Our life can be a little hectic. Mr. MVP drives 180 minutes roundtrip to work and there are some days when my brain doesn’t function past “feed the dog, let the dog out – repeat”, so it really helps us to plan ahead, especially when it comes to what we eat. I’m not even sure we could successfully be FODMAPers without planning our meals five days in advance. Truthfully, I’ve got the planning and organizing gene, so I come by my list making, container filling and cooking ahead honestly, but it’s not hard, so keep reading and I’ll teach you the ways of my obsessed lunch making mind.
The first thing we do is decide on the menu for the week. This week because we are going back to a basic FODMAP free menu, we are having 1 cup of brown rice, 3 ounces of plain grilled chicken and 8 yellow tomatos for lunch. Snacks will be a small serving of almonds and blueberries in the morning and then a mandarin orange in the afternoon. Mr. MVP does take 8 ounces of juice in the car, but breakfast and dinner are eaten at home and don’t need to be packed ahead of time (I’ll talk about dinner at the end). So, we went shopping on Saturday and purchased our groceries for the week and did all our cooking on Sunday. Mr. MVP grilled enough chicken for the week and I made enough rice in the Rice Ninja and then I got out our Ziploc Containers and filled them up.
After our lunch containers are full they go directly in the refrigerator and will fit in Mr. MVP’s lunch pail each night. The containers can go right in the microwave at work and then come home and go directly in the dishwasher. We use 1/2 cup containers for almonds and blueberries, 1 cup containers for grapes and strawberries and the square and circle small containers for meals. There is almost no measuring. For juice we like the Bodum 8 ounce travel cup because they’re leak proof and they hold exactly one serving size of cranberry juice.
Nature Sweet Sunbursts Golden Tomatoes
So, can you do all this if you’re not a FODMAPer or if you have kids or you’re a vegan? Yup. I sometimes have to laugh at all those crazy bento box lunches on Pinterest because I was kid once and my Mom packed my lunch every single day first grade through (I think) ninth grade and my goal was not to sit and gaze in wonder at the beauty of my lunch box, it was to devour as much as possible and get outside and play. Parents, pack up some healthy peanut butter and banana sandwiches in the freezer and take them out the night before. Add some plain popcorn, carrots, and water to the lunchpail and call it day. Adults, you can substitute any food on the planet Earth you feel comfortable with and create a lunch for yourself. Multiply times 5 and you’ll have a full week’s worth of meals.
Planning can take practice and looking at Pinterest can even make me feel like an underachiever and we’ve been making lunches and menus for dinner for almost 10 years, but like everything it takes practice. Our dinner menu, for instance is usually just a couple variations of our weekend dinners and our weekday lunches. This week we will have chicken tacos with red and green peppers and goat cheese, gluten free pizza with red pepper, tomato and mozzarella cheese, and in between we will have basmati rice with chicken, feta cheese and brusseles sprouts. Again, all of this has already been prepared and all we have to do is grab the ingredients, assemble them, and put them in the oven.
This week is a great week to start planning your meals. Make a list for the supermarket and make an organized approach at taking on the next five days. If I can manage to put together meals for our family when there are days a full thought doesn’t even escape my mouth then I have full faith in all of you and your container filling abilities.
About The Author
Nicole
Member of Team VP, knitter and Mama to Blue and Franks. Life, is bloody good.
