Easy Lunch Recipes

Easy lunch recipes bring a few new ideas for the working person.

Slow food made fast is our slogan. It does not have to take an age to prepare. In fact, today's sandwiches and snacks took me only four minutes to throw together.

This is a long page; scroll through it quickly to see if any ideas catch your imagination.

This page was updated on 4th April, 2023.

She who must be obeyed makes hers the night before, but Bernard Preston is far too idle for that. Four minutes in the morning is what it takes to prepare easy lunches.

Over and above that one should perhaps to be honest include the five minutes to make hummus over the weekend, and roast a chicken the night before.

Baking our own bread is an upgrade to our lunches that takes only five minutes. Having your own little oven designated for the dough is a gem.

We are looking here at Mr Average. If you are diabetic with blood pressure of 200/120, not taken a decent holiday for eighteen months and have not been on your bicycle or enjoyed a walk then it needs to be a lot more stringent if you want to see sixty; taking a swim is great too obviously, or just a skipping rope.

Are you a smoker? Well, chances are you will not see the seventh decade anyway, unless you cycle, and dip regularly into some of these nutritious choice foods; even then you will be the exception that proves the rule.

I am a bit embarrassed to start with this eggplant recipe. It is way out, and not what we do every week; actually it has now been demoted but remains a favourite. But that is where we are today. Whilst some of these ideas may not fit with you, take what does, and be prepared to experiment and delight in new and different foods.

Eat as wide a variety as possible. It is the only way to get all the vitamins, minerals and phytosterols we need to prevent the host of prostate, breast and other nightmares that are afflicting our world.

Creating a divine green salad

Making a salad isn't difficult if you are a gardener, but frankly it is really tricky to get fresh veggies; to my mind it makes more sense to grow them yourself.

Creating a divine green salad with added colours makes a mouthwatering easy lunch recipe that will utterly banish iceberg lettuce for ever. It is your best way to achieve high folate levels, important in preventing birth defects and achieving high scores in school.

If you have children or are of childbearing age make sure you know about this lettuce nutritional value. 

Adding a protein is of course important. That could be cheese or a boiled egg, for example but, if you think your diet is too high in animal protein, then fresh raw peas from the garden take a lot of beating.

How to grow peas is high on my gardening agenda. You must keep the hens out; they love them as much as we do.

If you are serious about stepping up to better health, then think no further than this healthy hummus recipe for a great start to added protein in your diet.

And beware of a low carbohydrate-high protein diet, especially if it is feedlot red meat.

The midday meal interestingly is often what will often decide whether the older person is likely to be a victim of raised homocysteine and the consequent hip fracture. The necessary zinc, and B vitamins can usually be found in these easy lunch recipes.

These are my top 7 functional foods for greater well-being; enjoy them weekly, or even daily.

Providing you make it yourself, and it's so simple, homemade mayonnaise will add to any salad. I use many different condiments to spruce up our veggies; variety is the spice of life. This parsley pesto is another simple dressing for your greens.

Pork slithers with chives

Pork slithers with chives has to be one of the simplest, quickest easy lunch recipes; start to finish it takes me not much more than half an hour. We usually have it with a salad; it is absolutely delicious.

We give lunches like this the credit for the fact that in our eighth decade we take absolutely no medication. Only gardeners can enjoy meals like this, and those with a determination to stay away from fast food, which never tasted half so good anyway. 

Broad beans on toast

Whole-grains and legumes provide what is known as the "subsequent meal effect;" satiety that last the whole day and even into the next. Broad beans on toast gives you a double win if you can find a source of 100% wholemeal bread; you will probably have to bake it yourself.

Quiche Bernie

Quiche Bernie takes 15 minutes to prepare, and then another 40 in the oven. It uses a real bread base; perfect with a green salad for a quiet lunch, or healthy picnic. 

Potato salad

New research shows that you can enjoy a potato salad, and not worry about your waistline, provided you know about reheating resistant starch.

Fennel and tomato salad

Something perhaps slightly exotic is our fennel and tomato salad. It is a herb you may not have tasted before; it has a mysterious anise flavour.

Use the sauce sparingly as it can overpower the more subtle fennel.

Swiss chard

Swiss chard food is the stuff that made Popeye famous, and enabled generations of moms, and for good reason. Along with its first cousin, spinach, they are loaded with the good stuff.

More important, you can cook it in a jiffy, and with a little help from garlic and balsamic vinegar it tastes so good. It's one of my favourite easy lunch recipes.

Here is one of our fresh spinach salad recipes.

Or just add some of Bernie's delicious spinach dip to any salad to increase the folate and lutein content.

