This person’s problem can be solved by a sandwich. Takes like 3 minutes to make, or can be prepped earlier, no cooking necessary, has color, is fresh, not frozen, beats any fast food meal in price and quality. Also can even be healthy if you shop wisely. Can be different every day. Can be hot or cold. The possibilities are endless. Sandwiches are the best.
Sandwiches were literally invented to be home made, portable fast food, for hunters, workers, and the like. Not only are they ok with being wrapped up and carried, if made right they actually get better when wrapped up and squashed.
I agree sandwiches are the best. But my metabolism is just too efficient at turning carbs into fat and high blood sugar. There's just no substitute for good bread in a sandwich, all attempts at compromise/substitutions ruin the whole thing.
I don't have this problem, but lettuce wraps are shockingly good too. A good sturdy lettuce, sliced turkey, smoked cheddar and some chipotle mayo (canned chipotle en adobo, pureed, just mix some of it into mayonnaise to make a spread.) Onion if you have it. I don't understand why it's good, it sounds like nonsense but I do this when I don't have time to make bread, but do have good lettuce or homegrown lettuce in the garden. It is delicious and feels good to eat.
What do you consider ‘good bread’? Don’t buy supermarket bread, go to a good bakery and get some nice, freshly baked whole-grain bread, that should be much more difficult to turn into sugar.
So much of these news aggregate sites are morons reposting the same tired posts from absolute crayon eaters who bloviate about how critically incapable they are at basic life functions.
I am pretty sure I have ADHD and I still manage to meal prep.
Even if you cant, you can literally just have a backup plan like mine, for when I forget to cook I have some frozen chicken strips, potato wedges, and green beans, throw it all on a sheet pan and into the convection oven for 20-25 mins, boom you have a decent meal, bit more pricey than doing it from scratch, but it's quick and low effort
I do have ADHD, and while I can manage meal prep, 99% of the time I just can’t be bothered. But I force myself to do it, because the alternative is eating a bag of crisps and a big bar of chocolate and feeling like crap all afternoon.
I make slow cooked chicken burritos and freeze them.
Takes about 1 hour of prep, and about 6 hours to cook so it isn’t easy, but I only gotta do this occasionally. If I do this in conjunction with meal prep it takes a lot longer to prep, but then I can have a work week of food, and have like 8 burritos for when I’m too lazy to cook.
I'll never understand how can people eat sandwiches every day, especially those with some kind of meat in them. I'm not vegetarian but eating sandwiches for more than two days in a row make me want to puke.
I am one and it’s peanut butter every day. For 3 years basically every working day has had a peanut butter sandwich. And that’s how the next 30 some years are looking too. It’s fine. I can live that way.
I eat sandwiches every day, and the same thing or small variety. I'm not eating for the experience, I'm eating to not be hungry. I can make and eat a sandwich is less than a minute, so I can get back to doing what I want to be doing.
If I really don't feel like a sandwich, there's always toast.
Genuinely, why? Personally, I'm happy to eat basically same meals for a few days before they get boring, and you can vary your sandwiches a lot of you so desire.
Peanut butter? Upgrading to natural peanut butter made all the difference for me, so it’s no longer just for kids.
I even get decent marmalade, which definitely doesn’t work for kids, or a dark amber maple syrup. I currently have apple butter, which goes nicely on a peanut butter sandwich, or with a scoop of cottage cheese on the side
I also eat pretty much the same breakfast every day. For lunch I can vary what's on the bread and the type of bread. That's just how things are here. It's not the nicest, but it saves a lot of time and money and can also be quite nice
If you don't have a freezer that can hold two weeks worth of meals, buy one. I have three homemade frozen pizzas and a half dozen chicken pot pies waiting right now.
I can cook a whole roast chicken on Sunday and enjoy chicken tacos, chicken sandwiches, etc. all week.
I can cook a five liter pot of chili/soup/stew and freeze it into pint containers; I've got a nice hot meal any time.
My problem with that is defrosting. It requires timing and planning, which is tough due to impromptu work based meals. And some stuff once frozen tastes like crap defrosted.
