Stuffed & Baked Vegetables (and fried)

I've been doing well with my lunches (for the last 3 days!) I'll post a full run-down of this weeks meals over the weekend. For now, I thought I would share a dish that I had for lunch today. Stuffed vegetables with rice!

The best thing about this dish is how versatile it is. You can really make it however you want and it's so easy! You can stuff any type of vegetable you want, with any type of filling. It's most often made with ground beef fried with onions and pine nuts but it's very easy to make it vegetarian if you substitute the meat with mushrooms or tofu (haven't ever tried it with those ingredients but just the thought is making my mouth water - will try asap and report back!)

The tray I made consisted of carrots, potatoes, eggplant, and artichoke hearts but I would have loved to include green or red peppers, zucchini, or tomatoes had we had any.

Just as a side note, I don't usually cook with measurements so I'm trying my best right now! Play around with it and see what works best for you.

Artichoke and carrot stuffed with ground beef.

The First Lunch

September 1 was supposed to be my first day of packing my lunch and in true Maya-style, I forgot my lunch at home. Great start, right?

But now that Labor Day weekend has passed, summer hours are over, school is back in motion - I'm back on track!

Some things I've learned about food preparation:

1) Think ahead! Make a week-long plan and buy  your groceries based on that. Not only will it save you money in the long-run, but you won't stress about not having food ideas.

2) Pack your lunch the night before! I, for one, am way too tired to wake up even 10 minutes earlier in the morning. Pack your lunch the night before and leave it in the fridge. Just don't forget to grab it from the fridge before you leave! I've started putting an alert on my phone to remind me.

3) Portion control. I'm an over-eater, as are most other people I know. We don't know what proper portions mean. I bought containers that have measurements on them to help me gain an understanding of what "one cup" of something really is. (I looked at it and thought I would die of starvation - I didn't.)

4) Snack often, snack healthy.We hear this all the time. Smaller meals, more often. But for me that means an excuse to stuff my face with fries and fuzzy peaches every hour. Make sure you pack filling snacks, like almonds, veggies, fruit, even crackers and cheese. 

With that said and done, on to today's lunch!

Warning: BEETS TURN EVERYTHING PINK.

Snacked on peach slices and blueberries.

Then had beets, corn, one spinach pie and a meat pie (recipes coming soon!)

Yum.

I will say it was absolutely amazing but I promise, promise, promise I will start taking more appetizing looking photos. My iPhone is failing me! 

You need to spend money to save money (or something like that)

Last week I spotted some extremely cute lunch bags that I couldn't justify buying, no matter what technique I used. Even my trusty trick of dividing the price of the product by the number of expected uses failed me. My friend didn't hesitate to remind me that this was because I never actually packed lunches and I couldn't pull off trying to carry it as a purse.

Thankfully, my mind always finds a way to get what it wants. Not that this project was created solely to justify the purchase of a $15 lunch bag or anything, but I've now divided the hell out of the price of the lunch bag. To the point where I've decided that I'm pretty much making money off of it. Pretty much.

So here it is, my brand new money-maker, otherwise known as an insulated lunch bag. The brand is Koko from Winners.

Isn't it so pretty? It even comes with little reusable utensils! Which I will never use because they're too ridiculous.

I'm actually starting to get really excited for this lunch-packing business. Anyone interested in joining my challenge?

The Project Pack a Lunch Challenge (featuring me vs myself)

After tallying up my monthly bills the other day, I realized that I spend a whole lotta money on one thing: food. Most of that spending, almost $300 worth, is done on my lunch breaks. Every day I tell myself that I'll pack a lunch tomorrow, and for one glorious week I actually did! But the temptation to go to sleep early or just sleep in or really just not do anything at all started to win me over and I went back to spending an average of $10-$15 per lunchtime meal, five times a week. Let's get mathematical here: $12.5 x 5 = $62.50. $62.50 x 4 = $250. Do you know how many pairs of shoes I could buy with all that money?*

I could just tell myself to start packing a lunch every day and have this be done and over with. But I am me and being me means that I have no willpower to do anything unless it's in the form of a competition, and if it is a competition then I will stop at no end to win until I've really lost. (see: the time I tried to stuff 40 gum balls in my mouth because my friend said I couldn't. It was messy. And stupid.)

That's the long and boring story of why I've decided to challenge myself to pack a lunch every day for the next year. I figure if I'm documenting it, I can't give up. I'm exempt from this torture on vacations and one day per month. If I don't use my cheat day that month, I can carry it over to the next. 

It all starts September 1! 

*The answer is 3.