Recipe ideas for lunches

Ponge

Hey guys,
I've just started back at university and I've been taking in my lunches each day to avoid paying the huge amounts of money asked at the cafeteria.

It's been going great, but I'm a little bit out of inspiration for lunches for this week.

Week 1 I made a huge bowl of wholemeal pasta with pesto sauce, cherry tomatos and cheese
Week 2 I made a big bowl of chili and some wholemeal rice.

On random days I've sometimes just thrown together a sandwich with a sandwich filler (like mexican chicken, or chicken sweetcorn), some lettuce and some salami.

Now tomorow I plan on making my lunch for all (or most) of next week and I'd love to hear some suggestions. I plan on going to the shops so I can buy any ingrediants you suggest. ideally it should be cheap and reasonably easy to cook. I don't have any real method of refrigerating the meal once I take it to university with me, and I have access to a microwave to heat it up.

I'll eat pretty much anything (although I really dislike mushrooms) but brownie points for healthyness and plenty of vegetables. It really needs to be able to stay in the fridge for 3 or 4 days at least. I love spicy foods and may also try a soup if someone can suggest a really nice one.

Hypatia

If you want to do some assembly at the school (or at home and bring it to nuke) you could always take one of these:



And bring a container with tuna and frozen peas (or carrots, beans, whatever) and the butter in it. Then you can drop it all into a bowl, buy a small thing of milk, mix it, and nuke the whole thing for whatever time it says on the back (I think 12 minutes?). You can add any seasonings or hot sauce you want and it comes out like Tuna Helper.

cmsamo

The GF and I pretty much take whatver is/was leftover from dinner the night before for lunch the next day or two.

Stuff like a greek salad is really good either on it's own as a salad, or even as part of a sandwich filling with cold cuts.

For the salad - you need:

sliced tomatoes
diced cucumbers
sliced red onion
olives
feta cheese
balsamic dressing (balsamic vinegar/garlic cloves/olive oil)

Risottos of many varieties are also good because they can be heated up the next day for lunch. Get some arborio rice, and cook it up with vegetable stock (adding the stock slowly). You can pretty much throw anything into a risotto to take your mood.

Veggie Chilli/meat chilli is also a favorite because it always tastes better for lunch the second day. I don't have my recipies to hand but Google will give you a whole load of decent chilli recipes.

She has also introduced me to simple but tasty lunches such as sliced peppers / sliced carrot / cucumber and some kind of dip - we use Hummous mostly. Tasty, and healthy!

EggyToast

For cheap lunches, I tend to use campbell's chunky soups as a fall-back. They're $2 and pretty filling.

Killgrimage

Best quick lunch is a sandwich for me. One thing to try is this spread called "Durkee's." It's a mayo/mustard mix spread, and it's delicious. The thing I like to do is hard boil a mess of eggs, bring only like 2 of em with me to work (where I keep bread/Durkee's), mash them there and then BAM, fresh egg salad.

VisionOfClarity

All the instant things are super unhealthy for you. I stopped even getting the Campbell's healthy garden whatever soups because the sodium was through the roof. I tend to make big pots of my own soup and freeze them so I can take them out when I want them. I do the same thing for meatballs for my pasta. Whole foods has an awesome Korma sauce so I make chicken korma and rice and bring that in to work. I also make chicken or beef teriyaki with broccoli, baby corn and water chestnuts. And leftover dinner makes some of the best lunch.

logic7

Logic7's Atomic Asshole Chili

1lb ground beef (73/27 is fine)
1 package of Wal-Mart "Great Value" brand mild chili mix
1 15oz can of red kidney beans
2 8oz cans of roasted garlic tomato sauce (IMPORTANT!!!)
4 Cubanelle peppers
8 green Serrano peppers
4 Jalepeno peppers
black pepper
Franks Red Hot or Great Value Louisiana-type hot sauce


Follow the directions on the chili mix package TO THE LETTER to make the chili. DO NOT ADD MORE WATER. It should be really thick when done.
While the chili is cooking, add finely chopped peppers, black pepper (to taste) and liberally squirt hot sauce into the chili and stir. Allow all of this to cook down quite a bit.

***** WARNING *****

if you chop up the peppers with bare hands make sure you wash your hands thoroughly!!! The juices from these peppers can burn your eyes and, if you're a guy, it will burn the SHIT outta your dick, so wait until you're done prepping the food before you take a piss!!!