Stuffed spicy eggplant

Stuffed spicy eggplant is a very simple Lebanese dish, one of my favourite easy lunch recipes, but something of an acquired taste perhaps. Use only fresh baby aubergines as they are called in Europe. My son in law describes them as Amazon slugs.

• Easy eggplant recipes
  

Easy roasted butternut with thyme

This only takes five or ten minutes to prepare, but it does take about an hour in the oven, so some aforethought is necessary. It's really all about thyme benefits, and the butternut is just one way to enjoy this lovely, healthy herb.

Hot or cold, this delicious roasted butternut squash recipe will add to any repertoire of easy lunches.

You can use this for a lovely variation of our healthy hummus recipe; personalise your food to your liking. Try to avoid getting stuck with a recipe which is really only a starter for your own creativity; whoever heard of adding butternut to hummus?

Packed lunch ideas

Your easy lunches recipes should include

1. A complex carbohydrate, (a small portion if you're overweight)
2. Some protein
3. Various coloured salads
4. Certainly a fruit, if you didn't have any for breakfast; a few olives perhaps?
   

Both the Banting diet proponents and antagonists are in agreement; eat avos and olives. They are both fruits.

Follow this link for more details about avocado fat.

Use the Site Search function to find links in bold like the Banting diet above and healthy flour below.

Here are a few easy lunch ideas for your four-minutes to prepare a meal.

Two slices of wholewheat brown. Never eat white bread or crackers; they are junk food that destines you to an early grave. Why?

Refined white flour products are high in starch, with zero fibre and no vitamins; usually they have added artificial flavourants and preservatives. And they have none of the phytosterols we desperately need to be filled with vigour. Tasteless, you have to add sugar, salt and fat.

They are the short route to obesity, painful arthritic knees and ankles; diabetes, heart disease and all that stuff too. Well, we are allowed to break down occasionally; perhaps once a month. A roll with a tomato soup is nice, is it not?

My advice is, enjoy a smidgen of butter or mayo, and make sure you have plenty of the healthy goodies in your packed lunch ideas; on your bread, too. Enjoy some low fat protein. A bit of chicken left over from last night, some cheese, but my first choice for protein is some hummus.

Just use your imagination. A little of that left over mutton stew, or beef roll would go down well in any easy lunch recipe?

The Banting diet has brought some new research into focus; firstly that it is high glycemic-index carbohydrate that makes us obese. And secondly that a diet high in fat but low in starches is by far the easiest way to lose weight. You do not feel hungry on these energy dense foods. 

If your weight is good you can have your low GI bread and butter and eat it with relish and zero guilt. See our panera recipe below for ideas on how to make your own nutritious loaf; if you are serious about your food, use only 100% healthy flour.

Choice foods

Nutritious choice foods are what give you a realistic chance of living to your eighties and nineties; with all your marbles intact. Some of these easy lunch recipes should regularly be on the menu. 

On your bread add some low fat protein. A bit of chicken left over from last night, some low fat cheese, my first choice some hummus nutrition, but really, just use your imagination. Some mutton stew from last night? Tuna and homemade mayonnaise.
I am not exaggerating when I say you can make our Authentic Hummus Recipe in just four minutes. I just did, and timed it. Can you answer the question what is cumin? It is a vital spice for your garbanzo bean dip.

Thought of making your own bread? This easy panera bread menu recipe you can prepare in only five minutes with a bread-making machine. Fancy that, your own mouth watering bread every day.

And now the salads. Just follow your own dictates, and if you do not like salads, stuff something in anyway. A stick of celery? Today I am planning a peanut butter sandwich, with a leaf of lettuce in. I will not stick to your mouth either with the lettuce. It is my variation of a lettuce wraps recipe. I love a couple radishes in my lunch, some olives; they are a fruit by the way. Do your own thing. What is special about lettuce, radish and parsley? Enjoy these healthy choice foods, and live long in the land.

I must admit green grocer salads are not very exciting which is why growing lettuce is so important to us; then you can enjoy them fresh from the garden every day; likewise with radish nutrition.

For a little variation, growing coriander, also known as cilantro, creates a wonderful herbie lunch.

Do you have an allergy? Some folk have difficulty with bread, and in particular if you have been eating supermarket loaves that often contains a nasty chemical that causes a gluten intolerance. For more about it and coeliac disease type it into the search this site engine in the navigation bar.

Today's quick lunch ideas may be helpful.

Of course in order to make your lunch in four minutes, you will have to scrounge around in the fridge. Because I love butter, which is my great weakness, I have to compensate, so yesterday I made a favourite eggplant dip called moutabel baba ghannouj for dinner.

