Lightweight Eats

I'm usually pretty awful at eating healthy lunches. I get home from practice hungry, grab a spoon and hit the peanut butter jar. Not a great start to the day.

Every week, I plan out our dinner menu. In light of my terrible snacking habits, I decided to also throw some lunch ideas onto the list--nothing complicated, but healthier ideas.

I've done this before and it's been mildly successful; this time, I decided to put in some extra effort in the hopes of improving the success rate. Over the weekend, instead of shoving all the veggies in the fridge, I pre-chopped them. I know this isn't the best practice for the longevity of vegetables, but that wasn't the point--I wanted to eat them, not keep them.

We also bought a few convenience foods: pitas, hummus and pre-made salad dressing.

I'm not a huge fan of pre-made salad dressing, and prefer to make large batches of my own, but my schedule is busy enough that that's not always possible. I carefully read the ingredient lists, and hope for the best.

The recent cold weather has also called for lots of soup. We bought a large slow cooker a few months ago, and I've been using it to make huge batches of soup. They're usually part of the dinner menu, but a crock full of soup is enough for 3-4 lunches and 2 dinners, at least.

On my lunch/snack menu this week:
- pita pockets with hummus and chopped veggies
- split pea soup
- salads with chopped veggies, avocado and bottled dressing
- celery sticks with peanut butter (yea, that's right, replaced the spoon)

Success rate? High. I think this is the first time we've finished an entire bunch of celery in a week. (Please don't think about that one too hard.) Our soup is super tasty. (Haha!) And we managed to finish off two pounds of romaine, two beets, a large turnip, a bunch of radishes, four pounds of carrots, and two cucumbers in three days.

I'm also a big fan of changing up the routine PB&J for lunches. I use almond butter or sunflower seed butter, and for a while I was using cranberry sauce instead of jam. Dan makes an awesome sandwich with peanut butter and pomegranate seeds. Not the most veggie-ful option, but a very comforting lunch. It's great with a hot mug of tea and the FoodGawker app.

In summary, I'm planning to make a habit out of pre-chopping veggies and planning healthy lunches into my week. I also think celery sticks are here to stay--more calories than a spoon, but also a lot more filling.