Mid-day Meal Mystery: Solved?

We are stuck in ruts over here. Ruts about what to eat for lunch. I'm the go-to person in the house for food. It's not a bad job to have and many times, it's quite fun to cook great tasting and (hopefully) healthy food for my family. But other times, I let meal planning (or lack thereof) stress me out, and it's usually over the issue of LUNCH. Here are the complicating factors (at least in my mind):

• Hubby needs something that will fill him up (no cheese quesadillas I'm afraid)
• Son needs something nutritious (protein, carb, fruit, and green veggie is the goal)
• Mama needs this to be economical (easy on the pocket book)
• Everybody needs variety 
• We have fallen out of love with peanut butter (I want kind from the Oklahoma peanut farm that I used to get...sad day)
•  Mama needs there to be some crossover so that I'm not preparing completely different lunch menus for hubby and son
• Mama needs this to be on the easier side so that I can have adequate time to prep for dinner, and other regular tasks such as bake bread, make tortillas, make applesauce or whatever else kitchen-related I'm considering a priority at the time.
• Wife needs this to be predicable so that I don't just drop the ball and leave my husband scrambling in the morning to make a lunch with no bread, tortillas, cheese, or fruit, and be able to catch his bus to work (not that this has happened...much)

All that to say...the question of lunch has been a challenge to me throughout all last semester (with a hubby working at a university, we still live according to the academic calendar)! However, recently I took some time to try and come up with a workable plan. We will call it: Weekly Rotations. Then, maybe, possibly, if I get this under my belt we can expand this weekly idea and have more variety. But this, this is for starters. Behold:

Week A: Chicken Salad on bread or tortillas
Week B: Bean burritos/Juevos rancheros on tortillas with homemade refried beans
Week C: Barbecue pulled pork sandwhiches/wraps
Week D: Red Beans and Rice
Weeks E-whatever: in progress

Isn't that amazing? I know, I'm a genius. Just kidding. But it's a plan! We will use these courses as a base for our lunches for the week. If Abram and I want to, we can have cheese quesadillas or cheesy bread or macaroni and cheese if we want. Sometimes my husband has special events at work and lunch is provided. And sometimes we have enough leftovers from dinner that we can have it for lunch. So I'm thinking this rotation schedule will get us going for the week and we can depart from it for variety during the week whenever we want. And I'm hoping it will help me know what to buy from the store when I'm planning my weekly grocery trip instead of "winging it" for lunch every day for the three of us.

Variety? Enough for us. Filling? Yes, each main dish has either meat or beans. Economical? As long as we keep some weeks without meat, I think it will be. Easy? Enough: Chicken salad just means I need to de-bone some chicken, hard boil some eggs, and throw it together on Sunday night. Refried beans and pulled pork are made in the slow cooker, and Red Beans and Rice cooks slowly on the stove and needs little maintenance until it's done. Crowd pleasers? I think husband and son will eat all these dishes with no complaint. And me? Well, I don't care what's for lunch, just that everyone has food and stays relatively happy!

So there you have it: our Lunch Eats Resolution for the year. 

Please, please, leave a comment with ideas about what you cook for your family's lunches! As you can see above, I need more ideas, and I'd love to hear how you handle the lunch time crunch.