If you practice and prepare you can cut down on some of the time. I used to live right next to a street of fast food joints so it was never worth it to cook myself from a time standpoint unless I was just having some frozen garbage. Now it's a 15 minute trip to pick something up if there's no line so I cook a lot more and with experience I've been able to streamline things so it goes faster. Also make enough for 2-3 meals when you cook and then "leapfrog" through the week eating the leftovers. That way you don't have to cook every day but also don't have to eat the same thing every day.
If you find a few recipies you really like and learn how to do them from memory, and then make them a lot, you learn lots of efficiencies and shortcuts that save a ton of time. Making stuff without a recipie at all is even faster.
Yeah same. I just try to cook a meal on Sunday but it doesn't get me through the entire week. Not to mention I usually need a second meal at night when I work out. It's too much.
That's the problem. It's more efficient with bigger meals. If you're single, you have to cook and then clean. If there's two of you, you can divide tasks.
Bread is a life saver. If you don't have time to cook just eat some bread. Healthy (depends on the kind of bread) and you don't have to worry about beeing hungry an hour later.
I disagree. I like cooking and since I'm working from home I can make something nice and fast at home for lunch. But I probably would have agreed back then when I worked at the office.
Just going to put this out there, cook too much the previous night, don't eat all the dinner you cooked. Place the remainder into some form of container; transport said container to work with you the next day.
Yes, eventually it ends when you’re promoted to middle management and you have to forage for granola bars and cookies during the few seconds you get between meetings. Stay an IC for as long as you can.
It's been years since I've eaten food away from my desk. And God forbid I should forget to bring food and need to run downstairs for sixteen seconds to purchase something. That's truly one of the seven deadly sins.
I would murder my whole family for a $5 sandwich meal deal in the states. Even fast food by my work is double that, and you're still only getting America-quality food packed with sugars and preservatives.
If you want to minimize cleanup and effort, just use a rice cooker.
Costs 30€
Put in rice and lentils at a ratio of your chosing, cook with oil and salt
Optionally spices and tomato paste
Put in frozen veggies either in a steaming basket or directly in the rice
Chuck in an onion (quartered if you're lazy) and some garlic
Yoghurt on the side
Congratulations you now have a healthy, cheap meal you can make at home or at work. If you eat directly out of the cooker you only need to clean your spoon. No cutting board needed either.
Mine has a non-stick pan. It all comes down to how quickly you empty it. Emptied immediately, it rinses clean. If it sits around while I eat, I’ll need to scrub a little
I'm a pretty good cook, but I don't think there's enough here to get it done. Do rice and lentils take about the same amount of water to cook? How much oil?
It's one of those "by feel" recepies. I would say 1-2 tablespoon per person. Red lentils fall apart and give a grainy texture, which you may or may not like. Black (or Beluga) lentils come out fine, or maybe a bit al dente, same for brown lentils.
Rice cooker was a surprising win for me - usually single use appliances are not worth it, but a rice cooker is, plus you can do more with it than you expect. I have rice much more frequently now that it’s just a matter of clicking a button
I have a basic 6c model that feeds my family with two hungry teens, and currently costs $20 online. Has worked great for years of 3+ meals/week. Non-stick pan makes cleanup simple, although I am trying to get away from non-stick coatings so may replace it soon: stainless steel pan version costs $40
Look I'm not saying that cooking your own lunch is a prerequisite for being an adult. However complaining about the quality of prepared food while not acknowledging you could just cook is sure as hell immature.
But seriously: for the week. I have multiple family members who do this and used to do it myself: most meals last up to a week in the fridge, so just put a little extra in Sunday night so you have leftovers for lunches.
My previous version of this was to start each week with giant: salad, pasta salad, fruit salad. Then I have a complete meal, including variety by just throwing a protein in the toaster oven.
I’m trying to restart something like this now that its back to just me all week: I have a 10 lb pork shoulder for the smoker!
I look forward to lunch every day. I make myself a wrap with some sort of oven cooked filling and a bunch of fresh veggies and some apple slices and a small bag of wasabi peas for dessert.
