Lunch Box 9: Big Fat Hamburger

You know what sucks? Starbucks USED to carry the most delicious lightly salted cashews. They were the only even remotely Paleo food item they carried, and I swore by them. A grande green tea and a bag of those delicious cashews got me through many a study session last year during my prep course for my current program. Alas, not so long ago I discovered that all my local Starbucks’ ditched the cashews and now carry boring old almonds. Boring old almonds are everywhere. Starbucks was my cashew salvation. And now it’s just another almond-carrying let-down.

But anyways…I write the above cashew/almond rant because I have big plans for a good solid 4+ hour study session at a Starbucks tomorrow after class, and because they now carry NOTHING Paleo (aside from those boring old almonds) I need to make sure I’ve packed enough food to get me through class AND the study session.

Juicy hamburger and...shrimp?! Random!

Lunch Box Contents:

Handful of frozen cooked shrimp
Leftover Buttery Pumpkin Mash 
Cucumber & goat’s cream cheese mini-sandwiches
Boring Old Almonds
A giant, juicy hamburger made by the husband in the kitchen just a few minutes ago.

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Lunch Box 8: Buttery Pumpkin Mash & Grass-Fed Beef Cold Stir-Fry

It’s FALL! It’s FALL! My Farmer’s Market was just screaming with fall deliciousness. Sweet potatoes, a spaghetti squash and a Sweet pumpkin (the green kind, not the jack-o-lantern kind) came home with us.  And made it into tomorrow’s lunch box. I have also been experimenting with ‘meal’ type foods that can be eaten cold, as I do not have access to a microwave on my long days. I think we have a winner, and it’s in this lunch box.

Pumpkin-y goodness

Lunch Box Contents:

Mini-cucumber & goat’s milk cream cheese sandwiches
Farmer’s Market (nitrate-free, naturally raised, etc.) summer sausage & pepperoni stick
Pumpkin Mash*
Grass-fed ‘good when it’s cold’ beef, cilantro and veggie stir-fry

* Chop top off pumpkin, remove seeds and throw pumpkin in the oven at 350 for an hour
Pull the orange guts out of the pumpkin and mash them up in a big bowl. Add a generous amount of butter and a heaping teaspoon of cinnamon
Transfer to a pot on the stove, turn stove to medium. Add some heavy cream and more butter and a bit of coconut oil if you choose and stir until all melty and delicious.
Eat. Love. Yum.

Lunch Box 7: Bacon-Wrapped Sweet Potatoes

This is my first Lunch Box with an ingredient that is so remarkably yummy, it got TWO compartments!

With food this good, who WOULDN'T want to go Paleo?!

 

Lunch Box Contents:

Bacon-Wrapped Sweet Potatoes*
Paleo Meat n’ Veg Sandwich**
2 hard-boiled eggs
1/2 an Apple Larabar

* Using some leftover sweet potatoes from the previous night’s dinner, cut raw sweet potatoes into chunks. Slice bacon length-wise and wrap each sweet potato chunk in a thin piece of bacon. Pre-heat oven to 400C, put yummy food in for about 40 minutes and you have yams that retain their shape on the outside but are soft and mushy and delicious on the inside, wrapped in crunch bacon!

** Sandwich made of:

Elana’s Pantry Paleo Bread 
1 tbsp butter, softened
several slices of nitrate-free chorizo
sliced avocado

Lunch Box 6: Gourmet Goodness and Some Egg Salad

Tomorrow was meant to be a short day. It’s actually going to be a seriously extra-long day! The good news – the new element to my day (driving to the other side of the city after my second class) means that I have an excuse to DRIVE instead of taking public transit. Woohoo!

In other food news….today’s Lunch Box (posted yesterday) was so filling, I’m not even hungry for dinner. That’s a major feat for me. I love dinner. Oh well…that just means that what would have been tonight’s dinner (salmon and green beans) will be lunch on my day off, Thursday.

This is another big ol’ Lunch Box as I’ll be out of the house for probably 11 hours tomorrow, starting before the crack of dawn. So it’s really two meals in one. Oh! And I should mention…I know how repetitive the foods this week have been. Reason for that: we were out of town on the weekend and, therefore, didn’t make it to our Farmer’s Market. This means we didn’t shop. At all. My mom picked us up a couple meat items and some cheese, but that’s it, that’s all. The rest is all leftovers from last week. Hence the copious amounts of cucumber, peppers, and other staples!

Can you even see the Paleo bread underneath the egg & veggie goodness there?!

Lunch Box Contents:

Leftover baked salmon topped with garlic, lemon juice and dill, garnished with chopped avocado and peach ‘salad’
Small container: more avocado and peach salad
Chocolate chip Larabar (broken into two to encourage me to eat it one part at a time)
Open Face Egg Salad Sandwich made with homemade olive oil mayo and Elana’s Pantry Paleo Bread  topped with cucumber slices
Sliced red pepper wrapped in nitrate-free Chorizo slices

 

Lunch Box 5: Summer Sausage “Sandwiches”

I am SO excited to eat this Lunch Box tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a day I can tell I will come to dread: Tuesday. On Tuesday I am out so long that I miss putting my daughter to bed at night. Tuesdays aren’t my favourite. This lunch box, however, just might be!

I think I'll add the shrimp to my 'sandwiches'....or maybe I'll mix the shrimp in with the avocado and make a salad...sooo many options!

