One cooked chicken, one bag of leaves and a short list of storecupboard extras will carry a working week of lunches without cooking twice.
Buy One Anchor, Not Five Meals
Meal planning fails when every day gets its own recipe, because every recipe brings a half-used ingredient with it. Buy one anchor instead — a cooked chicken, a tray of eggs, a tin of tuna — and let the rest of the week be variations on it. Five recipes need thirty ingredients. One anchor and five dressings needs about twelve.
The Week
- Monday. Chicken, cucumber and cherry tomato over leaves, with a lemon and oil dressing.
- Tuesday. The same bowl with kidney beans added and a spoon of the dressing thinned with yogurt.
- Wednesday. Chicken through cold rice with spring onion, which is the day the anchor stops looking like salad.
- Thursday. Egg and leaves, because the chicken is finished and Thursday is the day everyone gives up.
- Friday. Whatever is left, in a wrap, with the last of the dressing.
Dress at the Desk
Carry the dressing separately in a small jar. A salad dressed at seven in the morning is a wet salad by one in the afternoon, and that single habit is the difference between a lunch you look forward to and a lunch you buy again on the way to work.
Cook once, dress five times. Nothing about a week of lunches has to be interesting except the last thing you add to it.
The separate jar for dressing is obvious in hindsight and I had never done it.
Thursday being the day everyone gives up is the most honest thing I have read all week.