When your work days are generally filled with paperwork and conference calls and lunch is almost always at your desk, a home-cooked meal may be a highlight of the day. What if that meal were prepared by a friend as part of an office lunch club?
Betsy Mitchell, Denise Levis, Kim Newsome and Georgina Peacock Goebel are part of just such a group. They all work in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, and they all love to cook.
About two years ago, Mitchell noticed several colleagues enjoying home-cooked lunches. She was inspired to suggest a lunch club.
Delicious lunches and strong friendships turned out to be the result.
“There’s something very nurturing and wonderful about being cooked for and cooking for your friends,” said Newsome. “And it has to be for people you like or you wouldn’t want to cook for them.”
The plan is that everyone cooks once a week and brings in lunch for everybody in the club. There’s no schedule with assigned days for each cook. Two lunches might arrive on Monday, for example. Then club members can decide which lunch to eat Monday and which to save for Tuesday.
The group numbers four, which means four lunches over five work days, allowing for times when someone might be away from the office or have a business lunch.
The group has no formal rules. There’s no assigned schedule, no dishes are off limits and if someone simply can’t cook a particular week, that’s fine, too.
Their three suggestions for a successful lunch club?
First, be flexible. Not everyone can cook every week. That’s OK. Sometimes someone will bring in a store-bought dish. That’s OK, too.
Second, gather a group of like-minded eaters. A group can be gluten-free, vegetarian or whatever variation suits the group.
Finally, cooking has to be something everyone enjoys and looks forward to doing. Otherwise the weekly contribution can become a chore.
For this group, lunch club provides a place to exercise the members’ creativity. “It’s so nice to have someone eat my food and appreciate it,” said Peacock Goebel. Cooking for the family, one can get into a rut, she said, and lunch club inspires her to make something different or try something new.
Mitchell especially appreciates expanding her palate. “Roasted carrot soup? I would never have tried it, but it’s delicious. It’s workplace taste testing, and we have access to whole new recipes that would never have been in our repertoire,” she said.
Even when cooking recipes with pricier ingredients, the group finds it’s still less expensive than going out to lunch each day.
An email lets everyone know what’s been brought in for lunch. If it is delivered in individual portions, everyone takes one. If it come in one large container, everyone takes just a share of the dish. Most of the time they head back to their desks to continue working.
Are other colleagues jealous? “When people see us opening our lunches every day, they want to know more about the club, but then when they find out it means you have to cook every week, they lose interest,” said Levis.
A fifth co-worker, Jenny Williams, has taken a hiatus from the club because she’s gone back to school to earn her doctorate in nursing research. But she’s eager to come back. “I am feeling sorry for myself as I face yet again another ‘soup in a paper cup’ day at the school of nursing. I dream of opening the fridge again and finding some homemade heaven of a lunch waiting for me daily,” she said.
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Salade Niçoise
Hands on: 20 minutes Total time: 20 minutes Serves: 8
Our directions assume you will pack individual components in a container for travel and assemble the salad on site.
3/4 pound green beans, trimmed
1 pound red potatoes, sliced 1/4-inch thick
1/2 cup pure olive oil
1/2 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1/4 teaspoon salt
Pepper
1 large head lettuce, torn into bite-size pieces
1 pint cherry tomatoes
6 ounces albacore tuna, drained and flaked
8 hard-cooked eggs, halved
1/2 cup Niçoise olives
1 (2-ounce) can flat anchovy fillets packed in oil, drained
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
Set aside 8 individual containers or 1 large container.
In a large saucepan, bring 4 inches of lightly salted water to boil over high heat. When water is boiling, add green beans. Cook 30 seconds, then strain beans from water and put in a colander. Keep water at a simmer. Run cold water over the beans until they are completely cool. Allow to dry in colander.
Add potatoes to pot of simmering water, adding more water if needed to cover potatoes. Simmer potatoes until tender, about 15 minutes, watching carefully to avoid overcooking potato slices. When done, drain carefully.
While potatoes are cooking, make the vinaigrette: In a small bowl, whisk together oil, mustard, lemon zest and juice, and salt. Add pepper to taste.
In a medium bowl, combine beans and part of the vinaigrette. Lightly toss and move beans to container for transport. Put potatoes in bowl and toss with remaining vinaigrette. Carefully arrange potatoes over beans, cover container and refrigerate.
Pack lettuce, tomatoes, tuna, eggs, olives, anchovies and parsley into containers for transport. Refrigerate until ready to serve.
