List of ingredients for a college student lunch which doesn't need to be refrigerated

Here's my scenario:

I'm a college student, and most school days I'm running around campus with very little spare time on my hands. I don't usually bring a lunch to school, but I'd like to start. I'm tired of eating fast food garbage.

I already have a pile of stuff to haul around campus, (engineering student - textbooks, lab equipment, the kitchen sink, you name it) so I'd like to keep things to a minimum. I really don't want to have to cram an ice pack somewhere in my bag or carry another one just for my lunch. So refrigeration won't be an option, ideally. If I have to carry an ice pack so be it, but I'd like to avoid it.

There are microwaves on campus but I avoid them at all costs. The lines are usually long and I don't have much time to spare. So cooking food at school is not an option.

Lastly, I like to eat a lot. I get hungry easily and just need a lot fuel to burn. I'm not unhealthy, I just like to eat a lot of healthy foods, (I'm sure my diet is lacking relative to the common /r/nutrition user but anyways), and some of my school days are 8-9 hours of consecutive classes. This means I'm going to need to bring a lot of food, hence the no ice packs, just to get that little bit more food in.

I've already searched /r/nutrition for similar posts, which brought me to these two posts (Link 1, Link 2). In them, some recommend foods like fruits, nuts, and sardines, but I don't think a diet of fruits and nuts will be enough to keep me going, and I enjoy having friends so I don't want to death breath them everyday with canned fish breath.

My ideas for foods that fit what I'd like to do have been: A) Rice and B) greens (Kale, Spinach, Bell Peppers, microgreens maybe), but I'm stumped with a protein portion. I'm entirely new to nutrition on the levels that it's looked at in /r/nutrition, and I'm not really sure how to make it a well-rounded meal.

I don't mind making the meal the night before and tossing it in the fridge over night. Just that I can carry it around without the need for constant refrigeration or having to cook before eating.

I'm thinking this Tupperware container should fit my needs. It holds 2.12L, or 9 cups, or 72 oz if any of that is relevant. As for cost I'm not very concerned, a foot long sub at subway is roughly $8 each, so as long as it's cheaper than that (per meal) I'm happy. It also doesn't actually have to be a "recipe meal", it can just be a combination of ingredients that fit the bill. I'm not a picky eater and at this point, no longer care what it tastes like.

In Conclusion

Nutrition noob who needs recommendations for a lunch that doesn't need to be refrigerated for storage or cooked before eating, besides in preparation, ie. cooking rice the night before or having to refrigerate the meal over night. The lunch needs to be a decently well-rounded meal that's filling, but without things like canned seafood that would be offensive in smell in a public setting. The meal should be around 9 cups of food, and cheaper than $8 a meal. Current ideas for ingredients are rice and various greens, but I'm unsure of what else would be beneficial to add. Something like this looks along the lines of what I have in mind.

Thanks!

Submitted March 01, 2017 at 01:14AM by mattleviphelps http://ift.tt/2lnTuBP