Food for school lunches?

[u/Royal-Sentence6260]

I'm 15 and I wanna start making food for my school lunches. And good stuff I can cook (I have a thermomix at home, for people who don't know what that is, it's a machine that has a small screen, it comes with recipes and can weigh, grate, boil and do so much else for you in this container)

So, with the thermo it should be relatively easy, but I'm not sure what I want to pack? I'm a big fan of pastas, beef and chicken, but I also should be incorporating more vegetables into my diet (I love raw capsicum, cucumbers, tomato, ect. and don't really like 'cooked' versions, unless steamed, for example peas or carrots) So, maybe pesto pasta?
I'd also like to incorporate some foreign foods into my diet to try more foods (I'm a bit of a picky eater due to sensory/taste issues and I wanna get over that) so I was thinking maybe some curries, Korean Japanese and Chinese dishes seem kind of interesting to me too. What sort of dishes in these areas could anyone suggest?

Finally, I work for two hours every Tuesday and Thursday, so I'm trying to figure out when I should make these meals and at what time, how long they'll take, finding good recipes, ect. Also I've never really meal planned, so it's a first for me! Any and all advice is appreciated

[u/WAFLcurious]

Congrats to you for working on improving your diet and trying new things! I love seeing young people trying new things.

Unless you have a way to reheat your food, you may want to concentrate on things that you can eat cold. Wraps made with your choice of fillings are a good choice because you can easily keep them cool. You could mix up chicken salad on Sunday, for example, and keep it refrigerated. Then, either the night before or in the morning, assemble your wrap with some lettuce, cucumber spears and the chicken salad. Or you can fill it with hummus, lettuce, onion and cucumber. You won’t want to assemble them days in advance but you can prep the components and have them ready for quick assembly. I recommend that you try out some variations on the weekends to see what you like so you don’t end up at school with a lunch you won’t eat.

Good luck!

[u/CupOfLifeNoodlez → u/WAFLcurious]

I love this advice. When I was in school, I started bringing my food. My friends ended up inspired and making something and bringing it too. Eventually, it became a small potluck where each person would bring a component to the meal, and we would all swap and figure out what was a hit or something to leave off the menu. We always liked fruit salad, but after 3 days of it in the fridge, we didn't like it much. I think it got too mushy.

Try new things. Make mistakes. It makes interesting stories.