[Gummy-Bear]

Yes, it's that time of year again, time for all of us students to go back to school. I'm going into my junior year (god help me) and am not able to go off campus for lunch. The cafeteria's lunches are pathetic and I'm looking for fresh ideas.

School starts at nine and lunch is at around one so I need something that can hold up that long without being ruined and inedible.

I'm trying to lead a fairly healthy diet as well.

So does anyone have any good lunch ideas? Chefs? Home cooks? Mothers? As a side note, I'd really like some good chicken salad recipes as well so if anyone has a good one, please feel free to share.



Thanks,
Gummy-Bear

[MikeLM]

GB-
I can understand how you, as a budding epicure, might not be thrilled with your school lunches, but we may need a few more details:

I assume you can bring a lunch to school.

Can you bring it in a cooler? Your hope for chicken-something suggestions brings this to mind. There are endless chicken salad possibilities giving you meat, veggies, bread (croutons) and other stuff. You could even have garlic croutons, if you're not worried about alienating your fellow-students.

Hey, if you do the garlic right, maybe you could get sent home early!

But, obviously, you need to make sure you don't get done in by the chicken and mayo between prep time and lunch time.

Anyway, let us know, and I'm sure BDL and others will have suitably sophisticated suggestions. I'll try to help.

Mike

[tessa]

what about a wide necked flask that can hold either hot or cold food, you can store all kinds of things from soups and casserols to rice,pasta, salads etc

there was a thread not so long ago from oregon yeti which talked about lunches
what about geting an in insulated pack like you might use at the supermarket that you can wrap around your lunch, tupperware have some great containers where you cna put a frozen bottle /pack in to keep things cold or some small gel packs that you can pack up next to your food, i use them all the time they are great

when your mum is cooking , or when your cooking , just make a bit extra and have it as lunch
what kinds of things do you like

[Gummy-Bear]

We can bring thermoses but can not bring coolers. We have 2 microwaves available as well. The little cooling pouches are a good idea but I usually put the lunches in one of those little brown bags.

If I ask my librarian nicely, and bribe her with cookies.... I may get use of a mini-fridge, which would be very nice.

[Praties]

Chicken salad's neat because you can pretty much throw anything you want in there. Start out with cubed or shredded chicken, some mayo and then the sky's the limit. I like it with celery and some grated onion or sliced green onion, but I also like it with pecans and halved red grapes and/or throw in a little pineapple. Or add a little lime to the mayo and use unsweetened coconut and pineapple. Throw a little curry in the mayo and add pecans or peanuts and a few raisins and top it, right before eating, with some bean sprouts. Add some chipotle Tabasco and a little lime juice to your mayo, add some grated Jack cheese and eat it with tortilla chips or slices of jicama or roll it in a wheat tortilla with some lettuce and tomato (and, if you're me, some chopped sweet onion). Chicken's so neutral it's a great thing to play with, so have some fun with it.

(And you have my total sympathy on the cafeteria food thing)