Do not be put off by the name; it is Lebanese not Ben Laden stuff, and eggplant has wonderful cholesterol-lowering properties. It takes me less than ten minutes to make moutabel. It is terrific on a salad, sandwich or, if you insist, a nutritionless cracker.

So today for my easy lunch, I'm enjoying

1. One drumstick left over from last night. Recipe for sesame chicken is one of my favourites.

2. Three slices of wholewheat bread with peanut butter and lettuce, and a moutabel garbanzo bean dip called hummus.

3. A couple slices of cucumber, and half a dozen olives.

Oops, the peanutbutter is 'op' as we say in Holland. Finished. So it is cheese instead. It could have been tahini; do you know what that is? One of the great dishes the Mediterranean has given to us. 

Tahini is really just sesame butter. It is very easy to make with a coffee grinder. Healthy stuff, full of anti everything lignans and sesame oil benefits ...

Bob's your uncle, four minutes, I am not exaggerating, including taking these pics.

Here is an interesting thought from Jamie Oliver; there is no such thing as junk food.

Either it is junk, or it is food.

Winter salad with sourdough bread

This winter salad with sourdough bread really is dependent on being able to find fresh young greens and a high quality loaf; that may be difficult.

So we grow the dark-green leafy vegetables and bake our own bread. Get the best you can find.

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Corn on the cob

Corn on the cob is one of my favourite easy lunch recipes. If you are lucky like me, a short walk in the garden to pick a couple cobs, three minutes in boiling water and, hey presto, you have corn on the cob for lunch.

It does mean turning off the television for half an hour and figuring out how to grow corn. After radishes the easiest vegetable to grow in the garden; it is a rich source of vitamin E. 

Interestingly we've been eating mealies, as we call them, daily and have not put on an ounce. Seen in the context of the salads seen on this plate, have no fear of low glycemic starches like fresh corn. It is also partly because allowing food to cool gives some of that starch to pass through to the colon where it is more slowly digested; what do you know about resistant starch? It is a vitally important subject for every cook.

However being a whole grain, unrefined and unprocessed, it already contains a large amount of resistant starches; they reach the colon for digestion by the normal flora, producing amongst many other compounds, butyrate; it's a powerful natural anti inflammatory helping to prevent autoimmune diseases of the bowel like diabetes and ulcerative colitis.

A summer vegetable garden really simplifies making your easy lunch recipes; the fresh salads are only a few steps away. 

Easy lunch recipes

Easy lunch recipes are some of the quick menus that Bernard Preston uses to beat the fast food take away temptation.

• Recipe for sesame chicken
• How to make Tahini ...

Update: I now make my own bread. It takes only five minutes, literally to make our own Panera bread menu recipe ... healthy, fresh bread every day for five minute's work? No more chemicals, preservatives, trans fats, bread-belly-ache.

If your have your own electric flour grinder then your bread will cost half the price, and you will not have to purchase vitamin E and calcium supplements; and a host of other nutrients removed by the millers.

• Olive bread recipe ...
• Glutin free bread recipe
• Moutabel Baba Ghannouj ... use the site search function for this recipe.
  

Olive bread

Olive bread is easy to make with the use of a baking machine; perfect for your healthy easy lunch recipes.

Making your own bread is so easy; it takes no more than five minutes with the aid of a bread machine. If you want to do it the old fashioned way, then think about using this sourdough bread recipe starter. It is so easy and gives your loaf a wonderful, healthy flavour, free of preservatives and chemicals.

Do you need more easy lunch recipes? Try this broad beans on toast recipe; absolutely delicious but you do have to grow them yourself. Incidentally more than half of those suffering from Parkinson's disease will find better relief from the tremors from the L-Dopa in these beans.

Butter is back

Butter is back and margarine is definitely out; it certainly makes your easy lunch recipes more tasty.

Why be shy about using butter on your bread and in your cooking. Julia Childs is smirking; new research looking at 80 old studies declares that there is no convincing evidence that a low animal fat diet is protective of your heart. Read more at this butter is back link.

However, having said that, a black and white diet, meat and potatoes, deficient in the phytosterols found in salads and fruit that inhibit the absorption of cholesterol, high animal fat and heart disease are linked.

Aim for ten colours in your diet every day, and make sure you reach at least five.

Peanut butter is an all time favourite, and for good reasons. The problem is that mostly it is loaded with salt and sugar, and hydrogenated oil. Instead, try this peanut and ginger sauce on your bread; so easy to rustle up. On the side with a salad, or your sandwich it's a great flavour; healthy too. I am not so sure about the supermarket stuff, and can't recommend it for your easy lunch recipes.