Jokes on you …. I’m in the US and my company is trying to bribe us back to the office with good free lunches. Still can’t compete with work from home but half and half is working so far
Honestly they should just make nutrition bricks. Just combining nutrients into a brick. It could even be modular so you can add/remove various nutrients based on your nutritional needs. The perfect life would be working for the nutrition brick manufacturer and then going home to eat some nice nutrition bricks.
Learn how to cook. It’s not that hard to throw something together that’s good after being microwaved. The other day I made some bitter-orange chicken with rice. It was 30 minutes waiting and 4 minutes coating the chicken in the pan with the sauce.
Start going to Starbucks for lunch, instead of the roadside stall and you'll understand.
I'm happy with cooking at 13:00. Better than having an extra-humid, stale-feeling lunch box
Why would you assume I am eating at roadside stalls? Cause I am Indian?? Ignoring that hopefully accidental racism, I do in fact cook lunch when I have the time with mostly rice with one of the premade mixes and quick vegetable stir frys. Shouldn't take more than 20 mins to make something simple. When I am busy I usually get something either in office or nearby restaurant. A good lunch at normal restaurants usually costs about 100-300₹ per person and could get some light food within 100₹ as well. I don't count the shit at Starbucks as a meal, maybe a snack but why a sandwich when I can get good Indian food.
Me, living in France, where a cafeteria room is mandatory, 1-2h long lunchs are the norm and your employer has to give you at least 4-5€/day to buy lunch:
Do I want to get 6 hours of sleep and then pay $25 for a shitty meal, or get 4.5 hours of sleep and cook something that I hope tastes okayish reheated in the microwave tomorrow?
It's not even an age thing, but more an economic issue, I never ran into this as an issue when the cost of eating out was affordable. Don't feel like prepping lunch the night before? Screw it, I'll pickup something during my lunch break for $3-4. But now that $3-4 is $10+
There's a variety of lunches that are cheap and insanely easy though:
Stir fry with leftover rice, an egg, and some frozen veggies
Sandwich with a piece of fruit or some veggies
Leftover soup heated up on the stove (or in the microwave if ya nasty)
Cold pasta dishes like pasta salad with leftover protein thrown on top
Charcuterie plate with cold cuts, crackers, cheeses, and jams
Salad with cold leftover proteins
Leftover fried chicken straight out the fridge, as God intended
Like sure, some of these things rely on having leftovers laying around to dress up a bit, but I think that's a reasonable thing to expect of most people.
In Brazil, if you work more that 6hs a day, the company have to give you lunch. The majority of them, give you a pre paid debit card that can be used in restaurants. This mean that they are a lot of money there that can be used in restaurants, so any office building have lots of restaurants around.
From my union contract, I get 40R daily to lunch, and the restaurant I go they serve "prato feito" (beans, rice, salad, meat) for 25, and use the rest for some icecream or to eat something with my wife at weekends.
It's works close with transit costs too, the employee can opt in to pay up to 6% of its salary, then what is miss to cover all the transit costs is paid 50/50 by the employer and the government. For example, if I need to take a bus (5R) and a metro (5R), that sum to 20R daily in transit costs, 20R × 22 working days = 440 at month. Suppose a salary of 2000 * 6% = 120. The employee pay 120, the employer 160 and the government other 160. I'm fortunate to be in a position where I don't need that benefit anymore because I live in bike distance to the office, but it saved my ass when I had to take a bus to the metro station, a metro and then another bus every day.
Most MREs that I've looked at are a bit more elaborate than your average canned product.
But the idea is the same, yes. It's more interesting than your typical canned meal, and it's more expensive, but the quality of the food, if you can call it that, is not dissimilar.
MREs usually are a more "complete" meal with a variety of components, while canned meals are just a volume of a single component.
For me it's mainly that it adds variety.
And sure, there's MREs that are like, stew, or soup, that you would probably be better off just grabbing a can of ready to eat Campbell's or something.... But there's way interesting options than that too.
I once saw a "taco" MRE. It was little more than some "beef" (that you had to heat up) and "cheese" and some other fairly sad toppings on a small tortilla... But I would still take that over a can of chunky beef soup any day.
The nice thing is that MREs are shelf stable for a really long time, so you can get a box of them and shove them in your trunk, or into a desk drawer and then you don't have to worry about lunch for a month. Longer if you occasionally go out for lunch with coworkers to local food places near your workplace.
