What to eat for Lunch

Any of you regular readers will have seen numerous posts before detailing some of the meals I make myself for lunch.

I acknowledge that as a self-employed home-based worker, I have the flexibility to make lunch my main meal of the day, which is something many of you would struggle with, if you are based in an office, shop, factory or warehouse. I appreciate that flexibility. But still, you can copy some of my lunch ideas, cook them at the weekends and take them in to work, eat them cold, microwave reheat them, or just use them for your dinner ideas.

For me, lunch is my main meal of the day. Because I am home based, I tend to work out in the middle of the day (not every day, I also train first thing in the morning some days) and then I have a large late lunch, my post-training meal and biggest meal of the day. But your routine might be different. Maybe you go to the gym after work, then have your main meal as your evening meal, so just take these lunch ideas and make them your dinner ideas. Not really rocket science, is it?

Post-workout protein

Lunch needs to contain a big hit of protein for me. I often have meat left over, if I do a Sunday roast for my family, then often Monday and Tuesday lunch will be left-over meat reheated in a frying pan with a drizzle of olive oil (keep roasted meat moving as you reheat it, otherwise it will dry out and go chewy in a way it wouldn’t if you were cooking it fresh from raw) and I throw in whatever veggies I have. No you may think that sounds a bit dull, a bit tasteless, but you should go back and read some of my other blog entries…since I have cleaned sugar from my diet, I can actually taste real food again now. When I make a meal of some left over roast pork with a fistful of kale, some broccoli and half a red pepper…I can actually taste red pepper, kale, pork and broccoli. And they taste good. Not sweet and addictive, like most of the food they sell in supermarkets in boxes, packets and shiny wrappers, but real flavours, earthy and wholesome.

I make salads with diced pork or chicken tossed over the top. Salad with mackerel or salmon or tuna. Salad with hard boiled eggs. Salad with cold left over roast chicken.

I stir fry a bland tin of tuna with green beans, fresh tomatoes and green peppers, add a pinch of black pepper and if you need it, add a fresh chilli.

Organic chicken salad

How about the pic posted here – chicken thigh pieces stir fried for ten mins, with a salad of tomato, yellow pepper and avocado, with a few sprouted beans and a large slice of fresh lime.

Some days I grill a bunch of sausages, then keep what I don’t eat in the fridge for the next day. It’s amazing how fast I can produce a hot meal when I need one. Drizzle olive oil in a pan, whack the heat up, throw in a handful of greens, chop up a leek and some cabbage, chop some of the left over sausages into chucks, throw them in with onions, mushrooms, broccoli chopped up small, whatever veg you have. Stir that lot around for 5 or 6 minutes and you’re done. The idea is not to try to actually cook these veggies in a frying pan, we are really just warming them up and softening them a little. Veggies are best not over-cooked, they retain more of their nutrients, and indeed as many others would tell you, raw is best…but I personally find that eating them cold and raw makes for a miserable meal in the grip of winter in England. I like a hot meal, so this works a treat.

I hope that reading this, you realise the ease and simplicity of these meals. Making a hot lunch rarely takes me more than 10 or 15 minutes, and the meals are mostly meat or fish with some fresh vegetables. There is rarely more than 5 or 6 total ingredients, and nothing comes from a packet, box, tin or carton. No junk, and if you feel you need seasoning…a twist of black pepper, a pinch of turmeric or cumin, fresh basil, parsley or coriander from my herb garden, it doesn’t take much.

If you are used to eating boxed frozen pizza, oven chips, cream cakes and Mars bars, microwave lasagne, frozen ready meals and tubs of Haagen Dazs, then you WILL find this food bland and tasteless – but that’s ‘cos YOU are broken, not the food. Take the sugar-laden garbage out of your life and your palate will learn to taste real food again, and then you will see that this kind of food tastes great, and it’s really good for you.

In the next post, we’ll finish with dinner.