Wanting a simple hot lunch? Take a couple young gemsquash, spear them with a sharp knife, and drop them into a minimal amount of boiling water. Boil hard for five to ten minutes, depending on how old they are. Buttered gem squash, perhaps with a topping of hummus, makes a perfect, quick lunch.

There are so many TV programmes now on making fancy food; if you have the time, by all means. For me, I will stick to slow foods, made fast. It takes thirty seconds to spear a gem squash, and in ten minutes you have a delicious, healthy lunch. Quick, easy lunch recipes is what it is all about for me.

Easy lunch recipes

Do remember this is a working man's lunch. Chiropractor Bernard Preston does not sit behind a computer all day. Also, today I will be cycling to the Barendrecht station (20 mins x2), plus 2 x 10 min walk from the Dordrecht station to the clinic. It beats going to the gym.

Later: Three slices of bread was too much. Two tomorrow. I felt stuffed all afternoon. The olives were more satisfying than I expected. I enjoy pickling olives by the way, or making Olive Pate or even better Tapenade, once the can is open. The olives don't keep too long.

• Olive Garden menu TAPENADE ...
  
• Preserving olives ...
  
• OLIVE PATE ...
  

Do not be put off by these strange names. It is no coincidence that the Mediterranean people are amongst the healthiest in the world. That is where your roots probably are, in any case.

Type terms like "olive pate" into the Site Search menu for more information.

A NUTRITIOUS DRINK FOR A HOT SUMMER'S DAY?

Lemon juice makes an invigorating and delicious ice-cold lemon drink, but it does not keep due to certain compounds that are oxidised once it is cut and squeezed. Two minutes to make. The alternative is to heat the juice... read more: Lemon drop drink recipe ...

• Type "water for kids" into the Site Search tab in the main menu.
  

But during the day, remember that beer makes a good servant but a very bad master.

This wheat beer recipe is so easy to put together; a light alcoholic drink to go with your easy lunch. It won't blow your head off. 

Have you ever thought of brewing your own Merrylegs perry cider? It is so easy and rewarding; the perfect drink to go with your lunch.

Green bean succotash recipes

Pole beans and corn from the garden make a delicious healthy lunch, made in a jiffy. The general principle is, think of using some of last night's dinner left-overs for lunch.

Green bean succotash recipes are so easy and healthy.

But if you have no corn on the cob then cooking green beans and turning them into a salad with olive oil, fresh lemon juice and a little garlic is equally simple.

Did you know that research shows that 30% of the food bought in supermarkets in the UK ends up in the garbage? I wonder what the stats are for your home. Use your leftovers for tomorrow's easy lunch recipes.

In green jargon it is known as the race to end waste; do your bit for King and Country and you will have a good few extra pounds to spend on your holiday.

A good chicken tractor design improves the nitrogen fertiliser in the soil in an organic manner. Free range eggs have a much higher value of omega-3 and choline; these two alone will dramatically reduce the inflammation in your body. Free range eggs are spectacularly different to the pale shadows you get from the supermarket.

There is really no need to fuss about the calories in hummus; a few in the olive oil.

And of course, the calories in avocado, a wonderful fruit that we could add to this salad, need to be considered; it is healthy unsaturated fat.

It is often said, if you have an avocado, you have a meal.

• Cooking chickpeas - the main ingredient in hummus.
  
  

Nuts?

Okay I will admit it, I am a bit of fruit-cake. Most doctors are nuts, and DCs too. Do not take us too seriously. But I promise you this, my easy lunch today was far tastier than any McDonalds can produce. I have not done a costing, but I guarantee it is no more than $2.

Better still, I have no arthritic knees and aching feet, my BP measured last week (when I donated blood to the vampires) was 120/82 (not bad at 62), and I have taken no drugs since a misdiagnosis five years ago when the quack thought I had sinusitis. Turned out to be a very mild dose of shingles, on the forehead to boot.

Talking of nuts, only eat them freshly-cracked or from a sealed container for your easy lunch recipes. Their very nutritious fats are rapidly oxidised forming toxic rancid oils. 

Perfect for your easy lunch recipes, you can crack three pecans in one minute. Learn the knack.

Ten years later it is interesting reading what I once wrote. Yes, I'm still a bit of fruit-cake, cracking my pecans and taking no medication; not too bad at 73. Life is good and now fascinated by the Blue Zones of the world, and ordering my life in the hopes of reaching a vigorous ninety. Yesterday I was ten foot up the avocado tree picking 20 pears.