Presently, I don't work in an office (my job is 100% work from home), so I don't really need it. I can get the same variety from a frozen meal, which is arguably easier, and it's definitely cheaper than MREs.
I also have considered buying a few boxes as emergency food and throwing them in the trunk of my car. I live in Canada, and getting stranded in a blizzard isn't impossible. I have access to my trunk from the cabin of my car, so I shouldn't need to get out to get them and I could stay nourished while waiting for rescue. MREs are supposed to be paired with heating/cooking packs, which would help the car warm up when I'm having one, and with a decently sized container of drinking water, I could wait weeks for rescue, as long as I have adequate protection from the elements (jackets, blankets, etc), and some way to dispose of my bodily waste without contaminating my "living" area. I almost always travel with a radio (I'm a certified amateur operator, aka, ham radio), and a battery bank for my cellphone.
For a couple hundred dollars (maybe? Maybe more? IDK what the prices are for MREs right now), myself and a passenger could survive for a while being stranded in the white wasteland of Canada, without really having to do anything.... Just waiting for rescue.
With global warming, last year we barely got snow where I am, and I don't travel much, so the whole thing is on the back burner at best. The idea was to have it, and if I don't need it, a few months before everything expires, the MREs become my lunch, and I buy a fresh box for my vehicle.
Do people not eat salads? Like some spinach, a nice vinaigrette, some nuts, and maybe a little sliced baked chicken, with a few raspberries or something?
Microwaving some leftovers might be an option. You get the great food you put effort into making, without actually having to make the effort at lunchtime.
Well, what do you want to eat? I guess if you don't want to prepare your own food, those are the only options, whether at work or at home. Otherwise, make whatever you want and take it to work. Cook more food than you need for your dinner and take the leftovers. Make a salad (tons of options for them), make a sandwich. You don't have to eat canned soup, make some nice homemade soup and freeze a bunch of individual servings to grab and take. The possibilities are endless.
I used to do something like that for lunch. Next thing I knew I was crashing from not enough protein, and developing high cholesterol. Be careful eating the same basic things all the time, it’s easy to accidentally max something out without thinking about it.
I think something that is missing in the minds of the "but you could just..." posters here is that the mindset of the OP doesn't always come from laziness, immaturity, or the inability to understand how to pack a sandwich, it sometimes comes from crippling or barely functional depression.
I work from home and the thought of even making a sandwich most days in the middle of the day is just too much. I don't want to make a sandwich; I want to go back to bed for eight to ten years and I agree that lunch is the fucking worst.
(But so is breakfast, and dinner, and all of the meetings, and work, and life generally speaking, etc.)
it sometimes comes from crippling or barely functional depression.
For sure but here on Lemmy it seems to be the case in like 80% of posts. If that many people were actually depressed across the whole population, civilization would long have collapsed.
So you're saying a niche platform with a lot of tech guys who are actively facing layoffs daily nowadays isn't representative of society overall? I'm super surprised.
But relatedly depression levels have risen across society over the years, it's gonna impact the posting.
This is precisely why always working from home is unhealthy and the context switch would be worth the psychological boost it provides if not for the commute. I know people really liked the liberation of WFH at first but I just don't think it is going to be sustainable. It has nothing to do with productivity, but it's the next simmering mental health crisis.
Really? I've been an adult for quite a while and I always look forward to lunch (all meals, actually). Plenty of quick, simple, and appealing meals to make.
It’s frustrating as an adult with ARFID/eating disorders. I can’t bring myself to eat leftovers because I worry that they are contaminated. I’ve thrown away so much food because I won’t reuse a pasta sauce jar if it has been opened.
A lot of the common “easy” meals are things that I absolutely will not eat - spaghetti, canned veggies, ground beef. Sometimes I struggle with eating ramen. It’s fucking embarrassing but I literally cannot help it. I will gag and puke if my brain decides I can’t eat something.
Have you considered taking a serve safe restaurant hygiene class. I used to be similarly worried about food, but after learning about the safe handling and storage rules and temperature danger zones, I'm much less worried about left overs.
