The same lunch every day can get old, but if you eat pimento cheese 5 ways you can keep it fresh and interesting for a whole week!
Somehow I have managed to not lose my mind packing lunches this year. I don’t know what has changed but it has worked. Perhaps it’s the fact that instead of eating at the lunch table with my kiddos I’m just having a snack with them (because they eat at 10:45…good grief!) and eating lunch later while they’re napping, so I have time to microwave and so on and so forth.
Anyway, one of my favorite lunches is pimento cheese…in many forms. One recipe of my roasted red pepper cheese made a week’s worth of lunches. Gotta love it. Here’s what I got.
1. Pimento cheese with carrot & celery sticks, broccoli florets, and pretzels, plus an apple, a chopped peach, and a salted chocolate-covered caramel. One of the fruits is for breakfast and one is for my late-morning snack, and I’ve started taking a small, good-quality “treat” in my bag every day to keep me from eating any of the junk food that inevitably turns up. It works. These caramels came from Whole Foods.
2. Pimento cheese on pain de mie with cucumbers, plus broccoli florets, pita chips, green goddess dressing, a peach, and a caramel.
3. Pimento cheese and saltine crackers (I know saltines are not the most “wholesome” but they are comfort food and sometimes I just want saltines!), Caesar salad with easy Caesar dressing, shaved parmesan, and sunflower seeds instead of croutons, and a peach.
4. Pimento cheese roll-ups (spread pimento cheese all the way to the edges of a whole wheat tortilla and add spinach or arugula-you could also add turkey or ham if you wanted-then roll up and cut into pinwheels, discarding the ends-I discard them into my stomach), broccoli florets, pretzels, green goddess dressing, and a caramel. I’m sure there was fruit in my bag.
5. Pimento cheese with pita chips to dip into it, a Caesar salad with shaved parm and sunflower seeds (salted, by the way), a peach, and an orange.
I purchased my thermal lunch bag from Thirty-One Gifts, a company that was actually started locally by a lady that my husband knows. It’s adorably cute, but I think I need to upsize a bit. Many days I can’t get my bag closed!
The containers that I use are Gladware. I found them on Amazon in a 4-pack that I need to look into purchasing; mine came in a 2-pack. They are BPA-free and I love that (a) they are the perfect side for a sandwich or salad and a couple of extras; and (b) I can stick them in the dishwasher when I get home.
Of course, the ever-present entity in my lunch bag is my Klean Kanteen. I’ve had it for about five years and the wear is starting to show…it’s been dropped more than a few times and many, many trips through the dishwasher have done a number on the paint. Unfortunately, Rock/Creek is apparently not carrying them anymore, so I’m going to have to order a new one. I’ll get around to it one of these days. Anyway, water is pretty much all I drink after my morning coffee, though I usually end up gulping at least a third of the bottle when I get home in the afternoons.
So, that was a week worth of lunches for me. Really, it took about twenty minutes or so of active prep to make the pimento/roasted red pepper cheese and each lunch took ten minutes or less to throw together. I had the Caesar dressing in the fridge and I made the green goddess dressing while my roasted red pepper was steaming (to loosen the charred skin). I always pack my lunch the night before, otherwise I’d be a complete mess in the morning.
Do you have any other ideas for pimento cheese at lunchtime? Try pimento cheese 5 ways!
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