Quick healthy lunches

Dhalphir

I want to eat healthier at work when I have lunch.

Is there, realistically, any way to eat healthy food that is fairly simple and quick to prepare for lunch at work?

At the moment, I eat, every day, a toasted ham and cheese sandwich for lunch. The reasons are -

1) Its quick to make. I can walk into the kitchen, pull out my bread, ham, and cheese from the fridge, make the sandwich and be eating it within 5 minutes.
2) I don't have to prepare anything at home - I can buy a week's worth of supplies from the local supermarket on a Monday and be okay for the 5 day week.

Lack of variety doesn't bother me - in fact I usually prefer having the same routine each day for lunch.

I'd like to switch my every day lunch to something healthier, but I only get 30 mins for a lunch break and I don't want to spend 10-15 mins preparing my lunch, and I also don't want to have to spend 10-15 mins at home preparing it. I'd like something I can buy a whole bunch of bulk ingredients for at the beginning of a week, and then just walk into the work kitchen to assemble it each day when its time to eat.

I was thinking something along the lines of some sort of meat+salad wrap, but can you buy fresh vegetables on a Monday and have them still edible by the end of the week? Does anyone have any other ideas? I'm not worried about calories or price, I just don't want to be pouring cheese into my body in this quantity anymore.

TychoCelchuuu

"I don't have to prepare anything at home" isn't really the best way to eat healthily. It's doable but lame/expensive, and even though you said you don't worry about price, I do so I don't really have good suggestions for expensive stuff anyways.

Buy rice. Buy vegetables. Cook rice. Cut up vegetables. Freeze most of both. Stir fry/steam/blanche vegetables a couple times each week. Defrost rice overnight in fridge as you start to run low. At work, heat in microwave and add sauce (like soy sauce or sriracha or whatever).

Make huge pasta salad. Eat over course of week.

Make huge couscous/quinoa/bulghur wheat/etc. salad. (Sample salad one, sample salad two)

Make sandwich from healthier ingredients (whole wheat bread, tomatoes, cucumbers, sprouts, hummus, zucchini, lettuce, spinach, avocado, beets, etc. Google "vegetarian sandwiches" or whatever.)

Make huge pot of chili/stew/soup. (But, a healthy soup. No cheddar potato soup! Something like this.) Eat over course of week, microwaving if necessary.

Make huge pot of dal (basically a stew but it's a fancy word for stew!) and rice. Eat over course of week. (Sample dal recipe.)

Dhalphir

I don't mind doing some prep work once a week at home, I just don't want to have to set aside 10 mins in my already rushed morning schedule to prepare the lunch.

You can freeze chopped vegetables? So on a Sunday evening, I could shred some lettuce, chop some cucumber and carrot, freeze it in a big bag and store it for use each day? Perhaps combining that with some frozen cooked rice, and buying some pre-sliced ham from the supermarket and making a couple of ham + salad wraps each day. I prefer raw vegetables to cooked ones anyway, so that cuts down on prep time there.

I didn't know you could freeze vegetables. The things you don't learn by yourself, I guess!

Bagginses

Bring a can of tuna and a jar of mayo with you?

TychoCelchuuu

I dunno how well lettuce will freeze, but cucumbers and carrots will freeze fine. "Jar of mayo" does not scream healthy, though, so be careful with that

Dhalphir

can't stand mayo anyway.

thanks for the help @TychoCelchuuu

TDawg

Cook extra dinner, and use the leftovers as lunch. If you aren't cooking dinner, then just cook a week's worth of lunches on Sunday and keep them in the fridge for you to grab as the need arises. Delicious, healthy food, and you can scale the price as need be. I know you say you don't want to spend time making your food, but I feel like it really is the best option.

Tychocelchuu has some great food ideas too, and I second every single one of them.

mere_immortal

I do this for breakfast but works for lunch too.

Cook up a big batch of porridge and just put new stuff with it everyday. Pretty much all kinds of fruit works, throw in some nuts/seeds and cinnamon or whatever you have lying around. Takes less than 10 mins on a Sunday to cook it up at first and less than 5 every night to stick it in a bowl or plastic tub. Then just add your stuff the next day before you eat it.