This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Queen's U chapter.
With the return to campus in full swing, some of the luxuries of online school are beginning to fade. We now have to wake up an hour early to attend our 8:30 lecture rather than roll over to open our laptop at 8:25, and we can’t turn our Zoom cameras off to go to the washroom or grab food during class. On the latter point, it is easy to forget to nourish ourselves as busy people with crammed schedules and especially if we stay on campus all day it is common to either go without food or have to face a 30 minute Starbucks line for a lukewarm croissant. For the rest of this semester I have tried to make an effort to pack breakfasts, snacks and/or lunches in advance for days when I do not plan on going home in between lectures. While there is nothing wrong with grabbing a quick bite to eat on campus here and there, it can arguably become costly and easy to forsake nutrition for whatever is the most convenient. So if you, too, are sick of paying $10.00 for a mediocre lunch everyday I have listed some of my favourite meals and snacks to pack before heading to campus. While you might dread taking fifteen minutes out of your night or morning to make the food, you will be thanking yourself later when you get to dodge the long fast food (quite oxymoronic) lines.
Meals:
- Overnight oats
- This semester I have been so obsessed with overnight refrigerated oats that I might enjoy them more than making warm oatmeal in the morning. When packing food for my day, I usually like to prepare the meals and snacks the night before so I do not have to think about it the day of and overnight oats, as indicated by the name, is perfect for this. There are a ton of different variations and recipes for overnight oats, and this article provides some delicious options to make for an easy breakfast or lunch. To avoid even less prep work in the morning I like to mash a banana into the oats before putting it in the fridge rather than slicing it in the morning. I try to make my food as nutrient-dense as possible, and overnight oats provides easy ways to do this: adding in hemp seeds for protein and chia seeds for omega-3s provide almost “invisible” nutrients into the oats that you barely taste. If you prefer hot oatmeal, you could even prep the oats in a microwave safe container and heat it up for a minute in the morning.
- Sandwiches
- I probably do not have to explain to you how to make a sandwich or what ingredients you can make them with, but I feel inclined to reiterate how they are as an easy lunch to pack the night before or morning of your day on campus. Sandwiches are an efficient way to easily obtain a bunch of vital nutrients, carb, protein, fibre and fats, and your options are endless. I usually like to use sourdough bread since I find it pairs well with greatest amount of ingredients –– you could use a lettuce wrap for a lighter fare or a bagel for something heavier. Below I have listed a few of my current favourite sandwich combos –– all ingredients listed can also be easily interchangeable:
- tempeh, alfalfa sprouts and hummus or avocado
- turkey, spinach and cheese
- peanut butter and jam (a classic that can be made more nutrient dense by sprinkling some hemp or chia seeds in it!)
- chicken, pesto and spinach
- chicken caesar
- tuna, avocado, spinach
- I probably do not have to explain to you how to make a sandwich or what ingredients you can make them with, but I feel inclined to reiterate how they are as an easy lunch to pack the night before or morning of your day on campus. Sandwiches are an efficient way to easily obtain a bunch of vital nutrients, carb, protein, fibre and fats, and your options are endless. I usually like to use sourdough bread since I find it pairs well with greatest amount of ingredients –– you could use a lettuce wrap for a lighter fare or a bagel for something heavier. Below I have listed a few of my current favourite sandwich combos –– all ingredients listed can also be easily interchangeable:
- Grain bowls
- Another great meal with a vast amount of variations. I usually like to start with rice or quinoa –– the latter having a bit more protein, which I always aim to get more of in my diet –– and build the bowl from there. Whenever I make either grain I like to prepare 3-4 servings of it to save for other lunches or dinners, hence allowing my meal-prep to be even more extensive. From here you can get creative in what toppings you want, but I usually try to aim for another protein source, vegetable and fat source: this Chatelaine article has some great grain bowl recipes!
- Pasta:
- What I usually bring for lunch to campus the next day when I have pasta for dinner the night before. I always try to make extra pasta so I will have leftovers, and it is quick meal prep that takes no extra time and effort. Since I will usually bring the pasta with me to campus, therefore not having access to a microwave to heat it up, I aim to make pasta with sauces that taste good, in my opinion, at room temperature like a pesto or light cream sauce.
Snacks:
- Carrots and/or cucumber, crackers and hummus
- One of my favourite snacks that is easy to pack into containers. Carrots and cucumbers are my favourite vegetables to pair with hummus (honourable mention: bell peppers), and hummus comes in a vast amount of flavours from plain to garlic to beetroot to keep you not bored with your options. If you want to make this snack a bit more filling, adding some crackers on the side to dip into the hummus is key: some of my favourite crackers with nutritious, whole ingredients are Mary’s Gone Crackers, Lundberg rice stackers and Simple Mills almond crackers.
- Apples and peanut butter
- A classic snack that covers all the important nutrients: fibre, carbs and vitamins from the apple, and fat and protein from the peanut butter. To make it even more nutrient-dense, try finding a natural peanut butter without added oils, or if you are not a fan of, or are allergic to, peanuts, substituting it with almond, cashew, sunflower seed or oat butter is excellent!
- Nuts and/or cheese and berries
- If you want something a bit lighter from the former option, opt the apple for berries and peanut butter with nuts, in which you could exercise more control over how much or how little you want. Berries are a sufficient source of antioxidants, on top of tasting good, and are easy to pack in a container. Nuts are also incredibly healthy and calorically dense to keep you full for longer, and there are ample kinds to choose from be it walnuts or almonds. If you want to forsake nut products altogether and have another source of healthy fats, I love mini Babybel cheeses for a convenient, prepackaged cheese (they’re also extremely fun to open, if I do say so myself).
- Snack/Protein bars
- Bars are an extremely easy snack to pack that requires no prep other than throwing one into your bag or pocket. I like to try and find bars that have more “clean” ingredients and nutrients as a lot of bars are packed with suspicious chemicals or sugar substitutes like erythritol and aspartame that are arguably worse for you than sugar itself. A few of my favourite processed bars are from GoMacro, LÄRABAR, RX Bars, NuGo, Simply Protein and Love Good Fats.
