I felt pretty productive today; finishing off a bunch of books, returning them, clearing away space on my desk, and making sure I have a healthy lunch and prepped what I wanna make for dinner… And I was able to get my heart rate up enough to make me feel like some good calorie burn happened.

Now, I was talking about the electric lunchbox I use at work – where my co-workers get mad it’s not a buffet and don’t bring enough to share – and the steamed meals I make in them.

These are the raw ingredients before I started cooking. Those are small bits of sliced chicken in soy sauce with my usual spices: paprika, cumin and red pepper. I use plain noodles and break the block in half. One pack is over 400 calories, no way I’m eating the whole thing. The greens are bok choy, sliced garlic, white onion, and ginger. I end up having to cook in stages; the chicken first for 15 minutes, add the bok choy in the top section at the 15 minute mark, and the noodles in hot water at the 20 minute mark. At 25 minutes, it’s all done.

Sometimes (as in most of the time), I end up over packing the vegetables. I eat what’s cooked and let the rest steam a bit longer. I don’t like my veggies too soggy. I like the crunch. When I do broccoli, I leave the veggies in the entire time since that takes much longer to cook than the bok choy. The water I use to cook the noodles dilutes the soy sauce (I try to use low sodium but that’s not always on sale and I’m a cheap bitch) and the chili crunch is just delicious and fun.

This is a filling dinner that is so satisfying (even though the red pepper makes my nose run, which is gross but worth it). If I get one pack of chicken tenders from Trader Joe’s or Butcher Box, that makes two of these types of meals. I change up the vegetables (I already ranted about my issues with the broccoli from Misfits Market here) and those ramen packs are so cheap when they’re on discount and also last two meals. If I don’t have any noodles, I just add more veggies.

One of these days, I’ll post the version of this I make with lemon chicken and peppers (unless I did that already and fuck it, I’ll do it again) which I have had mixed results adding rice but for that, I just skip the carbs entirely. Rice is hit or miss for me with the electric lunch box. Or at least this kind of electric lunch box because I backed a different one on Kickstarter (yeah, not sponsored or an affiliate for anything I have linked here) that I’ll have to play around with when I get it to see what kinds of meals I can make or if it’s best for just reheating things. Either one would help me out since the microwave can kill food sometimes.

So… I went on a tangent about my food and the geeky products I own. If I put this meal into MyFitnessPal, it’s about 500 calories total; which is good for me since I don’t feel the need to snack at all hours after eating this. If I make this for lunch, I don’t even need dinner. That’s probably the Saxenda as a factor as well but a good workout and getting my steps in burns all this off no problem.

Uhm… I don’t have anything clever to say to end this. I’m tired and going to bed.

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