 

By the way researchers looking at the prevention of heart, stroke and diabetes with sound eating habits ranked unsalted nuts and seeds daily very highly. Nearly half of these nasty diseases could be prevented by simple changes in what we feed on.

Are you tired of pain, sick of taking drugs every day, and want to reach a busy 80, and perhaps 90, with all your marbles intact? And be at your granddaughter's wedding? Then join the fruitcakes.

Actually it is just the way your grandparents ate. That actually is the recommendation of this heart-surgeon;  foods to reduce inflammation is the subject of his talk.

Have a good day. And do not forget the easy lunch recipes, and share them with your friends if you enjoy them.
Do you enjoy classical guitar? Let us have a waltz with lunch.

 

How to cook cauliflower

This is not for a takeaway lunch for a DC; the garlic-breath might offend half the patients during the afternoon session. The rest will probably love it. My salad recipes are so delicious. How to cook cauliflower enables you to make this wonderful nutritious easy lunch recipe in a jiffy; really.

Leave out the garlic if it is not to your fancy.

Macular degeneration

A blind hen suffering from macular degeneration is a dead-bird; they too need healthy lunch recipes.

Now that we have hens, looking for free range eggs, I have found it interesting that given the chance they will dive into three crops in the garden; green beans for the extra protein and the nutritious benefits of kale; and of course fresh corn on the cob. Like us, hens need extremely good eyesight to pick up the bugs under leaves, so they love foods rich in lutein and zeaxanthin.

Lutein macular degeneration is just as important for them as for us; we try to have at least one leaf of kale on our salad and another lightly steamed with butter daily; I don't fancy a doctor poking sharp instruments into my eye. I would rather eat my dark-green leafy vegetables; these easy lunch recipes really are important if you value your wellness.

Few things can compete with a cob of corn, straight from the garden before the sweet natural sugars are changed to starch. There is no mystery about how to grow them, but you do need a largish garden. It's absolutely delicious on any easy lunch recipe. You just pop a seed in the ground, and come back in three months for a meal in one with two-hundred pips.

Today, January 1 in the southern-hemisphere, we had our first corn on the cob. Straight from the garden to the pot; they too are a rich source of lutein. And by the end of March our mealies as we call them will be getting too hard; the remainder of the crop will go to the hens. For three whole months we have had one for lunch virtually every day.

You may well ask, are we enormous with all the starch we eat on a daily basis? Bread, new potatoes, corn on the cob, butternut and all the legumes are banned on so many platters; it is nonsense because it's the refined carbohydrate that is public enemy number-one. Enjoy these easy lunch recipes.

Even diabetics can usually enjoy new potatoes without an alarming rise in postprandial blood sugar, and there is heaps of research proving that whole grains are an important way of preventing heart, stroke and diabetes.

Notice I said whole grains; not bagels, commercial bread, russet potatoes and cans of sweet-corn; eat them and you will be going to seed in no time.

Easy homemade vanilla ice cream

Looking at the overall context of the meal, as I so often stress, then provided you have been pigging out on the foods above then you can certainly indulge your sweet tooth periodically. Try our easy homemade vanilla ice cream recipe; low in sugar it fits happily into our easy lunch recipes.

Commercial ice creams have so much crap added; if you are serious about desserts and better health, then consider one of the portable ice cream freezers; they are surprisingly cheap.

It is not an arduous process to make your own easy homemade vanilla ice cream; you do need to prepare the custard at least a few hours ahead of time, and preferably freeze overnight.

Fennel and radish salad

Fresh fennel is not easy to come by but radish is the easiest of all the salads to grow.

• Fennel and radish salad

For a subtle variation in flavours you might try adding sweet-basil instead of dill to the sauce; the herbs eugenol oil helps to prevent the cells that break down bones from forming; reduces the tendency for osteoporosis; every woman should be enjoying basil and cloves regularly in her cooking.

Add a small touch of another healthy quick hummus recipe on the side if you want more protein; or, feta cheese?

Slow food made fast

Our theme is slow food made fast; what does take time is acquiring fresh, organic fruit and vegetables. When you can make easy lunch recipes like these, with a little imagination, why eat out?

Now try our fast healthy dinner recipes.

You'll find this page all fits with powerful new research from JAMA, the journal of the American medical association on heart stroke diabetes.

Did you find this page interesting? How about forwarding it to a friendly book or food junkie? Better still, a social media tick would help.

Address:

56 Groenekloof Rd,

Hilton, KZN

South Africa

Website:

https://www.bernard-preston.com

Create a Cyan Zone at your home; one which complements blue areas for longevity with green for protecting Mother Earth.