Fill my Bento!

Looks like I struck a nerve with yesterday's rant about sizing, hunh? Sounds like many of us have been or are in the same boat, too small for the women's sizes but with very few options in the misses. I do have some nice 16s in my basement closet (where all my smaller sizes are) so I'm less worried about what to wear when I get down to there, but 18-land is making me nuts. I guess I need to kick up the dieting to solve that problem, since the retailers sure aren't going to be lending me a hand! (Although I liked the suggestion about QVC and HSN; I may have to check that one out! Thanks, Abby.)

Anyway, that leads me to today's topic: lunch.

I went full-on grocery shopping for the first time in months on Thursday, buying all kinds of basic staples and options for dinner and other meals, filling our cabinets and fridge again after the last few months of Medifast. All we had then were salad fixings, chicken breast, and spaghetti squash. You could have been blinded by the bright light of our fridge, it was so empty. No more.

It felt so good to have some really basic items again in my house: couscous and brown rice, plain yogurt, Special K cereal, clementines, cooked shrimp, skim milk, eggs. Spinach and cucumbers, chicken sausage, bags of cabbage, polenta, mushrooms, carrots, onions and garlic and oh Lord, even potatoes. Potatoes!!

I made sure to get easy items for breakfast: fruit and yogurt, whole-wheat english muffins and Better N Peanut Butter, Special K cereal (cinnamon pecan is my flavor of choice). And despite my laziness the last two nights to make the broccoli-cheese chowder recipe, we have had plenty for impromptu dinners: chicken sausage with sauteed spinach, the last of the spaghetti squash, etc. But I forgot to come up with lunch ideas!

Luckily, I do have my Mr. Bento posts from this summer for some ideas, but those are mostly summer foods. I am craving the heartier stuff, like sandwiches and soups and carbs, but that's not what I have in my fridge. I have all the snacks and "side dishes" (fruits, yogurt, almonds, cucumbers, etc) but I can't think of many good main lunch dishes.

Here are some ideas I'm considering:
-shrimp salad, mixed with chopped celery and onion, some cocktail sauce and mayo, on a bed of spinach. Add slice of seeded bread, mixed fruit salad, plain almonds, and clementines for rest of lunch and snacks throughout the day.
-Saute the shrimp in Old Bay for dinner the night before, then mix with couscous and chopped veggies for leftover lunch.
-hard-boil the eggs for egg salad (need pita or bread or red pepper half to eat it in)
-buy roast-beef wrap at delicious local deli and add tomato soup

But that's it. Everything else involves buying other things. Can you guys think of other ways I can "remix" my foods to fill up my Bento? What do you bring for lunch -- maybe I need better grocery shopping ideas!




(From this summer.) Salad from the Whole Foods cold bar! That's a good idea...

What do you eat for lunch?