Upgrade your packed lunches

6 ways to make your brown bag lunches far more enjoyable

It’s been a long time since I worked in an office every day, but one of my big memories of that stage of life was that eating out every day was pricey. Even in a slightly subsidized cafeteria, I’d be shelling out $5-10/day when I bought. These days, a sandwich and drink at a chain place will easily run you over $10.

Of course, lots of people are working from home more these days, where no packing is required. If you’re only going into the office two days a week, buying on those days is probably not a big deal. That said, you might create the best of both worlds by forming a Tuesday Lunch Club (TLC!) and encouraging a group of your work besties to all pack on the same day. You can gather for a picnic (if you’re somewhere that’s not buggy and/or 100 degrees) or in the break room and enjoy some social time too.

If you do that, then you might start getting competitive about who can have the best packed lunch! Here are a few ways to increase the chances that you win that competition.

1. Challenge your mouth. True brown bag masters realize early on that most packed lunches are sad because they’re bland. Restaurant meals tend to feature stronger flavors. You can get at the same thing by including sharper ingredients like chipotle mayo instead of regular, flavored hummus for dipping veggies, or little pickles. You might also make sure you have something crunchy and something creamy for a little mouthfeel interest.

2. Go modular. There’s a reason bento box lunches look so cool on Instagram. A little bit of a lot of things is visually appealing (in addition to increasing taste variety). You could buy one of those cool multi-component lunch boxes, but even if you don’t, just channel the folks who create those protein boxes at Starbucks. Throw in a boiled egg (batch boil a few on the weekend), almonds, a cheese stick, and fancy crackers. Add some grapes and you are definitely winning, without even needing to make a sandwich (or cut your fruit into star shapes — you don’t actually need to post this on Instagram!).

3. Recreate easy restaurant options. What would you order in a deli? Some things can be made at home without much fuss. I’m a fan of curried chicken salad. You can buy cooked, pre-cut chicken if you want, or batch cook a bunch of chicken breasts on the weekend and cut them up. Add sliced celery, slivered almonds, cut up grapes, and mayonnaise, and mix it all together with curry powder. A big enough batch could make it into your lunch multiple days in a row. If — like me — you consider fresh bread to be a major upside of a restaurant meal, you could easily make a fresh roll to accompany your lunch by buying some pizza dough at your grocery store, pulling it apart into small chunks and baking those. (Pop two chunks in the oven before you jump in the shower in the morning and you can have one for breakfast and one for lunch!)

4. Upgrade convenience foods. Home packed doesn’t have to be all home made. If you’ve got access to a microwave, you can heat up an Amy’s burrito, and serve that with a bag of tortilla chips and an individual serving sized container of guacamole. Bring a little bit of salsa too and this is not dissimilar from what you’d get in a Mexican place. If you bring a microwave pasta meal, maybe pack some shredded rotisserie chicken, plus some sort of frozen veggie in a little Tupperware container (corn, peas) and then heat that up all together for a jazzed up entree. Combine a microwavable soup with a pizza dough roll (see above), fruit, and nuts and you have a lot of mouthfeels and flavors for very little work.

5. Cook with leftovers for lunch in mind. Lots of people go the leftover route, but my experience is that some leftovers pack up much better than others. Chili, for instance, can become even better the next day as the flavors blend a bit more. Make a batch on Sunday and you can bring this with cut up veggies or fruit for a day or two easily. Check out this list of dinners that make good lunch leftovers.

6. Buy treats. Lunch doesn’t need to be an afterthought when you go to the grocery store. Buy some treats you will truly look forward to and that pack up easily. Things like individually wrapped cheeses, bags of nuts or trail mix, bags of baby carrots or bite sized peppers, or individual dark chocolates can all make lunch more exciting. Yes, you’re spending a little more on convenience, but it’s probably still cheaper than eating at a restaurant, so just enjoy the little splurge.

What’s in your brown bag lunch these days?