Two lunch goals for 2017

I ate a lot of peanut butter and banana sandwiches in the last working weeks of 2016, when my brain was on auto-pilot and I traded lunch prep for sleep-ins. Thankfully I'm starting the year with a bit more variety :) What am I eating? Souped-up sandwiches like this broccoli sub and Sophie's delicious pumpkin burgers, which means roasting a tray of veggies when the oven's on.

I've also started stashing a big bowl of cooked rice in the fridge, so I can make these rice bowls with eggs and salad greens (I have an avocado quota!). There's also been pesto pasta and I'd love to copy the tomato, provolone and basil sandwich from Monster Kitchen sometime soon.

Ever since I watched Cooked and picked up a copy of Michael Pollan's Food Rules: An Eater's Manual I've been trying to reduce the amount of processed food I eat. We used to buy ham and turkey for sandwiches so it's required a bit more creativity and preparation but it's been worth it - I haven't missed lunch meat at all.

My second lunch goal was inspired by Erin, who blogged about minimising household waste in 2016 (she posted an honest progress report too). I picked up some beeswax food wraps just before Christmas and have found them really easy to use for snacks like banana bread and sandwiches. They're far prettier than cling wrap too :) Combined with a small collection of lunch boxes, glass jars and a reusable sandwich wrap and snack bag I am making progress.

What are you taking for lunch in these hopeful early weeks of 2017?

Five minute packed lunch

This is my go-to work lunch when there hasn't been any weekend lunch prep because some Sundays are for lazing about. It can be packed in five minutes flat and is based on three ingredients - two slices of sourdough, half an avocado and a good scoop of Persian fetta (goats cheese works just as well).

Winter lunch prep

There have been a few tiny shifts at home now that winter has really set in. Our towels spend a lot of time in front of the heater, the alarm is set that little bit later and people keep giving us pumpkins - so many pumpkins.

Colourful packed lunch

With a tiny bit of planning, I ended up packing a really good lunchbox the other day. It contained:

A zucchini muffin. I make a batch every fortnight or so for emergency snacks, they freeze really well. A friend at work likes to poke fun at me because I need to eat every two hours and tend to dig into my lunch right on noon. Don't substitute the spelt flour in this recipe, it makes the muffins moist.

This cookbook reintroduced me to shaker fries. Basically, you cut up a sweet potato (potato or eggplant) into little strips, chuck the fries into a zip lock bag and add salt and pepper, paprika, olive oil and a few cloves of garlic. Shake well before tipping the fries onto a baking tray. Roast at 180 degrees celsius until they smell done. 

My friend Sophie served some Sunburst cherry tomatoes the other week at lunch and now I'm obsessed. They're Fanta coloured and sweet.

And not pictured is the iced chocolate beetroot brownie that I ate before lunch, it was meant to be my lunch dessert. 

P.S I love this lunchbox interview series, this one is my favourite, although it makes me desperately want a segmented lunchbox to take to work.