Salad lunch pack

I should’ve written this one earlier, but I just didn’t have the time. Last year I started to make some more comprehensive lunch packs, compared to the Norwegian traditional lunch pack with a couple of slices of bread.

I was just tired of eating dry, tasteless bread, and wanted to try something else. I have two variants I use now, one of which is pictured above.

The salad lunch pack is easy, and takes from 5-20 minutes to make, depending on what you put in it. My favorite is the one on the picture, with chicken and pasta.

Recipe #1 – Chicken salad lunch pack

• Pasta (I use Macaroni or Fusilli, but any pasta will do)
• Lettuce (I use iceberg or crispi)
• Red pepper
• Grilled or cooked chicken meat (you can often buy salad-specific chicken meat. If not, a whole grilled chicken works too)
• Onion
• Maize
• Spices and/or dressing (I use salt and ground pepper, sometimes a little bit of garlic powder)

Cook the pasta. Cut the chicken, red pepper and onion into pieces. Rip the lettuce into pieces (this way it stays fresh longer, compared to cutting it). Mix all ingredients in a airtight lunch box, and add spices. If you use dressing, you can put that in a separate box to preserve the salad better. Remember to bring a fork.

Tip: If you make the salad the night before, make sure to put the driest ingredients on top, and don’t blend them until you are ready to eat. Store the lunch box in the fridge. That way you will have the freshest possible salad.

Recipe #2 – Home-made baguette with ham and cheese

This one requires a bit more preparation, but it tastes great and is really cheap. You can bake baguettes twice a week and have one for lunch every day.

Baguette:

• 3/4 white wheat flour
• 1/4 coarse wheat flour
• yeast (50g per liter of flour)
• milk
• salt
• whole grain and seeds (optional)

If you use fresh yeast, mix it with lukewarm milk. If you use dried yeast, mix it with the flour. Mix together the ingredients until the dough lets go of the bowl. Let the dough raise for about an hour. Roll into sausage-shapes in the size you want. Remember that it will raise. Let it raise for another hour. Put on some whole grain and seeds if you like. Wet them slightly with water before you put them in the owen at 220C. They are ready when they are crispy and brown. Let them cool down before eating. Put them in a plastic bag if you want to use them later.

• Lettuce
• Red pepper
• Ham
• Cheese
• mayonnaise (optional)

Cut a baguette in half. Add ripped lettuce, slices of red pepper, ham and cheese. Add mayonnaise if you like. Wrap in plastic and bring as a lunch pack.

Both of these are great options to paying for expensive lunch in the cafeteria or bringing plain old dry bread.

Ingredients

• Red pepper
• Onion
• Hot dog sausage
• Ham
• Milk
• Salt
• Black pepper
• Cheese
• Lettuce

Recipe

Cut a hot dog sausage, a slice of red pepper, a slice of onion and ham into tiny pieces. Fry them in a pan in oil or butter while you mix two eggs with salt, pepper and about 1dl milk. Add grated cheese to the mix.

When the pieces in the pan are starting to look ready (light brown on the sausage, blank onion), pour in the egg mix. Let it fry until the top is firm. Turn the omelette, and let it fry for 1-2 minutes on the other side. Serve with lettuce.

This is a really fast meal, probably took me under 20 minutes to make. Tastes great. As with any other meal I make, feel free to change ingredients.

Tasty

Today I had an unexpected guest for dinner. I was in town shopping when a friend met me. After finishing shopping some flowers to my girlfriend, we went home to my place. My girlfriend arrived shortly after, and we decided to invite him to stay for dinner.

We was having pork steak again, and had enough steak for him also. But we didn’t have enough fries, so I decided to use the leftovers from my salad also. Still that didn’t seem enough, so I cooked some vegetables that everybody should have in their home: Potatoes, carrots, cauliflower and broccoli.

All this is cheap stuff that you can keep around for a while. It took a while to make, again mainly because of the fries and vegetables. 30-45 minutes.

Ingredients

• Pork steaks (1 or 2 per person, depending on the size)
• Vegetables (I used potatoes, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli)
• French fries
• Salad (I used lettuce, maize, onion and garlic dressing. You can ad for example cucumber, red pepper or anything else you like)

Recipe
Start with heating the oven (if you use French fries that you make in the oven) and boil up some water in a pot. While they heat up, prepare the fries and wash the vegetables. Put the fries in the oven and the vegetables in the pot when the oven is hot and the water boils. Start with the potatoes, as they need to boil longer than the other vegetables. If you use the same vegetables as me, the other vegetables are added just a few minutes at the end (while you finish frying the steak).

Cut the ingredients of the salad. When you have about 10-15 minutes left before the fries are done, start frying the steaks. Remember to spice (salt and black pepper is fine). When everything is done, just serve it. I didn’t ad the garlic dressing to the salad, as some prefer to eat the salad without dressing. I put the dressing, some ketchup and spices at the table together with the rest of the food.

Enjoy.

As always I am happy to get comments and suggestions to my recipes.

I bought a large pack of frozen pork steaks (cheaper than fresh ones), and picked out a couple of them. The French fries was also of the cheaper sort, and we used half a package. The salad was leftovers from Monday, when we ate taco. Really simple and tasty. Took about 40 minutes to make, mostly because of the fries.

If you wonder what I ate from Monday to yesterday, I was in Trondheim picking up the rest of my stuff, and ate with my family.

Today’s meal: Chicken wraps

Chicken wrap

This was also a fast, cheap and easy meal. I still had leftovers from the taco, so I just bought some ground chicken meat. I used the taco wraps, lettuce, pepper, maize, garlic dressing and cheese I already had. Short recipe:

Ingredients

• Ground chicken meat
• Iceberg lettuce
• Onion
• Red pepper
• Maize
• Garlic dressing
• Taco wraps
• Cheese

Fry the ground chicken meat until it is brown. While you fry the chicken, lay the wraps on plates, and cut the vegetables and distribute evenly on the wraps. Add some garlic dressing and cheese topping on top. When the chicken meat is ready, just ad it to the wraps, wrap them and eat.

Of course you can add or remove ingredients at will. Cucumber and carrots are great options.

Estimated time: 15-20 minutes.

Comments
I know this is not the cheapest meal you can make, but if you have lots of vegetable leftovers, this is a great way to use it. The ground chicken meat was really cheap, and I used only 1/3 of a 400g package for 1 person. The rest i froze for later. It is also easy and fast to make, and it tastes good. I would love to get comments and suggestions on the recipe.

Tomorrow I will probably make something out of only leftovers, but next week I will try to get some more meals up here. Maybe something with fish or other seafood.