Wednesday, January 28, 2009

what i'm eating for lunch


I don't know about you, but I get really tired of making sandwiches for lunch. This week when I was at the grocery store, I decided to just buy one of those rotisserie chickens, with the idea of making some chicken salad or heating it up for dinner on nights when my husband is working and won't be home for dinner. But then it also dawned on me that this would be a great thing to just have for lunch with salad, which is something I need to be eating more of these days! So I bought one of those plastic containers of organic mixed greens (I don't always buy organic but these weren't too pricey), and off I went. This is a great thing to make for lunch. So easy, and pretty cheap. The chicken was around $5, which is what I would normally be paying for a week's worth of lunch meat.

Real Simple Magazine recently rated Salad Dressings, which led me to my new two favorite store-bought dressings:
Cardini's Parmesan Ranch, and Brianna's Zesty French Dressing. Both are delicious!

We also had a block of Cheddar Cheese in the fridge, so I chopped a little up, along with some grape tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots.

That along with some quiche a sweet neighbor brought over for me made a great, well-rounded lunch. (I did sneak a brownie for dessert, but a girl's gotta live a little!). This is certainly not the most original meal, but a good basic one for lunch at home.

One other thing you can do with this chicken is save the chicken bones to make chicken stock. I've never done this, but have ready many places that homemade chicken stock tastes much better than store bought, and is a great way to save money. So I'm going to keep all the bones in a bag in the freezer each time I buy a roasted chicken, and when I get enough to make a big batch of stock, I'll try it.

Anyway, what do you like to make for lunch? What do you turn to when you just can't drag yourself to the deli counter for yet another bag of lunch meat?

Oh, and finally, a picture! It's so much more fun to read about food when you can see it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love your blog! I think the photo for this post is amazing! I have got to get a camera like that :) So.. One thing I love to make for lunch is black bean and corn quesadillas. I saute diced onion and garlic in butter and add salt, pepper, garlic powder, mexican seasoning, etc. Then add fresh salsa, a can of black beans rinced and drained, and frozen corn. This mixture is great stuffed into tortillas with cheese and then toasted in an iron skillet for a few minutes to melt the cheese and crisp the tortilla. It is really tasty to add butter to the skillet too (I believe butter is good for me, so I am not afraid to add it to everything, and I do mean everything!) Serve with sour cream (I like Nancy's Organic Cultured Sour Cream from Whole Foods) and extra salsa, cilantro too if you have some on hand.