Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Battle of the Bulge: The Brown Bag

I don't brown bag literally. But I do bring my own lunch to work.

1) Sodium is the reason for water weight. No take-out or processed foods, and five pounds are out of the equation. For reals. Same food, homemade, is always better. 

2) Quite frankly, kosher ready-made food costs way too much, and if it doesn't, you get what you pay for. Financially, brown bagging will save you a fortune. Never mind medical bills.

3) After someone who works in the food business told me that it is impossible to have a restaurant kitchen without roaches, I'm good. 

It's not like I don't have opportunities; my office is smack-dab in the center of many options. But my own food always tasted reliably better and I could spend my money at Sephora instead. 

The best gadget I bought was the Crock-Pot 20-Ounce Lunch Crock Food Warmer. It comes with a removable canister with its own snug lid. On Sundays I make up a gigantic pot of soup, and simply pour over some into the canister and take it to work, where I pop it into the Crock-Pot Food Warmer. By lunch I have a piping, satisfying meal, and I have found that soup is what keeps me full the longest.
 http://i.walmartimages.com/i/p/00/04/88/94/04/0004889404379_500X500.jpg
One can warm up whatever one likes in there.

This past Shabbos there were guests, and as always in such a case there was a groaning fridge that needed to be emptied following their visit. I chopped up some greenery (lettuce, cucumbers, grape tomatoes, snap peas, scallions, etc.) and topped it with sliced sweet chicken and the apricot jam mushroom sauce as dressing.




Here's a simple salad dressing that is the only one really used in my house: vinegar, light olive oil, black pepper, and garlic powder. 


I always feel like I need something refreshingly sweet following a meal, so I scour the stores for in-season fruits. If one looks carefully, now there are some very good Golden Delicious apples (matte exterior, a perfect blend of green-yellow with a blush of red, and very freckled. Those are the best ones).  

Mark Bittman of The Flexitarian is also on a quest to revive the brown bag, metaphorically. Does my audience think I am unaware of the potentially "nerdy" connotations of toting tupperware? Tough. The Frumanista has spoken. 
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAd7spJY6dhS0uHa7hko55sIiQSMp7Omf3tZMpQWtwW_r7zlUHgNhI3HXDEnUVeMzcnGNHt_sKlpHTeOTVt6_TmitXNR0EvqDX_MQfVqnyXfU5NhHd7SjLUxj_YptnM0yhhCJmFzJAevg/s1600/DSC_0138.JPG
Via ladygouda.com. Très Chic.
I have managed to concoct for Ta a brown bag system that, I believe, has kept his health on track. More on that in another post. But every other man his age that I know is on some sort of medication; baruch Hashem, he is not. Eating out only rarely has to be a health benefit.  

3 comments:

FrumGeek said...

80% of the time I bring my own food, salad in a tupperwear, and a couple of golden delicious apples :)
(And maybe like 5-10 whole wheat crackers)

Princess Lea said...

Mmm, I love whole wheat crackers. The hexagons from Landau's or Kemach are the most calorie-friendly and filling, I've found.

Princess Lea said...

Adam: my apologies, I deleted your comment accidentally.

A second apology for the use of your photo. I try to give credit if I can tell it is private work, but Google is rarely that informative. I do not make any money on this blog, so it was not monetary exploitation, as least. Additionally, I must have misunderstood the parameters of "free use."

As you can see, it is gone (I wasn't sure, per comment deletion, which apple shot was yours, so I removed both).

Have a delightful day.