When I worked and still packed them, I had no formal rotation - lunch sammies were made from whatever was on hand........PB&J, tuna, egg salad, tomato and avocado (and often with bacon), leftovers or purchased deli lunchmeat. But lunch was not always a sandwich - sometimes hummus and chips, sometimes cheese, crackers and maybe salami or smoked sausage, sometimes yogurt. Always fresh fruit and/or veggies!!

And yes, I did eat at my desk, usually because I was too busy to leave to go elsewhere or there was no one else to provide lunchtime coverage. I am not overly concerned about desk hygiene or bacteria - the desk can be cleaned and bacteria is a fact of life.....the more one tries to avoid, the more likely they are to be adversely affected by it. And I am not sure I understand why eating at one's desk is any more vulgar than eating in a community break or lunchroom..........

I'm not a germaphobe, but I guess there does come a point where it might be a problem, particularly if you are allergic to some types of dander or molds/fungi. One could theoretically clear the desk, eat and then wipe up afterwards. As far as germs, any space frequented by humans contains a lot of human detritus for bacteria to feed on, and food crumbs only add to that. I know because I taught biology and we cultured swabs from various places, and the lab tables inevitably had the highest and most diverse bacteria counts. The least were actually the bathrooms, because they were regularly cleaned with highly concentrated anti-bacterial cleaners. Oh, I should say that the absolute worst was the old pay-phone earpiece from the hallway, but I imagine these days those are no longer regular features of college biology buildings. Anyway, that is why biology labs have a "No food or drink" rule.

Perhaps you are a neater eater than me. I routinely spill. Luckily, I have a space to sit and eat lunch where I work, and then I can wipe it off because there is also a kitchen. As for the vulgarity, he thought it was messy and harried, creating an undignified effect. For example, my Spanish friend also remarked on how frequently he observed Americans talking with their mouths full of food. Of course the effects of constant multi tasking on one's psyche are another topic all together . . . Also Americans are generally more "casual" in their work lives than Europeans, although that may be changing or have changed. This was back in the 1980's and 90's that I was able to be in Europe and make these observations. That was before the ubiquity of the computer in every imaginable work space.

I don't have to office anymore, and eat lunch in my own kitchen. :) It's been a long time since, but I'm no morning persona and had to be pretty organized. My last corporate job was in the computer room, and we would never have allowed food in. There was a windowless lunchroom with fluorescent lights and the door to the men's room. Still better than the computer room for lunch, though I used to nip down to my car, open the T top, and take a nap....Until I opened my eyes to an accountant's face leaning over the opening. UGH! Most of the time, my boss took the whole department out for lunch. As in drove. We had to pay. So that was my main meal for the day, and I drank a lot of iced tea because it was free.

My go-tos for brown bag lunch meetings and trade shows are egg salad or tuna sandwiches, or sliced turkey and cheese, small, not so juicy (i.e., not too messy) whole fruit, finger veg/fruit such as little tomatoes and sugar snap peas, nuts. Sometimes something in a container, but less likely because then you have a dirty container.

If I were taking lunch daily, however, I think I'd be more about variety and less about easy to eat in company. I'd make a lot of Middle Eastern and/or Asian salads and tidbits for the week and make up bento boxes with various main proteins, mix and match. Organized for the week, but with some flexibility and variety. I've done this for a week at a time. I don't know how well it works long term. The main thing is to avoid boredom. Recently, I bought what looked like ordinary Israeli salad from the supermarket deli counter when I was out at mealtime, but it turned out to have black sesame seeds and a Japanese style sweet sesame dressing. It was surprisingly good with the tomatoes, cucumbers and onions.

Good luck!

That's funny Pllog. You are like me, you want to avoid boredom. My husband loves routine for the efficiency and reliability. That's his personality too! Hubs says, "When I find a good thing, I tend to stick with it." Can't complain about that! I have a friend who makes up those quart canning jars filled with salads, all at once for the whole week. I'm not sure I could get that organized in advance or keep to a regular lunch schedule. I'm trying!!

Lunch box (bento) in Japan is an art form.

Lunch in India and China are catered. You pay a monthly fee, lunch will be delivered to your office. You eat what they deliver. No choices.

dcarch

I don't work but I still eat lunch. I don't particularly want to have to think about what to buy/prepare etc. So nearly every day, I have the same lunch.

I have 4 small square slices of Kroger's "Private Selection" Vermont white cheddar cheese. I break each square into 4 pieces, having 16 pieces on my plate in a small pile. Then I add 16 grapes - whatever variety is the nicest - the Holiday grapes are still available and they're delicious. One pice of cheese and one grape go into my mouth at the same time - I like the two different flavors together.

