Feel like you never know what to bring for lunch so you’re always grabbing boxed food or getting take-out?  Don’t let lunches stress you out.

The first step to making lunch a less stressful ordeal is understanding that leftovers are your best friend!

So Pop Quiz:

Question:  What do you do when you have a bunch of leftover ingredients from another recipe?

Answer:  You throw them together and bring them to work for lunch!

I had some leftover spinach from the lentil recipe on Tuesday, so I’ve been using it for lunches.  This morning I threw some frozen broccoli, a handful of spinach, a garden tomato, a sprinkle of parmesan cheese, and a dash of the garam masala spice blend into a container and packed it in my lunch cooler along with a hard boiled egg.  When lunchtime rolled around at the clinic I cut the tomato into chunks and heated everything for about 3 minutes in the microwave.  Who would have thought such a random assortment of vegetables would have been so tasty.  This could be good over a bit of rice, quinoa, lentils, or whatever grain sounds good to you.

With about five minutes of prep time at home, you can make quite the dent in your vegetable requirements for the day.  One or two hard boiled eggs will provide you with some good protein or throw in some leftover meat from your dinner the night before.  Bring a bit of cheese or some of the trail mix nuts I talked about in an earlier post and lunch is served—and it doesn’t have to be complicated…or come from a box.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful day! –Dr. Jenna