35
votes
What are your favorite no-refrigeration, no-microwave lunches?
I’m not a child, but I very often eat peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. They’re quick and easy to make, and I can leave them in my bag until lunch and then just eat them as-is. With banana slices inside, it’s a decent meal. I also prefer not eating meat, so it gets points for that too. But it’s not particularly exciting, not particularly well-balanced, and I frankly feel a little childish eating it.
The problem is that I very often have no refrigeration and no means of re-heating. I used to just have leftovers for lunch, but room temperature leftovers usually aren’t the most appealing.
For those of you who don’t buy lunch out, what do you do? Any recommendations for something that’s still tasty after sitting in a bag the whole morning?
If you are willing to deal with the extra bulk, a name-brand Thermos can keep food hot for a good long time. I used to have an outside job, in the winter, (in the south, so it rarely got below freezing, but it got down there) and I would make canned ravioli before work, and tip it into a wide-mouth thermos, and it would stay piping hot for six hours even with the jar itself out in the cold with me.
You can get bigger, more elaborate versions, and I'm sure the other brands are perfectly good as well.
Nice call on the thermos. They are amazing. I guess yours is easy enough to clean? I have one, but the mouth is too narrow for me to be able to reach in well, so I’ve always just used it for coffee.
A good bottle brush is worth it's weight in gold. But thankfully they're lightweight.
There's a bunch of bad bottle brushes out there, though. I think the one I bought that rocked my world is the Quickie brand one. The ergonomic handle and angled bristles really put it on another level.
I specifically have a wide-mouth thermos for food, for that exact reason. Easier to clean, and easier to eat out of. Mine also has a fold-up spoon that fits inside the lid, where it can't get food on it, which is a fairly common thing with the wide-mouth models.
I got a chainmail scrubber for cast iron pans, but it makes an excellent cleaning tool for thermoses. Just toss it inside with a little hot water and soap, put the lid back on and shake vigorously.
I picked up this one a while back (not from this seller, but I no longer see it on the Stanley website): https://www.bobstores.com/stanley-17-oz-classic-vacuum-food-jar/23430500014.html
My daughter has been using it ~1/wk for the past 2 school years. Canned soup, left overs, spaghettios. If the contents aren’t mostly liquid, I’ll put some water from the kettle in to preheat it. Then it goes right in the dishwasher, haven’t had any problems yet.
Buy a small cooler bag and an ice pack that fits in it. You can now keep food refrigerated until lunch time.
As for what to have, I've taken to having 'complicated' sandwiches. A bag of salad leaves and a pot of supermarket deli filler is enough for four sandwiches, or you can have slices of cheese, and a bit of sweet pickle never goes amiss. (I also go for sliced ham, but you mentioned not liking meat.)
That’s a good thought - for some reason I’ve rarely bothered with making more complete sandwiches. Sandwiches with more components are like a totally different category of food. Maybe I’ll get some decent cheese this week to form the base.
A (variation of a) Couscous salad is incredibly easy to make and holds up pretty well when eating cold, luke-warm or warm.
The linked recipe talks about cooking it for 20 mins, but I guess that depends on the couscous you're using. Just refer to the package and you should be good to go. Super easy to experiment with by adding new ingredients.
The couscous I often use I just put in a bowl and soak it with a cup of broth (i.e. boiling water + a bit of a stock cube) . Once the broth has been taken up by the couscous you're ready to mix and store it or eat it immediately. I think you can even use just water for this, but I like the added flavour of using broth.
That does look tasty. Have you ever experimented with adding nuts or seeds?
Yeah a common mix is to add almonds with some chopped mint leaves and then add a bit of lime juice and some feta cheese.
But really, you can go all the way with whatever you wanna throw in there. I've seen sunflower seeds, chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, whatever you like!
We'll often throw in some grilled bell peppers (chopped) in there as well. It's just super easy to make and experiment with, and works as well as a dinner-dish as as lunch. Just start with one of the many recipes easily found online and experiment away.
The laziest lunch I know of that I eat regularly (it's extremely cheap, healthy, quick, filling AND delicious!) is as simple as:
It's honestly delicious just like that, but you can add all sorts of different things to make the dressing and get a million different quick-and-tasty meals almost directly from a single can. Soy sauce, garlic powder, sesame oil? Amazing. Tomato puree, onion powder, balsamic? The options are endless.
If you add a slice or two of bread and butter it becomes even better!
Ooh I'm definitely going to try this sometime, I love chickpeas. I will tentatively suggest lemon juice instead of vinegar -- with that it's almost tbe ingredients for hummus without the annoyance of blending it up.
I'll add: a throw some nutritional yeast (aka "nooch") in there and maybe some granulated garlic/garlic powder.
Nooch is popular among us vegans. But, truly, it is amazing. Everyone should try it! There's umami, "funk", and a little saltiness. Also, it's usually fortified; it's a great multi-vitamin!
If you are ok carrying a heavier bag, there are refrigerated lunch boxes that you can combine with ice packs to keep your food cool.
Canned stuff, omelettes or falafels are fine cold if you cook them throuroughly and spice them more to adjust for the coldness.
Check bento recipes. Bentos are meant to be eaten at room temperature. They can be a bit elaborate to make but not as much as food bloggers / instagramers make them look. You can make them the day before and refrigerate them before work.
I’ll definitely look into bentos. That’s something that has never even been on my radar. And I could eat falafel every day and never get tired of it. My homemade baked or shallow fried versions never quite reach the level of deep fried though.
