Bring Your Own Lunch

I make my own lunch for work pretty much every day.  Anytime I don't make a lunch, there's a good reason; such as I'm getting lunch for free that day.  It's work to make a lunch everyday.  Especially to make it not the same boring thing all the time that I'm going to get tired of eating, or worse, that Andy will get tired of eating.  Sometimes I don't want to make lunches and I'd rather sit around in the morning and read the news.  But then I think of the consequences.  If I don't make a lunch, then I'm going to have to buy a lunch.  Even with my mall discount, a comparatively delicious lunch would cost me between $6-7.  To me, that is expensive and money could be better spent in other ways.

One thing I really dislike: microwave meals.  I have probably not had a microwave meal for the past 10 years, and that is something I really appreciate.  If you try and think what process food has to take to get to the point where it can be frozen and regenerated like that after being shipped thousands of miles, gross.  Also, I like the idea of a person making my food, not a machine.  I'm not a "locavore" or anything.  I just like buying ingredients and making food from scratch.  Cooking is a skill that is in short supply and I like to learn how to cook new things. 

Granted my best recipe that I created myself is butter noodles with seasoning, I still like to learn.  Cooking good food is a challenge with delicious rewards, and I like anything delicious.  Andy has been a great help in getting me to be more experimental and try new vegetables and recipes.  When I was little I really wanted to be a vegetarian for animal rights, except that I didn't like vegetables.  So I'm getting there.

For some reason I just feel a lot better making my own food than going out and eating.  Sometimes it's lots easier to just get some food, but it's more rewarding to me to just have my own food that we make.  Andy is really good at cooking, so I'm lucky to have him around to make fresh bread and buns.  It's nice to take my own lunch to work and tell everyone that Andy made the bun that my sandwich is made on or the salad dressing I'm using is a gluten-free recipe from Andy's mom.

My biggest food problem is planning ahead for each dinner, it's really hard to make a menu a week in advance.  Then we have to go out and get a bunch of ingredients and stick to the plan. I like flying by the seat of my pants sometimes.  But it gets hard when there's nothing in the cupboards and we're hungry.

I'm open to hearing new recipes from anyone if they'd like to share!