Lunchy-time foods

Once upon a time, I worked at a magical preschool every day and every day, I ate lunch there. Fast forward to now, I still work at said magical preschool. Not every day but close. And I eat lunch there too. Also now everyone, teachers, students, everyone, brings their own lunch from home.

This has been good for a lot of reasons. Kids eat a lot more than they used to. Sometimes. It seems to be a little less messy. And lunch takes longer which is awesome because lunch time is my favorite time. Lots of sit down talk time with the kids, my favorite! And I always know what is in my lunch box, and the kids know what is in theirs too. There's no mystery about what we're eating. Pretty straight forward.

This has been bad for a lot of reasons too. Like... I have to bring lunch from home now. And those lunches aren't always as healthy as the lunches I used to get at work. I don't get vegetables every day. And it costs money to buy lunch, whereas before, I was getting paid to eat food that I didn't buy.

Lunch is like... antibiotics to me. Something like that. Let me explain. You first start taking antibiotics and it works great! You feel like you don't need them anymore and so you quit, and the bad guy bugs in you build up a resistance to the medicine because you didn't kill them off all the way. With me and lunch, I find something I like a lot so I eat it all the time. It's cheap, it tastes good... and then a few weeks later I'm sick of it and hate it. And may never eat it again.

Case in (and?) point... lunch meat. It's not that I don't like lunch meat, it's just that I ate it to death and now my brain starts analyzing everything about it and no longer perceives it as food.

However, it's hard to come up with meals off the top of my head! Meals I can pack for lunch. So I've got a list of meals I like, and rotate through them. No sickness of the food.

1 - Asian Thing. I call it Asian Thing because it's a short name that fits on my little menu thing. Asian thing consists of noodles, soy sauce, occasionally vegetables, and pot stickers. Always pot stickers. In fact, pot stickers may be the one food I'd never get sick of. I just wish my Asian thing was as cool as the Asian things my preschoolers bring. Sushi, mainly...

2 - Egg Salad sandwiches. I like pickles a whole lot, and all the time, and this fixes my cravings. It gets me less stares than just cracking open a jar of pickles and commencing my feast.

3- Tuna salad sandwiches. I can't prepare this, however. I have another weird thing about tuna, where, if I see or smell it in a can, I can't eat it because it's gross. So Joe has to make this one. Sorry, Joe. EDIT: I can prepare and then eat expensive tuna, but we're college kids. Come on.

4 - Rice salads. Particularly this one. I love this girl's blog, she's got all of my favorite foods on there.

5 - Pizza. Usually left over from the night before, which means it's probably pepperoni. And we made it. And it might get soggy because homemade pizza does that, and we never buy pizza because all I want is Hawaiian and Joe doesn't trust hot pineapple.

6 - Pretzel Rolls and other things. You know those pretzel rolls from Costco? Stick some mayo and mustard on those, maybe some cheese. This ends up being a small meal though, so we toss in some more things. All of our meals have default side dishes including fruit (usually oranges), crackers (usually something cheesy!) and a granola bar (usually something peanut buttery. But I can't take this to preschool so I just save it and stick it in Joe's lunch for the next day.)

7 - Left over Enchiladas. These are so easy to make the night before and last for a while. I have to be in a mood for them, though. If I'm not, forget it. It's a wasted meal. So this isn't really on my top 10 favorite, but when I'm in the mood for it, it is.

8 - Chicken Broth. I could drink chicken broth for the rest of my life. It's all I need to be happy. Put some spices in there and MMMM. Joe's a man, however, and man can't live on broth alone. So usually we have to put noodles in it and vegetables and other things. And then one of the thermoses break and spill all over your pants and make it look like you peed your pants and then the thermos is still broken so THERE GOES LUNCH and I have unresolved issues about this still. Usually broth means we have a tortilla with melted cheese too.

9 - Random Salad! I don't like bringing lettuce in my lunch box for some reason. Guys. I'm realizing upon writing this list that I have so many lunch issues. Random salad means a caprese salad with avocado or cucumber and tomatoes. There's this really good Greek mixed up salad that one of my in-laws made and it was amazing. So if anyone knows what that was, send me the recipe and I want to make it.

10- The random junk I find on pinterest. When push comes to shove and nothing sounds good at the moment, I look up something on Pinterest about lunch and make that. The reason that  thing is not on the list is because I didn't like it. But pinterest things get made once every week or so... so they must be some kind of favorite.