Eating

I have been giving some thought recently to the ideal of a balanced diet.  What it is that I am trying to balance.  I am a menu planning sort of person.  I plan a seven day menu each week and buy the ingredients that I need to cook it, if I don't already have them in the house.  My plan is not for a specific meal on a specific day, rather seven days of meals which I then decide at some point each day which one I am going to cook, it is also only for the main meal of the day which we usually eat in the evening.

I came to realise recently that as I do not plan lunches that sometimes our meals, and therefore diet, were not very balanced.  Our lunches relied heavily on bread, coupled with cereal or toast for breakfast and if we had a meal like pizza for tea that was a lot of wheat and yeast in one day.  Bread and sandwiches is an easy lunch, one that I had come to rely on, it does not require any thought, the pre planning extended to making sure we had made some bread.  I was not planning on going gluten free or grain free but just reduce our intake of them a bit as they were starting to dominate our diet.  So if we were not going to have bread everyday what where we going to eat.  We are at home for lunch most days of the week and on most of those days I now have a 12 o'clock panic moment as I rack my brains to decide what we are going to have for lunch.  Sometimes there are leftovers in the fridge which are great for lunch, sometimes I make soup, sometimes omelette but it still feels hit and miss.  Yesterday I did not eat lunch until 3 o'clock because I forgot to give it any thought and then had the rabbit in the headlights moment.

Perhaps I should start a plan for lunches too but I am faltering, it feels like a step to far, a bit too rigid but maybe not.  If I did plan then it would free me up to get on with other things with the children rather than being preoccupied with lunch thoughts from about 12 o'clock onwards.  So I am going to give it a go for next week, it is not an atypical week we have friends and family coming to stay over the next ten days so it may take a couple of weeks before I feel it is worth it.  So if anyone had any great ideas for healthy vegetarian lunches I would love to hear them!