Shifting gears

This week, I'm going into my office with some regularity, indicating the end of summer is here. Oof. For those who don't know me, I'm a professor (at the #2 university in the Midwest, mind! Woohoo!), so I have summers to spend at home, working at my own pace (slow) and eating whatever I can rustle up from my fridge. I have the time to choose, cook, and eat on my own time line.

Now, however, I find myself in the old situation that most people who work outside the home find themselves in all year long. What on earth can I take for lunch that isn't overly salty, overly fatty, overly processed crap? The cost of convenience is too often unhealthy junk food. I get grumpy every morning when I have to dig through the fridge for stuff to take that won't lead me down the path to Vendoland in the basement. The land where a girl gets trapped in bad decisions and foolish justifications.

I have no real answers to this quandry, actually, but I'd love to hear from you what you do for lunches that don't break the calorie bank. How do you stay healthy with a portable meal?

There's the obvious leftovers, which I do try to keep going to some extent. When I open a new jar of pasta sauce, I make enough pasta (whole wheat, of course!) for the whole jar and keep single servings in containers that are easy to grab. But A) I don't always make meals that have leftovers, and B) when I do, I get tired of them before they run out.

I bought a cookbook at WW with slow-cooker recipes that I'll start trying in fall. There's the same problem as above, though I'm thinking of buying a small chest freezer, so I can freeze mass quantities to spread them out a bit.

I do often take some fresh vegetables with me, and sometimes I get those Green Giant frozen singles boxes and just eat those (the broccoli and white cheddar one is only three pts, so that's reasonable and tasty). 

I have Boca vegetarian chicken and hamburger patties that I eat on sandwich thins.  Chicken ones are 3 pts for not a lot of food, though. The burgers are a better 1pt.

I take a salad and leave a bottle of vinaigrette in my work fridge.

I have a box of high-fiber cereal on hand at all times in my office, as well as some dried fruit that keeps well (e.g., raisins, craisins, apricots). I can take with lunch some Special K crackers or Ryvita and Laughing Cow for snack urges.

What else? How do you all get through lunch in a healthy way? I have no idea who (if anyone) is still reading, but I'm hoping there are several of you out there, and that you have ideas to share. Leave a comment under this posting for us!