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6 make-ahead staples for quick weekday lunches

It's no fun preparing lunch while you rush to work. Use your weekends instead.

Though we enjoy throwing food together on the fly, sad desk lunches often result when not enough time has been put towards planning our midday meal. Let's face it: Early mornings are not an inspiring time to plan your lunch.

But making a different dish for each day of the week can be cumbersome. Instead, make your work week easier and your lunches vastly better by taking an hour or so over the weekend to think ahead. Pull together some lunch staples, and you can mix and match ingredients all week.

Here are our favorite ways to get ahead on your weekdays before the week even starts:

  • Start with starches. Make some basic brown rice on Sunday afternoon — it will serve as a canvas for your lunches all week. Or you can go for some more dressed-up options, like cauliflower couscous, freekeh with fennel and mint, or orzo salad. These dishes keep well in the fridge and can be thrown into a salad, added to leftovers, or just eaten by themselves.
  • Now for the fun part: toppings. There are tons of make-ahead spreads to add to sandwiches, salads, or pasta — like pesto, aioli, muhammara, and hummus (bonus: a lot of these can double as dips for office snacking). After you have the basics down, try some wilder options, like mint-pistachio pesto, beet hummus, and pimentón aioli. If you're a fan of good old PB&Js, try mixing things up by making your own nut butter.

This story was originally published on Food52.com: 6 make-ahead staples for quick weekday lunches

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