What Should I Have for Lunch? Start With Your Afternoon

Lunch rarely gets its own thinking time. It gets squeezed into the gap between one thing and the next, so it tends to end up being whatever is closest.

An easier way is to let the rest of your day make most of the choice. What's left is a short list, and picking from it is quick.

What should I have for lunch today?

To choose lunch today, ask two questions: what does your afternoon look like, and where will you eat it? Your afternoon decides how big lunch should be. Where you eat decides the format: a plate, a box or something you hold in one hand.

1. What does my afternoon look like? If a long meeting, a presentation or a drive comes straight after, keep lunch small and bring a snack. If dinner will be late, make lunch a proper meal. If the afternoon is quiet, have the lunch that takes longer to get.
2. Where will I eat it? At the kitchen table, anything that needs a plate and a knife and fork is fine. At a desk, you want one container and one utensil you can use between emails. In the car or walking between places, it has to be something you can hold.

Say you're working from home on a Thursday, with a long call soon after lunch and dinner at the usual time. You don't want anything heavy right before the call. You'll eat at the kitchen table, so a plate is fine. That points to something small and warm: a grilled cheese and a cup of tomato soup. The big bowl of leftover curry can wait for Friday, when the afternoon is empty.

If the harder part is how hungry you are or what to spend, the three-question guide covers that.

What should I eat for lunch at home?

An easy lunch at home is last night's dinner with one fresh thing added, something on toast, or instant noodles turned into a real meal. You have a kitchen and a table, so use them, but you don't have to cook a second dinner in the middle of the day.

The easy version means no recipe and one pan at most:

• Leftovers plus one thing. Leftover curry with a fried egg on top, or last night's roast vegetables stirred through pasta with some cheese.
• Something on toast. Beans on toast, a tuna melt, or mashed avocado with chili flakes and lime.
• Upgraded instant noodles. Crack an egg into the pot and add a handful of spinach or frozen greens before the noodles are done.

Working from home makes it tempting to graze all afternoon. Sitting down to a plate, even a small one, marks lunch as done. If you'd like a stock of no-recipe meals that work at any time of day, the lazy dinners list doubles as a lunch list.

What are simple lunch ideas for work?

Simple lunch ideas for work are ones that sit in a container all morning and still taste good at your desk, either cold or warmed in the office microwave. Cold sesame noodles, a bean and grain salad, rice balls, or soup in a thermos all fit.

• Cold sesame noodles with cucumber and spring onion, eaten straight from the box.
• A bean and grain salad: chickpeas, couscous or farro, chopped peppers and a lemony dressing packed in a small jar on the side.
• Rice balls with a filling you like, such as salmon, tuna mayo or pickled plum.
• Soup in a thermos, for days when the microwave has a queue.
• Leftover chili or stew with rice, to warm up at work.

Keep anything wet, like dressing or sauce, in its own pot until you eat, so the rest of the box stays crisp.

Forgot to pack a box? Today's Mealow asks six questions and picks 3 dishes from real places near you. Free in your browser, nothing to install.

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What can adults eat for lunch instead of a sandwich?

If you're tired of sandwiches, try a snack plate, a bento-style box, or a slice of frittata with salad. These are simple lunch ideas for adults that aren't sandwiches, pack just as easily, and feel more like a meal.

A snack plate is just a few small things together: hummus, crackers, cucumber, a piece of cheese, olives and a boiled egg. It needs no cooking, and you can build it from whatever's left in the fridge at the end of the week.

A bento-style box is rice in one corner, two leftovers beside it, and something pickled or crunchy to finish. A frittata made on Sunday gives you slices to eat cold through the week, with a handful of salad leaves on the side.

What should I have for lunch if I'm eating on the go?

For lunch on the go, pick something you can eat with one hand and no table. A samosa, a steamed bao, a falafel pita or a hand pie all work. If you're driving, skip anything that needs a spoon or comes with a pot of sauce.

When you're buying lunch between errands, choose the place on your route over the best place in town. A detour for lunch eats into the afternoon you were trying to protect.

Buying lunch today? Today's Mealow asks six questions and picks 3 dishes from real places near you, each with a one-line reason.

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What should I make tonight for tomorrow's lunch?

The simplest lunch to make tonight is one more portion of whatever you're cooking for dinner. Box it up before anyone goes back for seconds and put it in the fridge. Tomorrow morning you just take it with you.

This works best with dinners that reheat well: stews, pasta bakes, dal, casseroles. On nights when dinner won't keep, use the clear-up time instead. Cook an extra handful of rice or pasta while the pan is still out, and it becomes the base for tomorrow's box.

You also get to pick tomorrow's food after you've eaten, with no rush, which is an easier time to choose than the middle of a busy morning.

Can an app pick my lunch near the office?

Today's Mealow can pick lunch near you, whether that's near the office or near home. It asks six questions, including which meal you're choosing, then picks three dishes from real places nearby, each with a one-line reason.

In Today's Mealow, a little cat does the asking. The six questions are what kind of cuisine, which meal, how you're feeling, what flavor you want, who you're with and where, and what you don't eat. Pick lunch as the meal and set the rest to fit your afternoon. Tap "Show me others" if none of the three land. For picks that don't need your location, try the other food-picking tools.