Adult Lunch Box: Shrimp and Avocado Salad

Well, the good news is that my daughter’s new lunch box, a Laptop Lunch Box, arrived! The bad news? It’s still too heavy for her to carry in her back pack. What does this mean? It means that I have a new lunch box, of course! For the rest of this year we will just pack our daughter’s snack in her soft Dora the Explorer lunch bag in our leftover take-out tupperware and she will re-inherit both her Planet Box and her Laptop Lunch Box when she’s a little bit bigger.

So, here is my Laptop Lunch debut! What I like about it is that the containers are deeper than in the Planet Box. However, it’s plastic. Planet Box is not. Also, the Laptop Lunch Box has its own built-in cutlery and is microwave-safe. Major win!

Check it out:

Lunch Box Contents:

Sugar Snap Peas

Shrimp-Avocado Salad – from this recipe on Kaylin’s Kitchen, modified by using homemade mayo a la this recipe. Calling it tasty does not do it justice! This compartment has a lid, I should mention :).

Baby cucumbers (the Laptop Lunch Box is deep enough to hold TWO baby cucumbers!)

Delicious Farmers’ Market Paleo Crackers (sunflower and flax seed)

Please look for a post offering a full comparison between the Planet Box and Laptop Lunch boxes in a little while – once I’ve had some hands-on experience with the new box!

Adult Lunch Box: Paleo Fish Sticks!

Ever since I went back to school, my husband has been the chef of the house. He’s recently been experimenting with almond flour breading for chicken and fish. Last night he made absolutely delicious fish sticks with Perch from our local Farmers’ Market. They were so satisfyingly crunchy with a hint of spice to give them a more ‘adult’ flavour. The best part of these fish sticks is that they were just as delicious eaten cold at lunch today as they were right out of the oven last night!

Today’s lunch box was somewhat depressingly bland, colour-wise, but it was one of the yummiest lunch boxes I’ve had in a while.

Lunch Box Contents:

Sunflower & Flax Seed crackers from the Farmers’ Market – I will miss these crackers SO much when the market ends for the season. They are A-M-A-Z-I-N-G and they make both raw vegans AND Paleo eaters happy!

Avocado Slices

Sliced Ham

*note that I made mini ‘sandwiches’ using the crackers, ham and avocado at lunch time today. Crunchy and creamy!

Leftover Paleo Fish Sticks – if anyone is interested I can get the recipe from my husband and do a photo blog of how he prepares them next time he cooks. Is this of interest to anyone out there?

English Bacon & Purple Sweet Potatoes!

Purple sweet potatoes are the sweetest, according to the farmer who slipped us a few for free after we bought a few pounds of orange sweet potatoes at the market!

 

Lunch Box Contents:

4 slices of English Bacon (also called back bacon)
1 purple sweet potato
Summer Sausage ‘sandwiches’ filled with a goat cheese chèvre spiced with rosemary and basil…YUM!
2 hard-boiled eggs

I have learned a lesson over the past 8 months: calories DO count. I think I was over-feeding myself, thinking that because the food is all Paleo/Primal, it wouldn’t cause weigh gain. Well…it has. So I’m reigning the portion sizes in, trying to get my body back to its fat-burning awesomeness!

Lunch Box 14: Goat Cheese Stuffed Dates. Yes, Please.

Loving my new Paleo Cookbooks!!

I had three blissful weeks off. I ate 80% Paleo (but I did consume sugar, which is probably why I gained a good 5 lbs. Boo!). But tomorrow is back to the grind. They have found a new way to torture me this semester – my Wednesdays involve three classes back to back. That’s NINE HOURS of class WITH NO BREAK.

I made a few loaves of Paleo bread and froze them and made a double batch of the best spaghetti sauce in the world (a family recipe…I’ll share at a later date). We also received our quarter cow from a local farmer we met at our market this summer. 100% grass fed! And we even went to visit the cows earlier this fall. Very cool.

