The Meal I Have Trouble With...

My hubby and I really enjoy cooking together, and I love the process of finding recipes, planning the meal, shopping for the ingredients and then making it all come together into something tasty for us to share.  I'm a pretty good cook, as is Zeb, so we really do end up making some fabulous dinners together.

Breakfast is pretty simple, too.  I'm good with a couple of whole grain blueberry waffles, an orange, some apple juice, a yogurt or some cottage cheese, a bowl of cereal with fruit in it, a nice english muffin or some scrambled egg whites with a bit of spinach and feta.  Any combination of some of these things is going to make me pretty happy at breakfast time.  On weekends, we'll sometimes plan something a little more elaborate... and if there's a restaurant meal we're likely to save our WPs for, it'd be a hearty breakfast out at our favorite diner.  Breakfast is easy.

Lunch... lunch is the bane of my existence.  Let me explain a few things about my general eating issues... and let me say up front that "get over it" is a great deal more involved than it might seem on the surface.

1. I do not eat leftovers of 99% of the foods out there.  There are some (rare) exceptions, things that really do taste good (or better) the second or third day... my turkey chili, Zeb's honey mustard ham, the spinach/turkey/ricotta lasagna I made the other night, SOME stews and soups - and that's about it.
   
2. "Lunch time" is usually when I am most immersed in whatever I am doing - working on programming something, a cleaning project, a craft project, a conference call, repairing a database, whatever.
   
3. I've mentioned I have a circadian rhythm sleep disorder - two of them, actually.  Not only does my sleep schedule move around the clock, putting me in bed about 2 hours later each day than I went the day before... but I also have delayed sleep phase syndrome.  I am at my peak in the middle of the night.  My core temperature drops during the day.  This is the opposite of most people.  But because of the first sleep disorder, I am sometimes sleeping through my peak, and awake when my internal clock says it should be sleeping (but can't).  So when I am awake during the day, I have a VERY hard time working up enough energy to get up and fix something to eat... I will often put it off for hours and then find that Zeb is walking in the door looking for dinner.

There are things I really like for lunch... tuna or chicken salad, for example.  Even a nice spinach salad, maybe with some grilled chicken on it.  Sometimes a sandwich.  The problem is, if I make these things ahead of time, I will generally talk myself out of eating them when lunch rolls around.  I convince myself that the food has "gone bad," and I just don't feel like making something else.  It is "too much work."

Tonight, (it is currently 5:11am - middle of MY day) I made a really delicious BLT wrap.  Toasted up a La Tortilla Low-Carb/High-Fiber tortilla, threw a few pieces of bacon in the oven, sliced up some tomato, washed a few pieces of spinach.  Spread Hellmann's light mayo on the tortilla, laid out the other stuff, wrapped it all up and had a really yummy meal.  7.5 points - I only had regular bacon in the house and I used  4 slices since I could "afford" the points today.  It was quite tasty and filling, and I got in a serving of veggies AND whole grain.  

Unfortunately, it's something I am unlikely to eat on a day-awake day - because I won't want to do the prep work.

So yeah, I really struggle with lunch.  I have not (yet) found a solution to my dilemma... but I will eventually.