Today's lunch

[pegkerr]

I've mentioned how much I love my Laptop Lunchbox, haven't I? Once I started using it, I couldn't believe how many years I subsisted on the boredom of frozen lunches heated up in the microwave. I'd never go back now. Today's lunch (don't have the means to load a picture here at work, sorry), which took me about fifteen minutes to assemble: spanakopita (leftovers from kiramartin, mmm), spring mix salad topped with pomegranate seeds, dried cranberries, pecans, and Newman's Own Light Vinaigrette; a sliced orange; and butternut squash simmered in apple cider. According to my SparkPeople nutrition tracker, it totals 485 calories:

Spanakopita (Spinach&Cheese), 150 grams (304 calories)
Butternut Squash, 71 grams (28 calories)
Orange, 120 grams (56 calories)
Pomegranates, 23 grams (16 calories)
Pecans, 7 grams (48 calories)
Spring Mix Salad, 1 cup (10 calories)
Newman's Own Light Balsalmic Vinaigrette Dressing, 1 tbsp (23 calories)

NUTRIENTS: [GOAL]; TODAY SO FAR (breakfast and lunch)
Calories: [1200 - 1550]; 879
Fat: [27 - 60]; 38
Carbohydrates: [135 - 252]; 120
Protein: [30 - 136]; 25
Calcium, Ca: [100 - 150]; 68
Vitamin A, IU: [100 - 110]; 186
Vitamin C: [100 - 500]; 178
Vitamin B-12: [100 - 200]; 41
Vitamin B-6: [100 - 200]; 63
Fiber, total dietary: [25 - 35] 15
Vitamin D: [100 - 150]; 24
Vitamin E: [100 - 200]; 19
Folate, total: [100 - 125]; 39
Iron, Fe: [100 - 150]; 39
Fatty acids, total saturated: [0 - 25]; 12
Cholesterol: [0 - 250]; 139
Sodium, Na: [0 - 2400]; 1,152
Caffeine: [0 - 200]; 120

Did you pack your own lunch? What are you having for lunch today? Do you think your lunches are pretty healthy for the most part?

P.S. So far, I've gotten 49 people to sign up at SparkPeople. Anyone want to up my total to an even fifty? Click here:



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For those of you on my friends list who HAVE signed up, how has SparkPeople been working for you? Leave a comment to let me know what kind of success you have had.

Comments

[knitmeapony.livejournal.com]

I love Sparkpeople, yes I do. There's a couple of teams I'm having a blast being active in. I don't always follow the meal plan like I should -- I'm still at a financial place where it's peanutbutter and ramen most days -- but it keeps me aware.

Also, I'm going to be training for the bike part of a triathalon with some girls from work, and I set some goals pre-training, since I'm not used to a regular exercise program.

[rachet.livejournal.com]

I joined. :-D

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Mostly I have leftovers for lunch. Working from home means that I don't have to decide in advance. I have also remembered that, duh, salads are not so hard that I can't make one for myself for lunch. (For some reason I had only been making them for dinners, and I love my salads.) What I want for lunch today is half a grapefruit and a salad, but I think I need some cheese or something a little more solid if I'm going to spend most of the day running hither and thither (which I am).

[diatryma.livejournal.com]

Lunch, when I eat at schoolworkofficelab (I need a better word for where I am), is a turkey sandwich with provolone and honey mustard. Thursdays I eat out, either getting Jimmy John's and eating it at my desk or grabbing other people and going for whatever they're going for. If I'm at home, odds are good it'll be two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I'm boring, but I eat lunch almost every day. It works.

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

I was considering the laptop lunchbox, and ended up going bento -- mainly because our wee bento is the right size for Meg. I like pre-prepping lunches, but often I end up making a sandwich or a salad. (Particularly nice when I can go glean the salad by picking from the garden.)

I tried SparkPeople but found that I wasn't focused enough to enter everything online; I started tracking on paper, as I'd been doing with Weight Watchers, and that helped. I like that SparkPeople focuses on calories and nutrients rather than the WW Points system, but I need to be trained into thinking that way rather than automatically assigning points!

[madlori.livejournal.com]

I use My Food Diary, which is a very similar site to SparkPeople. I log all my food, exercise and body numbers, there's a forum and resources, yadda yadda. I've lost ten pounds since 11/28!

I don't pack my lunches since we have an awesome cafeteria here. Generally for lunch I have either a grilled chicken or a black bean gardenburger, and some vegetable side dishes from the entree line, or cold salads (they have this awesome corn, black bean and jicama salad they make sometimes that's spicy and gooooood). Usually my lunches come in under 500 cals.

Since I'm only cooking for me, my usual routine is to make up a big batch of either my healthy chili or cider beef stew, both of which I have numbers for (my site has a recipe builder function, as I'm sure Spark does). I am a Gladware devotee. I separate it into single servings, put a couple in the fridge and freeze the rest for later.

come to think of it, I need some new stew recipes for variety.

Lunch

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

"What are you having for lunch today?"

Stuffed cabbage.

It was a choice between that, pork-sausage sauce on pasta, mushroom and wild rice soup, and smoked salmon. Our refrigerator is a bounty of leftovers right now.