Years ago I was working a job that involved full days of travel out into remote desert and I used to bring two cans of soup. It was surprisingly not too bad, though my boss absolutely felt terrible that that was how I was living and every time she came out with us she’d try to give me half her lunch.
I'm going to acknowledge right up front that I don't always take good care of myself and often forget to eat while I'm focused on work during the day or traveling.
So I usually keep one or more of the following non-refrigerated, mostly non-perishable items in my bag to snack on:
Fill a 1 liter bottle with water halfway, add powder. Cap tightly, shake the bottle like your booty is on fire. Add more water to the bottle to 3/4's full, shake again. Drink as fast as you can so you don't have to taste it for long. Wash the bottle immediately.
Understand that none of these are long-term viable means of nourishing oneself, just stopgaps until I can make something better.
Definitely good ideas for more snacky days. Sometimes I’m rushing to stuff food in my face or otherwise don’t get a chance to eat.
Yum.
Glad you found anything helpful!
And that's also the way I feel about Soylent, so approach the post-workout formula flavor in that context. It's not bad, it's just weird, like having too many not-totally-compatible flavors at once, e.g. chocolate, salad, and steak. Even more so when I throw in lemon-lime flavor electrolyte mix for hot days or sweaty work.
I usually just pack a basic salad. Lately I have been transforming it into a wrap with hummus added to it. Lunches to me need to be simple so i actually prepare them before the week because if I don’t I’ll be too tired to do it midweek. This week I ran out of my homemade dressing so I’ve been ordering sandwiches at subway, which is much less than ideal.
As a rule of thumb, food without animal products in them will last longer without refrigeration than food with it. The stuff animals are made of make them the perfect breeding ground for the bacteria and viruses that can hurt us. Vegetables have the same thing happen to them as well, of course, but it’s generally a much slower process. There are some animal products that will last a while without a fridge like butter and jerkey.
Agreed about the effort. One of the reasons I default to peanut butter is because it takes like 30s to make in the morning. For your salads, do you do anything to keep them from getting wilted and sad through the week besides keeping any dressing separate?
If you're talking about storing for a whole week, then refrigeration is really ideal; my stuff stays in the fridge until the day I'll eat it. If I were making one head of lettuce at a time it might last, but remember I'm too lazy to do prep on workdays. There are some varieties of lettuce that handle wilting better, like romaine. Keeping it dry is key, though, so if you're using more than just lettuce you might want to dry out or seperate any particularly moist ingredients.
Where I live the lunch is the main dish of the day.
My favorite is penne rigate (500g) with dried tomatoes (one pack/bottle say around 100-150g, cut to pieces smaller than 1cm, more like 0.5cm) and one can of tuna fillets (160g can, which is around 110g of tuna itself). Mix together, eat. No seasoning required due to taste of dried tomatoes and tuna. If you want a bit more tasze, add parmeggiano regiano (or grana padano or similar) cheese, maximum 50 grams so it's not too overwhelming. I put salt into the water when I boil the pasta.
Such dish is enough for three adults or family of two parents and two smaller kids.
Do you not have access to boiling water? You could have noodle meals that just need boiling water?
For sandwiches, you could get away with my favourite, thick ham and English mustard (Coleman's) should last the morning.
If you have access to milk, don't discard cereal, it's not just for breakfast!
If lunch eating is tricky, get up earlier and make a big full English breakfast. You should then be ok with just snack food until you get home.
Some instant noodles might work. And yeah, I could consider shifting around my calorie intake for the day and just have some fruit / gorp / etc instead of a real lunch. I do love ham, but don’t eat it very often. Maybe I could throw that in occasionally for a nice treat.
So you can safely eat ramen noodles that just get a cold water soak 'til soft. The starch is pre-cooked and only needs rehydration. Same with the little packet of vegetables. If you put cold water in a bowl with the seasoning/broth powder mixed in, add the vegetables and noodles, and let sit for 30 minutes - 1 hour, until the noodles are soft... voilà, cold noodles. If you really want to get fancy, add sesame oil, furikake, and sliced scallions.
Other similar recipes here.
My everyday sandwich at work is a turkey sandwich. I have found to keep it from getting soggy, lettuce to cover the bread at the bottom, provolone to cover the bread at the top. From bottom up, bun-lettuce-turkey-tomatoe-provolone-bun. Keep it out of the sun works most of the time, otherwise a cooler or in combo with an ice pack to keep it fresh.
This might not help because its specific to my environment, but I drive trains and we have hot plates in all of them. Grilled cheese sandwich on the hotplate with no pan. As long as its a smooth top hot plate I've had success using low heat and a paper towel instead of a pan.
A couple lunch options I go to often that I enjoy at room temp:
Snacky meal
Combo of a dip like hummus or tahini, pita slices, sliced veggies/fruit, hard cheese, olives, etc.
Cold frittata
Internet says to leave cooked eggs out for no more than 1-2 hours, so Im probably playing with food safety fire, but pair with an ice pack to be safe. Serve with bread.
Hearty salad
Salad ingredients of your preference; I like adding lots of nuts and cheese, and have bread/pita on the side, to make more filling. Store the dressing on the side to add when eating.
I'm not sure if you have access to a car while on lunch OP but I'm a truck driver and carry a lunchbox that heats up my lunches for me by plugging it into the cigarette lighter. I usually plug it in ~30 min before my lunch and it is nice and hot when its time to eat. I don't remember the exact brand I have, but they all look the same really.
Something like this