curried egg as something other than cheese and ham!! also he occasionally likes to take a dip with cucumber, peppers, carrot and celery sticks and you can buy the single serve packs of homus, cream cheese dips in super markets also i go to the fruit markets at the weekends and my kids like to take a big box of fruit salad as an alturnative! just a few suggestions!

[suzer]

Roasted veg and curried egg salad sound like great ideas. I make my own humous (easy, much cheaper and you can change it up).

Homemade salsa sounds fantastic - have you got a recipe to share?

[Lol63]

Deli meat is fine as long as you don't get the over-processed stuff like chicken loaf, bung fritz, a better alternative is leg ham off the bone, champagne ham and silverside. They are nicer IMO if you ask for them shaved. My kids take butties most days, sometimes they will take quiche, it's healthier if you make it without pastry, and they enjoy just salad with cheese chunks in a small container. They like the little packets of dried fruit as well.

[suzer]

Sounds like you do some nice lunches for your kids - I remember peanut butter sandwiches when I was growing up!

[RockDr]

sandwich fillers, I like egg mayo +tomato, tuna mayo with sweetcorn (+lettuce/tomato), or (light?) cream cheese with sweet chilli sauce (+lettuce), brie sundried tomato and pesto, hummous with thinly sliced fresh capsicum/peppers/"whatever your flavour of english calls them". Good bread makes or breaks a sandwich though.

Otherwise we have a microwave at work, so I often just make a little extra dinner and take that for lunch the next day. Or bring in home-made soup and a couple of slices of bread from the breadmaker-made bread (if don't have microwave at work, could always put the hot soup in a thermos flask).

[newlife]

a really nice filling for a roll is Brie, cranberry and grape. best in the crusty baguettes

[Diane]

As a change from sandwiches, I sometimes buy the ready cooked vol au vent cases (on sale in the cake section of Foodland!) and fill them with the following:

Chop an onion finely and saute till soft, add either raw chicken chopped into small bits, or cooked chicken. (Cook, if raw). Then add whatever you fancy such as chopped ham, sweetcorn, frozen peas, mushrooms, chopped sundried tomatoes... then stir in a tin of condensed campbells cream of chicken, or chicken and mushroom soup. Heat through then use to fill vol au vent cases. If you want to eat some hot, put in the oven for 10-15 minutes till the case is heated up. Whatever is left over, put in the fridge until you're in a major panic at 8am and packing lunchboxes. Put one, two or three (depending on appetite and size of vol au vent case) into a lunchbox. Add couple of cherry tomatoes as garnish.

In the UK, they used to sell uncooked vol au vent cases (basically puff pastry cut to shape) but they don't seem to do that here.

[cbeeb]

home made sushi, can do with avocado. get recipes off web. soup in flasks when colder, we also do dips loads of fruit. if have access to microwave left over dinner. We are veggie so really easy. Pasta salad. Couscous with added veg either like greek salad or roast veg. if you make hummus why not falafel with salad in wraps. I get recipes off web so really easy.