Lunch Meal Prep - Week of 11/4/19

Each week, we try to plan far enough ahead to make lunches to have throughout the week. Most weeks, we are ok having the same lunch each day. Bringing a lunch with me to the office, saves me from going and buying lunch somewhere, and usually saves me a few calories as well.

This week, I found a recipe on the Food Network from Alton Brown (actually Sarah had saved it from a previous week when we had not got around to making it). It is Artichoke Pasta Salad. It is a great combination of flavor from the artichokes and chicken, as well as freshness from the basil and grape tomatoes. The farfalle (bow tie pasta) gives this meal the heartiness you’re looking for to keep you full throughout the day. One adjustment I made to this recipe is that I had some leftover frozen chicken thighs, so my chicken is a combination of shredded chicken from the Instant Pot, and pan-fried chicken thighs. I actually think that the chicken thighs bring much more complete flavor to the dish than shredded chicken.

We generally add some fruit on the side, this week adding some strawberries, blueberries and grapes. If we’re hungry enough at lunch time, we’ll eat this with our main lunch. However, fruit makes a nice afternoon snack to get us to the end of the day, if we’d like to keep it for that.

This meal has about 400 calories, making it a nice healthy alternative to your regular routine.