A Study in Greens: The How to Pack Lunch When You Can Barely Get through the Day Post

I admit that I used to focus a lot of energy on lunch. I’d make sure that I prepped needed ingredients beforehand (even days in advance) so that I would always have an abundant and fresh pile of greens paired with something savory each day. I’d have salads with curried sweet potatoes, sprout wraps with nut pate, heaping containers of local baby kale or arugula with wild rice and olives. Even on those days when I woke up late, I’d still have a supply of ripe avocado and cherry tomatoes to have a huge avo-tomato tortilla plate (I still keep a bag of unsalted tortilla chips in my desk) to satiate in the middle of a crazy day. I even made my salad dressing from scratch. Every. Single. Day.  Now, with so many (important!) things vying for my attention that seems like some alternate reality when I had more that 5 minutes to devote to what I am going to ingest in the 20 minutes I have for lunch. This lack of focus has produced some horrifying results: espresso binges, bagel overdoses, desperate almond scrounging in my desk and purse, grease truck weaknesses, and the list could go on. When it is more important than ever to keep my strength up to face each day, how can I deal with lunch?

This year, I have attempted to do better and I realized that if I relaxed my standards just a little (seriously, how did I ever have time to make dressing from scratch) and gave that 5 minutes of thought some actual thought, I could keep up with lunches, and stay away from hangry brain decisions.

The key here is to always expect to take a bag full o’ greens to work with you. What you pair with them will make that healthy base taste good. So, each week I already plan on having some romaine, spinach and/or kale on hand (I am religious about making morning green smoothies - more on that later) and one other green. Usually this is arugula, but I don’t discriminate (with the exception of Swiss Chard – I just cannot). This never changes so I always have enough greens to go around.

Now the fun part! What do you pair with your greens? As you have already read previously, I used to whip up homemade veggie delights to nestle in the bed of verdant lushness– well now, I sometimes just grab a bag of Trader Joe's Frozen falafel for the week and a bag o' organic spinach to boot. The trick to succeed is to not spend any time thinking about it and to never feel guilty. So here are some of my recent examples of lunch. Hope you enjoy!

Spiralized zucchini and carrots with buckwheat noodles and not-really-authentic Pad Thai dressing over romaine

The spiralizing takes time, but luckily my grocery store carries prepared packs of noodle-fied veggies! I also have a tiny one and can make carrot or zucchini noodles in about 10 minutes.

You cook the buckwheat noodles according to the package (I did mine the night before) and then toss with the veggies in 1T tamari, 1 tsp maple syrup, spritz of lime juice. Throw in some peanuts and you are done. Sometimes I have this on top of some romaine.

Mushrooms, spinach and potatoes

This is as easy as it sounds. Heat mushrooms and some small potatoes (I used unsalted canned here, but usually have leftovers) in some salt, pepper, splash of tamari and I like the smoky flavor from liquid smoke. Put it all over spinach. If I take this to work, I heat the already cooked potato and mushroom slightly in the micro and put it over the spinach to wilt. This looks like I have not spinach, but it completely shrunk and sucked up all the yummy saltiness!!!

Kale and spring rolls

These are Trader Joe’s frozen veggie spring rolls. I cook them the night before or have them as leftovers from dinner and just put them over kale. Then I use my stand-by tamari, lime and a little maple syrup.

Romaine and Falafel

This is by far the easiest. Again, T Joe’s comes to the rescue with frozen falafel that can be ready in 2 minutes. Cook the falafel, throw it over some lettuce and add your fav dressing. For me, I like a vegan ranch or some tahini-based creaminess. 

Kale and leftover lentils

I literally threw leftover lentil soup on top of kale and ate it up.

Arugula, rice, chickpeas

Leftover rice tossed with some chickpeas over arugula with a teeny-tiny splash of EVOO and apple cider vinegar.

Some tips:

* Keep EVOO and some vinegar at work for dressing on the fly

* Always incorporate leftovers
* Always have 1-2 frozen options in emergency situations. You can grab one with your bag of greens and have something healthy waiting for you.