Back from the Dead...and Hungry for Lunch

Look, you don't have to say it. I know. It's been roughly 803 weeks since we've updated. I don't want to make you feel bad for getting all upset at us, but it has been a TRYING few weeks here. There have been broken fingers, ant attacks, emergency surgery on wacky infections, slashed open toes and a weekend in New Orleans and Austin where I really hurt my stomach by eating too much.

So we've been trying to catch up on life after all of our delays.

I did get a frantic e-mail from a friend this week which made me realize I've neglected this site: "With all your knowledge of healthy and sustainable eating, what kind of lunch meats do you buy; or not? I'm having trouble creating sandwiches. I'd ask this on your blog, but you suck and don't update."

OK, I added the last sentence for dramatic effect.

Lunch is, by far, the hardest meal to account for in our new "diet."

First things first: lunch meats. The answer is, pretty much we don't eat them anymore. And it's a bummer. There is nothing like a good deli-sliced turkey sandwich with spicy mustard and all the fixings and...you get the point. After a few weeks of struggling with lunches, I broke down and bought Whole Foods' organic sliced turkey and chicken lunch meat.

Hardly sustainable, not cost-effective (at all!) and quite frankly it's pre-packaged lunch meat (read: slimy). I bought it once and will likely not do so again. So what do we do for lunch?

We just skip it and watch the hours go by until dinner.

Lunch presents some interesting challenges. Salads are cumbersome and wilt. Any seafood is out because no one wants to be the person who stinks up the whole office and never gets invited out to another happy hour again. But all hope is not gone. Below are some of our tried (and true) go-to lunches:

• Chili
• Pretty much, any rice-based dish (rice and beans, veggie risotto, this spectacular rice dish I make when we have pork chops)
• Meatloaf sandwich or just a slab of meatloaf (my personal favorite)
• Peanut butter and jelly sandwich
• Mozzarella Caprese sandwich
• Veggie wraps

I'm also HUGE on soups and will eat those non-stop. I'll post some recipes on those another time.

I'm also actually considering buying a roast (and when I find one a pasture-raised turkey) and making home-made sandwiches. I'll let you know how it goes. But here's the audience participation part...what do you do for lunch? Even if it's not sustainable/etc. it can lead to ideas. I'm a little desperate here.