5 HEALTHY LUNCH IDEAS ‣‣ Realistic Weekday Meals

Hi friends, welcome back to my channel. If you're new here, my name is Alyssa. Today I have got five healthy and delicious lunch recipes for you, similar to the style that I shot last week or the week before that shared five like simple everyday breakfast recipes. These are kind of in the moment, five consecutive days of my week lunch recipes that I incorporate leftovers. If I don't have leftovers, types of meals that I like to make, and I hope you enjoy them. They're all delicious, easy, and try to have an emphasis on protein. So let's go ahead and get into the recipes. All right, so welcome back. Today is a very realistic day in lunches and it's leftovers. So this is a dinner we made a night or two ago. It is pesto tortellini with a kale, pesto chicken sausage, some spinach and tomatoes. And I'm just gonna heat it up and eat it for lunch. So I guess not really a meal that I can make and show you on video, but I will say that pasta makes great leftovers. I always like to make extra the night before so that we have enough for lunch the next day. And that's one of the things that I always find if I am in a busy season of life is leftovers are life for lunch. So definitely think about adding extra portions to your dinner prep so that you can eat leftovers for lunch because it will save you a ton of time. So here's just a quick closeup of the pesto tortellini with the sausage, spinach, and tomatoes. So simple and legit delicious. Oh, it's future Alyssa editing this video, realizing that I didn't film an intro for the meal that you're about to see. So this lunch is something that I have been loving lately, especially as the weather has started to get warm because it doesn't require cooking. It's cool, it's refreshing, but it's also really healthy, light, filling, all the things. So it is my ultimate snack plate slash snack board, which is what I'm calling it. And you can mix and match with any sort of ingredients that you want or whatever you have on hand, but it's super simple and delish. So let's make it. All right, so with a snack plate, I recommend just adding whatever you want. I am adding chopped up carrots as well as sliced bell pepper. We have some snap peas. We have some sliced up cucumber. I have some sliced up sharp cheddar cheese. I have some crackers. I had a big dollop of hummus. And then I also added two hard boiled eggs for extra protein. It's basically just what you would snack on and you're trying to keep it balanced with a mix of vegetables, protein, some carbohydrates, and some healthy fats. And it's just such a simple and delicious lunch. And I definitely will be making this a lot this summer because it was so easy to put together and seriously delicious and kept me surprisingly full. Another day, another lunch recipe. I am making an egg salad sandwich today. And one of the things I love to add to egg salad is pesto. So I always try to have pesto on hand. I get mine just either I make it, but you know, basil's not in season right now. So I like to just buy it at Whole Foods or wherever. And I like to mix my eggs with pesto, a little bit of mayo, some salt, pepper, and then I put it on toast. And if I have a tomato, which I don't, I would add a tomato, but I'll probably just like add some spinach, avocado maybe if we have avocado. Oh, there she is, pause. So for the egg salad, you're gonna hard boil some eggs. I hard boiled three eggs and then add your toast into the toaster oven. Once your eggs are done, you can peel them and then pop them into your bowl, smash them up with a fork. You're gonna mix in some mayo as well as some pesto. Mix that together. If you don't wanna use pesto or don't have pesto, you can just use the mayo and add a little bit of salt and pepper. But basically you just want it to be like mixable, I guess you could say. And then just put it on your bread. I burned my toast, but that's okay. It was also really hard to cut because it was toasted. So if you aren't gonna eat it open-faced, I would not recommend toasting your bread. So I just made a sandwich by adding greens and that was it. Sometimes I add avocado, tomato, et cetera. You get the gist, but delicious, fun twist on egg salad. Back again to make another lunch. I feel like I've worn this outfit the last three days that I've been filming, but we are in the midst of about to be moving out of our short-term rental. So we've just been working at the house and stuff. So yeah, same outfit. I am going to make a leftovers lunch. We had Chipotle last night for dinner and I saved the extra rice and beans that I had leftover. So Matt's cleaning in the background. I am going to heat those up with some spinach and then probably put some eggs on top and call it a day. In case you can't tell from this video, eggs are one of my favorite things to eat for lunch because they're quick, they're high protein and I love eggs. So that's what I'm going to make. And it's just another way to repurpose leftovers, which again is one of my favorite things to do for lunch. So here is my leftover Chipotle. It was beans and rice, essentially there was like some other stuff mixed in, but added it to a pan, added in some spinach, cooked that down until the spinach was wilted and the rice was hot, transferred it into a bowl. Then I fried two eggs. And since I am pregnant, I am not eating runny eggs. So I have to crack my eggs and make sure that they are cooked all the way through. So I do that. And then I just serve them up with a dollop of cottage cheese and some hummus and the eggs and salt. Quick, easy, and like very filling. This was a big lunch for me, but it was delicious. All right, the last lunch that I have to share with you, I actually have shared before, but it is just so good. And it's one that I make all the time. I wanted to put it in this video too, because I hope you give it a try. It is my easy tuna melt. And one thing to keep in mind with this is that if you are pregnant, I mean, really, even if you're not pregnant, make sure to get skipjack tuna instead of albacore tuna. It is a lot lower in mercury, like very low in mercury. It's a safe fish to eat. And it's a great source of like omega-3s and every beneficial thing that you get from fish. So I am going to show you how I make my simple, delicious veggie-packed tuna melt. And that will be the last lunch that we have in this video. So for the tuna melt, I am going to start by toasting my bread. And then I like to add vegetables to my tuna salad. So this is shredded Brussels sprouts, but you could also do sauteed spinach or sauteed kale. I just like to add a little bit of vegetables so I get some greens in. So I basically just sauteed these in water until they were steamed and wilted. Then I added my skipjack tuna into a bowl, mash it up with my fork. And then I add in my Brussels sprouts, as well as some mayo and some salt and pepper. And you can mix that together. Taste according to your seasonings, but I think it's simple and good with just salt. Then transfer it to your toasted bread and divide it evenly. Top with whatever kind of cheese you want to use. Pop it back in the toaster oven until the cheese is melty and finish it off with, if you can get access to it, seriously, this is the best stuff ever, crunchy chili onion sauce slash condiment from Trader Joe's. It is made with olive oil, not a seed oil, and it is seriously so good. It's delicious on everything and is the highlight, I think, of this tuna melt. All right, my friends, I hope you enjoyed today's video. I will be filming another one that talks about dinner, so stay tuned for that. I think next week's video is going to be a little renovation update. We have made a lot of progress on the renovations in terms of demolition, so I'm excited to share kind of how things look at the house. We're hopefully moving in next week, fingers crossed. And, you know, baby's coming soon, just life hopefully is coming together in the next couple weeks, we'll see. So stay tuned for that, and if you did enjoy today's video, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up. It really helps with the YouTube algorithm. And if you aren't already subscribed, you can tap the red subscribe button that is right below this video. Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see you in the next one, bye.