When ready to serve: Divide lettuce among serving dishes and top with potatoes, beans, tomatoes, tuna, eggs, olives and anchovies. Sprinkle with parsley.
Adapted from a recipe provided by Kim Newsome based on “The Way to Cook” by Julia Child (Alfred A. Knopf, $65)
Per serving: 314 calories (percent of calories from fat, 58), 16 grams protein, 18 grams carbohydrates, 3 grams fiber, 21 grams fat (4 grams saturated), 222 milligrams cholesterol, 461 milligrams sodium.
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Zucchini Pancakes
Hands on: 30 minutes Total time: 30 minutes Serves: 5
Don’t be tempted to save time by skipping the step of salting and draining the zucchini. Removing that extra liquid is critical.
2/3 cup plain nonfat yogurt
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 teaspoon salt, divided
5 medium zucchini, grated (about 2 pounds)
5 eggs, beaten
11/2 cups crumbled reduced-fat feta cheese (about 8 ounces)
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup finely chopped dill
8 finely chopped green onions
2 tablespoon olive oil
11/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon pepper
To make the sauce: In a small bowl, mix together yogurt, garlic and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Package for lunch and refrigerate until needed. May be made up to 2 days ahead of time.
To make the pancakes: In a colander, toss zucchini and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt together and place in sink or bowl. Let mixture sit 5 minutes. Transfer zucchini to a cloth kitchen towel and squeeze hard to extract as much moisture as possible. Squeeze a second time; volume will shrink to about half the original.
In a large mixing bowl, combine zucchini and eggs. Add feta, flour, dill, green onions and olive oil. Mix well. Add baking powder and pepper and mix again.
Heat a griddle until very hot. Lightly grease with cooking spray. Scoop 1/4 cup batter onto griddle, flattening with spatula if necessary. Pancakes should be about 3/8-inch thick and about 3 inches in diameter. Add as many pancakes as your griddle will hold without touching. Cook until golden on one side, then turn and fry again until golden on other side, about 3 minutes per side. Remove pancakes from griddle and continue with rest of batter. You should have 15 pancakes. Allow to cool and then package for lunch. May be eaten warm or cold. Serve sauce cold, on the side or on the pancakes.
Adapted from a recipe provided by Denise Levis based on a recipe in The New York Times, April 8, 2009
Per serving: 344 calories (percent of calories from fat, 45), 17 grams protein, 31 grams carbohydrates, 3 grams fiber, 17 grams fat (7 grams saturated), 239 milligrams cholesterol, 1,011 milligrams sodium.
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Shepherd’s Pie
Hands on: 45 minutes Total time: 1 hour Serves: 4
This comfort food dish from English-born Georgina Peacock Goebel’s childhood is a lunch club treat and her go-to dish for delivering to new moms. She uses organic carrots, which she finds to be consistently sweeter. “Definitely no precut baby carrots” in this recipe, she says.
1 pound red potatoes, cubed
Salt
1 pound 95 percent lean ground beef
1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon dried basil
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon Worcester-shire sauce
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 small carrots, sliced 1/8-inch thick
3/4 cup water
11/2 teaspoons beef or vegetable soup base
1/2 cup frozen baby peas, thawed
Pepper
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup skim milk
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Lightly grease 4 (8-ounce) baking dishes.
In a medium saucepan, cover potatoes with 1-inch lightly salted water and bring to a boil. Cook until potatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.
While potatoes are cooking, prepare filling. In a large skillet, cook ground beef, onion and garlic over medium heat until beef is just cooked through, about 5 minutes. Stir in basil, oregano and Worcestershire sauce, then sprinkle with flour. Mix thoroughly, then add carrots, water and soup base. Stir to combine. Cook until carrots soften, about 5 minutes. Sauce will thicken. If it’s too thick, add more water. Stir in peas and season to taste. Divide filling among prepared baking dishes.
When potatoes are tender, drain and return to saucepan. Add butter and milk. Using a hand mixer, whip until potatoes are smooth. Season to taste and divide potatoes among ramekins, spreading evenly. Bake 20 minutes or until potatoes have lightly browned. Serve hot or cool and refrigerate for lunch.
Per serving: 463 calories (percent of calories from fat, 50), 27 grams protein, 31 grams carbohydrates, 4 grams fiber, 26 grams fat (11 grams saturated), 94 milligrams cholesterol, 295 milligrams sodium.
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These lunches can be prepared as individual servings or as one big dish to share. Didn’t eat your lunch? Just take it home or enjoy it the next day. What about the containers? Originally the group went in together on sealable plastic containers so everything could be interchangeable.
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