If you're like me, you may be traveling 45 minutes to work, or even taking the caltrain or bart into a major city into work.
As part of my attempt to save money and eat healthier, I wanted a lunch that traveled well, could be stuck in my bag, and could be thrown together in the morning before I left the house. Compact was important because while you can get a tiffin or insulated lunch bag, I didn't want to be one of those people on the train loaded down with bags - I wanted to keep my stuff limited to a small purse and a backpack. Furthermore, I like eating hot lunches and my office has a fridge and microwave in the breakroom (tiffins don't microwave for the most part).
I started taking leftovers to work in a 1 quart glass container with a lid (we have a fridge at work), however, I wanted more to add more veggies (rather than just fill up the container with rice and chicken, or pasta). This last week I bought a big 1 pound box of spinach from costco. I found that by squishing the raw spinach and packing the bottom of the container full of it until there was 1/3 to 1/4 of the container left (or even less) I've been able to add more servings of leafy greens into my diet.
When I heat of the food in the microwave, it cooks the spinach a bit so the volume goes down, and you can mix the spinach with the pasta, or whatever is in the bowl, so the spinach doesn't taste so bland.
The key to the one quart container has been to think bento like (without the cutsie prep that goes into bentos). On days that there are no leftovers, I've cut a sandwich into quarters and added chips or (my preference) pretzel sticks into the bowl along with cookies.
I'm hoping that adding more leafy greens into my diet with increase my energy level.
I experimented this week with buying a lb of salad greens and spinach. I found the spinach easier to incorporate into lunch, the salad greens were harder, and my dislike of bitter flavor of the salad greens made me less inclined to add an extra bowl of salad to my lunch prep in the morning.
