Answer: Bring it from home.

The question is how to keep that lunch interesting enough to not be pulled to the darkside of the wonderful foodtrucks that are on my office block each day.

I’ve been doing some financial belt-tightening as part of my goal of paying off all my debt before I hit 40 (I’m not going to say how many years that gives me). A recent review of my spending showed me that a large share of my income goes to supporting local food trucks and other nearby cafes.

So I’ve been packing a lunch each day from home, or packing all of the week’s lunches on Sunday night, to save money.

My lunch options are more limited than most people because I cannot have anything containing gluten, fresh tree fruit (bananas are the exception) or tree nuts.

And although I’m thankful that there are some gluten-free breads that could pass for the real thing if one were realllllyyyyy intoxicated, sandwiches and snacks get boring really fast. Moreover, bringing in something like humus and cucumbers doesn’t work because I’ll snack on them all day but not find time to treat that like a meal.

This week I decided to mix it up a little.

On Monday I had gluten-free rice pasta with garlic-scape pesto and a side of fingerling carrots pan-cooked with rosemary and olive oil.

Next, I made a sort of taco mix (the church I used to go to called them haystacks) of beans, lettuce, Greek plain yogurt (I prefer that to sour cream), shredded cheese, diced tomatoes and salsa. I brought in a bag of corn tortillas (precooked at home) and made the tacos in the kitchen.

Today I made a dish that used to be my potluck standby.  It is a salad of chickpeas, feta cheese crumbles, diced tomatoes, diced cucumbers, fresh-squeezed lemon juice, olive oil, cumin,  salt/pepper and a dash of Adobo seasoning.

But I’m running out of ideas.  Suggestions?