1 Grocery Bag 5 Lunches

This article in Canadian Living promised that you could 'shop only once for an entire week of easy and deliciously different lunches the whole family will love'. Here is a rundown of our experience.

Day 1 - Fresh Orange Chicken Salad

This was a pretty easy salad to put together. The croutons were a nice addition that I normally wouldn't have bothered with. The instruction about the orange was a little confusing, and I had part of the orange down the garburator before I should have. Luckily I had purchased a couple of extra oranges so had enough to make the dressing. Red onions are nice, but maybe not so much if you are at work.

Day 2 - Cold Chicken Noodle Salad

In order to only have to grill chicken once, I had the two chicken dishes in a row, so this was technically Day 3 in the article. This was a really nice salad, even though I used a green pepper instead of a red. I also used very thin vermicelli because I had it on hand, but I don't think it changed the dish much at all. The dressing was a little garlicky, I felt like I had to brush my teeth 3 times before going out that afternoon. Again, maybe not the best for work.

Day 3 - Tomato and Chickpea Salad

We make chickpea salad quite often in our house, but this one was nice, again a little garlicky. The tomatoes were a nice addition because I would not usually add them to my chickpea salad.

Day 4 - Quick Vegetable Curry

This was a really nice dish, I used hot curry powder and mixed the yogurt and diced cucumber with a little lemon juice. It was a very nice addition to the dish. After the first 3 days I decided to use half the garlic, and it worked well.

Day 5 - Perfect Tuna Salad Sandwiches

Tuna salad is not something I normally like to bring to work, but I was eating at home so didn't worry about it. I did like the idea of putting the toppings on the sandwich at work so that the bread doesn't get soggy. I never would have thought of adding black olives to tuna, and it was actually really nice.

Overall the recipes all worked out well. Although I'm at home, it was nice having lunch prepared in advance every day. That way when I had a few minutes it was easy to grab and eat. There were a couple of things that I did want to point out though:

• Grocery list should include at least 1 or 2 packs of gum, many of the dishes would not be great if you work with clients or have meetings.
• The hands-on and total time for preparation was completely undershot. We quickly realized that if you had all the ingredients prepped (ie. carrots chopped, tuna drained, bread cubed etc.) then perhaps the prep time was accurate.

We are pretty good at packing lunches as it is, but it was fun to explore some different lunch ideas. I would definitely recommend this for anyone who finds themselves eating out 2 or more days a week. It definitely kept us on track.