I got the manager certification a long time ago, and it oddly made it worse. Weird things like being convinced that my refrigerator isn’t consistently keeping temperature or that the plastic in the packaging has holes in it. Texture sets me off and there’s a lot of variation I’m sensitive to.
I can’t get a family sized bag of chips or cereal for example, because I can only eat them the same day I opened the package. I know that there is nothing wrong with them, but the thought of a stale one upsets me. I love apples, but rarely eat them because I don’t want to risk a mushy one. I know a mushy apple or stale chips aren’t “contaminated” but they feel intensely like they are.
Breakfast is the worst. Sausage, ham, pancakes, cereal, eggs, hash browns, or toast. Want a breakfast burrito? Take a normal burrito, add scrambled eggs. Want a breakfast sandwich? Swap out sliced bread with english muffin or bagel, optionally add an egg.
Screw that. I'm having leftover spaghetti for breakfast.
Where's all the people who loathe breakfast because they aren't hungry until lunch?
Followup question because I'm not one of them. Should we not talk to you until you've had your morning coffee and cigarette? You know it doesn't give you permission to act like a dickweed to everyone Amanda.
I skip breakfast so technically lunch is breakfast but it’s then I eat my main meal and it’s always top notch. Who wants to eat a large meal in the evening?
I’ve just started with smoothies. Some greek yogurt(has loads of protein), frozen vegetables, honey, and water(to make it a drink) and it’s already goin’ pretty well.
I've been making my own yogurt lately a half gallon at a time. It's dummy easy and comes out a bit thinner than most store yogurt. It works really well as a drink or smoothie base
I’ve heard of this homemade yogurt thing. I may have to give it a go depending on how much I need but for now I don’t mind buying the stuff at the store.
I think it’s the filtering out of pulp and other solids, leaving only sugary juice that would make it unhealthy. However the point of a smoothy is to blend actual fruit including fiber and other solids, and throw in some protein
Veggie smoothies would be even more healthy than fruit smoothies but I’m not up for trying that yet
My blender has a “Smoothie” program with varying speed and pulsing and sensing when it’s done, so it’s literally one click
Don't eat lunch. When you finally convince your boss to let you work 8 hour days with no break instead of 9 hour days with an awkward 1 hour unpaid break you can do nothing with, that's 1 hour you can spend on yourself that you didn't have before. Also, now you don't have to waste as much of your spare time exercising (to fight weight gain caused by eating 3 meals a day as an adult) so the time savings are twofold.
Not everyone can do that unfortunately as it is illegal. We're "forced" to have a lunch break, which I support the idea of, I just hate that I have to stay the extra hour when "normal" full time jobs are 9-5 and the lunch is in that 8 hours...
That was one of the few the only advantage of living in Texas. It was not difficult to get out of that 1 unpaid hour "break" so I could go home earlier and get paid the same for spending less time at work. Lawmakers pushing for mandated unpaid breaks are helping corporations keep their employees at work longer.
“cuisine of the week”, learn to prepare meals from around the world
replaced teflon cookware with cast iron, stainless and carbon steel, and learned to use them
got a steel griddle top covering my entire stove and learned to play short order cook. Played a little hibachi chef but made too much mess trying to twirl and flip things
got a smoker
This weekend I have a 10 lb pork shoulder to smoke. Easily pulled pork for the week and unless my kids come home from school, I’ll likely freeze a bunch
Bread is probably the least time consuming thing on that list though. There's a whole slew of no-knead recipes out there, and it takes about 5 minutes to measure out and mix together the ingredients. After that it's just waiting for it to rise, another 5 minutes to shape the loaf, proof it, toss it in the oven and wait till it's done. For 10 minutes of active prep time, you can have a nice loaf of crusty white bread that's nearly as good as something you'd find in some bougie bakery. Granted it takes a couple seconds of pre-planning since the rise/proofing times are long, but most basic no-knead recipes are super forgiving on that, and if something comes up before you're able to bake it, you can toss your uncooked dough into the fridge for short term storage, or freeze it for long term.
Eating is a chore, I watch a video so i dont think about it, instant noodles are real easy to make at work, toss in some broccoli if youre feeling like a but fancy