Lunch Box Contents:

All-natural, nitrate-free Farmer’s Market Pepperoni Stick & a handful of almonds
Avocado chunks & a hard-boiled egg
Open-face summer sausage “sandwiches” – Thinly sliced summer sausage topped with sheep’s milk bocconcini cheese, cucumber & avocado
Cooked shrimp (final decision: will be mixed with the avocado – shrimp & avocado are SO good together, right?!)
1/2 triangle of President’s Choice 72% dark chocolate

Lunch Box 4: Paleo Breakfast On-the-Go

Almost as soon as I got home from our weekend getaway this afternoon, I hard-boiled a dozen eggs and prepared my Monday lunch box. I know myself. If I don’t prepare my food first, I may not prepare it. Mondays are an interesting day. I only have three hours of class and it’s a morning class. I’m home in time for a late lunch. That means I need to eat on the way to class, in the car. Everthing in my Monday lunch box needs to be edible using one hand so I can eat while I drive.

Here is my first Breakfast Paleo Lunch Box:

My first Paleo breakfast box!

Lunch Box (Breakfast Box) Contents:

1/3 avocado, sliced with
3 slices nitrate-free chorizo
2 slices naturally raised, nitrate-free bacon (cold bacon = love!)
1 slice of Elana’s Pantry Paleo Bread topped with coconut butter (it’s melty-looking because I had to melt it to make it spreadable as it’s freezing in the house today!)
1/2 a peach, sliced
1/2 Cashew Larabar (leftover from Friday’s giant box!)

Lunchbox 3: Ant-less Logs

Today is my day off. Today I spent the morning at home reading as much as my brain would allow, I hit a 1:00pm Crossfit class, went to the bank, and then came home to prepare tomorrow’s lunch box.

Tomorrow isn’t just a long day. It’s a long day followed immediately by a road trip! Six hours of classes, after which the husband and child will pick me up and we’ll head out of town for the weekend. I think this lunch box reflects the need to stay full for a long time, given the fact that the snacks that will be packed for the weekend will likely be snatched up by the husband before I can even say “gluten-and-nitrate-free-all-beef-Farmer’s Market-pepperoni-sticks”!

Lots of food for a long, long day.

Lunch Box Contents:

3 hard boiled eggs
Ant-less logs – Celery sticks filled with almond butter (so sad we don’t have raisins or cranberries!)
Sliced Prosciutto
1/3 of a peach, cubed
1/2 of a Cashew Larabar
and in the centre…2/3 of a triangle of a President’s Choice 72% Almond & Honey Swiss Dark Chocolate Bar.

The Verdict:

No verdict yet as the lunch box is currently waiting for me in the fridge and I won’t be blogging this weekend. I have a good feeling about this one, though!

Also, made the most AMAZING Paleo Eggplant Lasagne last night, using 100% Farmer’s Market ingredients. I wonder if I should start posting non-lunch box recipes here, too? Since nobody reads it but me…why not?! 🙂

Lunch Box 2: Stuffed Mini-Peppers…buuuuut….

Today’s lunch box had a fatal Paleo flaw…NOT. ENOUGH. FAT!

It was a short day (only 6 hours out of the house), but I was hungry. Really hungry. Like, ‘must-eat-now-grabbed-a-dark-chocolate-bar-and-ate-three-squares-on-the-way-home’ kind of hungry. Like (dare I say it?) low-fat, high-carb, ‘back in the day’ hungry. I despise that feeling.

I thought the 1/4 avocado that topped my tuna would do the trick, but I think with what I assume was an insulin spike from the sheep’s milk cream cheese, it just wasn’t enough.

Yummy, but not filling.

Lunch Box Contents:

Delicious Leftovers – Mini-Peppers, stuffed with sheep’s cream cheese and baked for 30 minutes at 350
Summer sausage
Almonds
1 full mini-cucumber
Tuna with olive oil mayo and celery topped with 1/4 avocado

The verdict:

I think that one is obvious. I was left hungry.

The mini-peppers were beyond delicious. We had them for dinner last night along with a grilled wing steak from our quarter of a grass-fed cow that we bought at the beginning of the summer. They tasted *almost* as good cold the next day.

While I was eating my boring tuna I was having big regrets. I should have mixed in way more veggies and topped it with plain olive oil and balsamic instead of using mayo. Next time!

Lunchbox 1: Simple & Speedy

Some nights we have leftovers. Most nights we don’t. Since my daughter refuses to eat anything other than eggs, fruit and cucumber at the moment, we generally just cook dinner for two once she’s in bed, and we usually eat it all :). Today’s lunchbox was leftover-free, and took me about 60 seconds to throw together. Today’s lunchbox was a ‘long day’ lunchbox as I was out and about (commuting and at school) for over 9 hours, so it was a pretty full one!

No leftovers, super fast

Lunchbox Contents:

Blueberries
Almonds
Red Pepper Slices
Summer Sausage & Prosciutto
3 hard-boiled eggs
in the small container: 2 squares of Lindt 85% dark chocolate

The verdict:

I stayed full. Almost too full. I ended up eating the lunchbox in chunks and ended up with one egg and a couple chunks of chocolate.

I wasn’t jealous of the girl sitting next to me in my first class eating the greasy and delicious-looking slice of pizza, or even the girl in front of me with the 300 grams-of-sugar smoothie ;).