Oh, my favourite part of my three weeks off (aside from the amazing time with my daughter and family) was receiving two new Paleo cookbooks for the holidays! Today’s lunch box includes a recipe I simply couldn’t wait to try from Make it Paleo. I also got Paleo Comfort Foods. What I like about these books is that they are full of creative Paleo recipes, but simple enough that I can confidently pass them over to my husband, who cooks dinner while I’m in school, and know that he’ll be able to figure it out ;).

Today’s Lunch Box Contents:

Two hard boiled eggs, chopped up
a slight variation on Make It Paleo’s Goat Cheese Stuffed Dates topped with crushed walnuts. Like heaven in my mouth. No, seriously.
Two Paleo Bread sandwiches filled with loads of grass-fed butter!
Spaghetti squash topped with the World’s Greatest Spaghetti Sauce. I’ve always been an ‘eat the leftover spaghetti & meatballs cold in front of the fridge’ type of girl, so I’m cool with eating my leftovers in class, cold :). Is that weird?
And finally, a few squares of Camino brand 80% dark chocolate.

Here we go again……..!

Lunch Box 13: Shawarma and Tzatziki

My top secret ingredient? Sunday night take-out 😉

I think I have a new best friend: the delicious, Paleo-friendly Greek place that catered my daughter’s family birthday dinner last night. Huge portions. All-Paleo (well, Primal, given the dairy in the tzatziki) options that satisfied the non-Paleo family members. And did I mention the huge portions, which meant HUGE LEFTOVERS!!!??

Today’s Lunch Box Contents:

Leftover Chicken Shawarma (large container) & Tzatziki (small container)
A few slices of gluten-free pepperoni (leftover from last week’s paleo pizza recipe!)
Cucumber & Goat Cheese mini-sandwiches (now that the farmer’s market is over I no longer have access to my local goat’s milk cream cheese, so this is just plain goat’s cheese)
Local Marble Cheddar wrapped in Nitrate-Free Ham

Lunch Box 12: Paleo Pizza!

That's PIZZA with a bacon and egg crust!

 

It’s been ages since my last post. Being a schooling-mom is proving to be an all-consuming, time-sucking experience! I spend pretty much all my free time contemplating one question: WHAT DID I GET MYSELF INTO???? However, I’ve been staying, let’s say….85% Paleo (the cheats come during my full-day study sessions at Starbucks. I eat bags of their fruit & nut trail mix…sugar and seed oil. Yuck. But yum…). The good news is that I’ve only had to purchase lunch on campus three times all semester. NOT BAD given my 3 days a week of crack-of-dawn classes and my 75-90 minute commute!!!! Go, lunch box, go!

 

Being with me being so busy, my husband has taken over cooking dinners 100%. Tonight he made a Paleo Pizza from FastPaleo.com. It’s AWESOME! AWE-SOME! A-W-E-S-O-M-E. Try it. And with the farmer’s market over for the season (insert countless sad faces here), we’ve signed up for the food box that the market has coordinated to get us through from November-June. That means: SWEET POTATOES. Lots and lots of sweet potatoes (my current favourite vehicle for grass-fed butter)!

 

Lunch Box Contents:

 

1 small yam mashed with 2 heaping tablespoons of grass-fed butter

2 hard-boiled eggs

2 slices nitrate-free turkey

almonds

2 slices of Bacon Lovers Dream Pie (we put gluten-free pepperoni, full-fat mozzarella, red pepper and onion on top!)

Lunch Box 10: Omega 3s at Lunch!

Another weekend out-of-town, another week short on creative new food options for the Lunch Boxes. At any rate…

Fat. Delicious, satiating fat. Yummmmm.

 

Lunch Box Contents:

The ever-reliable hard-boiled eggs
Meat Mash Up: Pepperoni stick pieces and  chorizo roll-ups
Green pepper slices – cut thick to act as scoops
Canned wild-caught salmon with homemade olive oil mayo
Almonds

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.

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