B

Re: Lunch

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Sounds absolutely wonderful to me. Everyone in my family except me would have rejected everything on that list except for the pasta. Oh, and I guess Rob would have tried the pork sausage.

All three of them rejected the spanakopita. I will be eating it for lunch for the rest of the week.

Re: Lunch

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Which is sad, because good spanakopita is, well, good.

B

[nwl.livejournal.com]

Did you pack your own lunch? What are you having for lunch today? Do you think your lunches are pretty healthy for the most part?

I was supposed to have lunch out with a friend, probably at her work place - Sodexho. They have the best cafeteria. Being a food service company, they have five star chefs who feed the employees to keep up with their skills. Alas, she was sick today.

So, I ate leftovers from dinner. I cut up the garlic chicken breast, spread mayo on home made bread, and made a chicken sandwich. I had a few of the mixed nuts my uncle sent us and a cup of hot tea. I finished with an apple from the Macs mom sent from NY. I'm looking forward to the oranges from FL to be arriving soon.

Being at home means I usually don't have a whole lot. I'm often busy and don't feel like eating much. I'd rather sew during the time rather than eat.

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

I love my Laptop Lunchbox a lot less since the container tops disintegrated. The fact that there was only one full-size container with a top limited its usefulness for me, but I was very unhappy when the tops that did come with it simply fell apart all around the edges. I still use the tops, but everything leaks now. Which leads to the bag getting smelly and having to be scrubbed down with baking soda every week or so. I'm not pleased at all, and no longer recommend the kit.

I take it you didn't have this problem?

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

No, not at all. But then I've been washing everything by hand because we don't have a dishwasher. Have you been putting them in the dishwasher? Not that this would be an adequate excuse for them to fall apart.

I wonder if you sent an e-mail to them at the website to complain, they would offer a replacement?

[dreamshark.livejournal.com]

We don't have a dishwasher. I do sometimes microwave the food container, but not the salad dressing cup of course. It must have just been a bad batch of polyvinyl or something.

I kept intending to email them, but never remembering. After I posted that comment I finally sent the email. I would hope that they would at least offer me replacement tops.

Of course, that still doesn't deal with the larger problem, which is their whole "philosophy" of only providing one meal container with a top in the first place. If I had it to do over again, I would buy something different. Sure, it's POSSIBLE to pack a lunch with only one "wet" item, but why should you be forced to? Is there something basically wrong with the desire to take a small container of applesauce or yogurt as a side dish? It's not like "wet" food is inherently unhealthy. So I end up buying small, wastefully packaged yogurt and applesauce containers instead, which conflicts with the whole eco-friendly anti-packaging concept.

[pameladean]

I had lunch out with my mother, and we both had the same thing, a spinach salad with apples, red peppers, grilled portobello mushrooms, and a piece of excellent bread smeared with goat cheese and then toasted.

At home I have leftovers for the most part; if there aren't any I might have a big salad with a baked potato cut up into it, or a mock-meat sandwich, or some whole-wheat tortillas with refried beans, soy cheese, and hot sauce, generously topped with salad greens or leftover steamed vegetables. I bet you're glad you're not me! 8-)

P.

[woodrunner.livejournal.com]

I joined Sparkpeople, but when I entered in the information regarding my diet, it didn't really give me meal items that I could actually eat. I've already changed my diet so that breadstuff and wheatstuff is at a minimum to accomodate my husband's diet preference; and I'm vegetarian on top of that...

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I tried SparkPeople on your recommendation, and found them uncomfortably focused on diet and weight loss. Maybe they're more flexible than most such sites, but still way too much into the weight-loss/calorie-counting for me to tolerate.

[airemay.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I may check out SparkPeople. I'm definitely not interetested in losing weight, but I do need to round out my diet a bit. More fruits and veggies, regular eating habits, etc.

I love packing my own lunches! It's a great way for me to get in a piece of fruit and veggies. Over the summer, I would pack sandwiches or a frozen entree and bring a snack treat (like fruit snacks or a granola bar), a piece of fruit and carrots. Today, when I went to museums with my friend, I packed us a lunch. PBJ, fruit snacks, granola bar and berries. My lunches are generally pretty healthy. Packing food is a staple for me, with all the theatre stuff I do.

[avengangle.livejournal.com]

Haha, you ask this question on the day of the Faculty/Staff Appreciation Luncheon. I had: salad with cranberries, blueberries, and mandarin oranges (and raspberry vinaigrette); some green bean/red pepper salad (mayonnaise, I think); a bit of Waldorf Salad; turkey; a very little bit of tortellini with capers and tomatoes; about two bites of salmon; steamed California Mix vegetables (yellow carrots! oh my!); a roll; about a spoonful of mashed potatoes (they were out of a box); half a piece of cranberry walnut bread; half a piece of pumpkin spice bread; and a piece of mint chocolate mousse pie.

Oh, and a strawberry dipped in chocolate.

Normally I have whatever I can find as I run out the door, which might be a bagel and a clementine. Or a banana. I definitely enjoyed lunch today.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I'm so envious of your lunchboxes! They always look and sound so delicious.