Review: Bring Your Lunch: Quick & Tasty Wallet-Friendly Lunches for Grown-Ups by Califia Suntree

SUMMARY FROM NETGALLEY.COM:

With over 60 delicious, healthful, unexpected recipes, BRING YOUR LUNCH ensures DIY lunchtime success—and significant weekly savings—while keeping the brown-bag doldrums away. And it doesn’t matter if you’re a make-ahead food planner or a harried last-minute type—with its innovative, doable strategies, cooks of all kinds can learn to overcome the obstacles that keep them hooked on expensive takeout or boring PB&Js.

MY TAKE:
I always feel overwhelmed when it comes to packing lunch so I usually just stick to processed foods (like hotdogs, etc.) plus rice.

In Bring Your Lunch: Quick & Tasty Wallet-Friendly Lunches for Grown-Ups, readers get to learn not just recipes for healthy pastas, salads, soups, etc. that they may want to have for lunch, the book also includes helpful things like how to pack and store food at work and at home, how to avoid food-borne illness, as well as specific products that are particularly useful.

I was happy to see that the book included not just sandwiches and salads, both of which can be prepared quite easily, but things like soups, pasta and rice as well. I like having soup with my meals, but it seems like too much work to make them and pack them.

The book makes packing, making and storing lunch seem quite easy. Not super easy, of course, but definitely doable. The key is prepping or cooking ahead of time and storing them in your freezer and refrigerator already portioned out so it's pretty much pack-and-go in the morning. The book even mentions making use of leftovers in the recipes, particularly the homemade broth. For those who have specific dietary preferences or requirements, the recipes indicate whether they are vegan, gluten-free or dairy-free.

As for the recipes, I saw a number of recipes that I wanted to try, namely: Vietnamese Lettuce Wraps, Mashed Potato and Leek Soup, and French Onion Soup. There were also a few recipes that made use of beans, which I don't like, so I'd probably omit those before cooking.

The recipes aren't that many, but I appreciated that the author makes suggestions for other mini-recipes, combinations and pairings that the reader can try.

Thanks to NetGalley and Workman for the e-copy.

THE GOOD:

1. There are plenty of useful tips and tricks you can try.
2. It's easy to go to certain recipes via the links in the e-book, and it's easy to buy specific recommended products that you like just by clicking on the link.
3. The recipes look easy enough to do.

THE BAD:

1. I would have liked it better if there were even more recipes. 

READ IT IF:

1. You're sick of eating fast food for lunch.
2. You want to save money on food.
3. You want to eat healthier. 

RATING:


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