For dessert, there are 6 squares of Chocolove's Dark Choc with Cherries or with Ginger. This is my "chocolate fix" for the day.

I have a glass filled with ice and water with it.

In the summer, I may vary it, and when I'm on the Vineyard, I treat myself to ordering lunch from the snack bar the 14 times I go as an "under-the-roof house guest - DD is the member). Then I have various things like a BLT with avocado, or small custom pizza or other sandwiches. It's my once-a-year treat to myself.

I've heard of the whole jarred meal trend, but I'm not sure I understand putting salad in a jar, unless it's just your favored container. I find them hard to deal with in the fridge. The kind of salads I was talking about are like the Israeli salad, hummus, Japanese cucumber salad, daikon salad. Mostly a singular kind of thing. Also, hard to make one or two servings, but keep well for 4-5 days.

The thing is, variety is much healthier. You get different nutrients. When I was in elementary school, my father mostly made my lunches, and they were standard school lunches: Sandwich, something crunchy, milk, cookie. His sandwiches tended toward old style Jewish, cream cheese and butter (My mother put an end to that when I was little! :)), cream cheese and jam, salami (I still love the bread from a salami sandwich which has been sitting, which has absorbed the fat and seasoning), turna salad, egg salad. Tuna salad was for school. Egg salad was for Summer day camp spelled by the occasional chicken leg (I think the mayonnaise was already pasteurized--it never went bad--and egg salad flavor doesn't mind being camp temperature).

That's as regimented as it ever was, and by the time I was making my own lunches in seventh grade, they were much more interesting, and often hot in Thermos containers, and I make better sandwiches, with vegetables and condiments. :)

I get it about the guy who sticks to what he knows, but there's a whole world out there and that also means he's missing out on what he hasn't tried.

I also get the Norwegian lunch half-hour to eat the bread-and which they admit isn't very good, because they want to get out while the sun is still there. I would too! Working in the windowless computer room, eating in the windowless lunch room, only window onto the entry area where there was also no natural light there for security (so we could check for spies) not humanity, was a real drag of sun barely out to full dark during the Winter. Even though it was not good for paying off the car with the T-top, my bosses' insistence on going out to lunch in the middle of the day was fantastic for getting to actually see the sun. In the Summer, we'd be stripping as we went out, because the computer was cooled.

Even after I started mostly working from home, I did a lot of lunches out on the same principle. Business meetings were better in a convivial atmosphere, and if I got overstressed over budgets and the like, I could eat the butter. :) (I now know that fats take away stress chemicals--then I just knew that if I was eating the bread and butter it meant I was stressed.)

Now, having a great kitchen and good food in the house, making lunch is no big deal. I do get your dilemma about fixing lunches to take to work, however. I don't think you can get out of the brain work. It becomes automatic, the way you're looking for, with repetition, and once you've made all the decisions.

Perhaps a better strategy would be to lean in? Like set some nutrition goals first. Figure out things you want to eat to accomplish them. Like do you want to increase your fiber intake? Reduce fats? Get more dark leafy greens? Do a meatless day? Once you figure that out, think up twenty lunches (a month's worth) that will be nice to eat and meet your goals, and which can be done with the foods that are currently available by season and price. Figure out some that work with leftovers you regularly have, like maybe a fried rice or chicken salad. Then, while you're shopping and/or making your list, make sure to add in things from a week's worth of the lunches you've thought through. Keep the list of lunches on your phone. Plan some substitutions, like pears or peaches depending on season, or soup for salad.

There are no shortcuts to organization, but organization itself can be a shortcut to not needing to think things through every time.

Dcarch, the dabba walahs deliver food prepared in the eater’s home by (usually) the eater’s wife or mother. It’s astoundingly efficient.

When I took a lunch, I took the same thing for months on end....one period was a slice of boiled deli ham, a slice of deli swiss cheese a little dijon or dark German mustard on very thin white sandwich bread. When I was pregnant I added a hard boiled egg.

Then for another period I took cottage cheese on whole wheat and some canned crushed pineapple....then I cycled back to the ham and cheese!

I eat at my desk and browse GW forums while doing so. I used to go down to our small lunchroom until my company brought in 100+ Indian IT contractors and they took it over. Speaking of people who talk with their mouthful of food!!!

I usually eat what is left over from a previous dinner and often add a small side salad. Yesterday was a Chile Relleno, 1/2 chicken quesadilla, and some rice. Today will be a small piece of steak, a couple grilled shrimp, 1/2 baked potato, and a small salad.

