5 ways to make lunch more interesting

Last week it was just tips on eating healthily. This week’s food related post leads me to lunchtime. It’s always the way – what do you actually have for lunch that’s interesting? Have enough sandwiches for lunch at school and you’ll never want a squashed slightly curling cling filmed sandwich again. In fact the same could be said for almost every lunch – repetition gets boring. However in the workplace culture at UK plc time can be short and rushed – there’s no Michelin star fix for this, however this week I’m going to attempt to come up five ways to make your workplace lunch more interesting.

1. Cook enough the night before to have for lunch the next day.
Possibly the easiest tip of all. I’m forever cooking extra so I can zap it in the work microwave the following day. Of course it doesn’t work all the time – but things like curries, chillis, stews and so on are fantastic to take to work the next day. They’re quick, simple and usually a fairly filling option.

2. Cook something especially for lunch the night before.
Ok, so this is almost a repeat of the previous point, but it still holds true. 30 minutes spent cooking something simple and cheap like a lentil curry on Tuesday night can give you lunch for Wednesday and Thursday. It also saves time because all you do is pick it up out of the fridge in the morning instead of spending time making those sandwiches….

3. Have a salad instead.
Salads are fantastic and versatile. Some do, quite unfairly I might add, call them boring but my argument here would be if their salad is boring then they simply aren’t making it interesting enough. Salad doesn’t just have to be lettuce, cucumber, tomato and some sliced ham. Salad can be leftover roasted meat from the night before, grated carrot, some diced beetroot, cherry tomatoes, sweet corn, aduki beans, strips of pepper, red onion and some fat free dressing to serve. Salads aren’t supposed to be green and red, they’re supposed to be colourful and if the food looks interesting you’re more likely to want to eat it….

4. Take dessert.
No, no, no! I am not talking here about a stodgy, sluggish carbohydrate filled doughnut, piece of cake or anything like that. Make up a little bit of a fruit salad – strawberries, melon, blueberries and raspberries make a fantastic combination and if you are that way inclined, which I am sometimes, you can always top it with some Greek yoghurt or a few cashew nuts. Much more interesting than that yoghurt which is the same brand you’ve probably been eating for the past x amount of years and also as the seasons change so can your choice in fruit.

5. Vary your lunches!
I know I’ve hinted at this throughout, but lunch is at it’s most boring if you have the same thing every day. Salads will get boring after a while, eat lentil curry for two weeks and you’ll be sick of that too. Keep your lunches interesting by varying them – make it something you want to eat, rather than something you’re eating out of habit and soon you’ll look forward to eating lunch and as with all of my foodie posts, my idea is that if you’re more interested in what you’re eating then you’re more likely to eat the right things 🙂