I always have containers of chile, soup, or ham and beans in the freezer I can grab if no leftovers are available. I only eat out about once a month and it is usually Chinese or Thai food.

for me, it’s usually leftovers, I will sometimes either cook more than I need for dinner (doesn’t always work as others sometimes just eat more then) or if we order something like a pizza I’ll try to hide a piece or 2 away in the fridge, I like chunky salads too or veggies with dip, if I’m desperate I’ll boil an egg or do a scrambled egg sandwich, or make a pbj (unless someone has eaten all the jam too lol), one of my coworkers would bring in cans of soup with an openable lid

My take on the article is that the Norwegians don't spend time while at work wondering what they will have for lunch, going out for it, or eating it. It's just nourishment. I almost always take my lunch to work. The only lunch time at work that is "wasted" is when I need to queue up for the microwave. That is the time when I'm most likely to chat with coworkers about life outside work so may not really be wasted.

On the productivity side, some of my coworkers go out to lunch together frequently (like 3 or 4 times a week). They spend a somewhat crazy amount of time discussing where they will go. And almost always take longer than our allotted 45 minutes.

I don't have a regular routine of lunches but I think about them when I go grocery shopping and buy what I need. I make my lunch the night before and just grab it in the morning.

I also make my lunch the night before. In the summer its salads or sandwiches but I the winter I want hot food. I now have a great lunch box that steam heats my lunch in about 15 minutes so i take pasta with a sauce, or a baked potato with toppings or leftovers. Its wonderful having a hot lunch.

Have to say, I hated eating lunch at my desk. Ever so often, there was no choice. There were a few 11 hour work days, and something needed to be et... while doing some Excel or Powerpoint at the computer. No, not relaxing but as I note, something needed to be et.

Much of my cooking for weekday lunches was on Sunday, though occasionally a weekday dinner would show up again the next day at work, maybe as a salad, or as some other take on the original dish.

I almost always did breakfast at home: usually a couple of soft boiled eggs. I seriously cannot start the day high carb.

Yeah, I don't think it was the sandwich that was the productivity key, it was the regular routine. I have to laugh, my husband is so funny with his love of regularity. He's a great cook, and last night he made a fantastic chicken minestrone as per my request. But all he kept doing was complaining that it was not his "regular" chicken soup recipe. I said, "But it's delicious, didn't you like it?" and his answer was, "Yeah but I prefer my regular recipe." He has one type of chicken soup he likes, one. His defense was that he likes all kinds of soups, but only one recipe of each . . . If I want variety from him it has to be mushroom barley, chili, Italian wedding, clam chowder . . . and chicken soup has to be plain chicken broth with frozen mixed vegetables added and wide egg noodles. Don't go throwing any egg drop in there!! Yes, he is Germanic by half, and Anglo Saxon on the other half.

Edited to add that this afternoon he had the leftovers for lunch, and his remark was, "This soup is delicious, but next time no tomatoes and no beans . . . "

"et".........do you mean eaten?? I'm sorry to go off topic here but grammatical errors like this are to me like fingernails scraping a blackboard and throw me completely off the subject. Sorry.

"Et" is not a grammatical error. It is an alternative word form of ancient age, and legit, even if it bugs you.

If anything it is archaic and and NOT in current accepted usage. The verb 'eat' is irregular - the simple past tense is ate and the past participle.....how it was used in the remark I referred to.....is eaten.

Conjugation of the verb 'eat'. Nowhere in that listing is the word 'et' used as a form of any tense of the verb eat!

it’s familiar enough to me, maybe from reading period literature, maybe from one of my relatives, not sure...

I understand "et" is commonly used at least in Texas.

I could be wrong.

dcarch

we hop on an et to fly somewhere, land, and we are hungry, so we get all et, and by the time we get to the hotel, we are ready for a shower, and get all et doing that ...

I have a 1hr lunch. Most days I drive the 2 miles home and eat whatever left over or easily fixed foods so that I can do some pre dinner prep, play with the puppy or just relax.

My husband commutes over 1.5 hours a way on a good day, so he gets his standard "breakfast" for lunch meal that I prep all 5 of on Sunday. I pack his lunch box each night for the next morning and set the coffee pot.

Just a little aside.... many what we call americanisms stem from old English, you saying gotten for example is old, we haven't used it since the 16th century.

I hear Americans frequently say "I just did" instead of "I've just done", which makes my ears bleed. It's just differences.

Et for eaten is often said where I come from in England.....regional dialect. As is ent for isn't. I miss it! I love regional differences, accents.......