Brown Bag Lunch: Salmon and Asparagus Sandwich

Brown Bag Lunch:  Salmon and Asparagus Sandwich

(c) Dorine Houston 2008, all rights reserved 

Brown bag lunches, whether for children returning to school or the adult who never experiences the "lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer" at the office, need to be tasty and appealing, full of nutrition and substantial enough to provide strength for the afternoon's work.  Rightly handled, dinner leftovers can make excellent sandwiches.  If your family protests at them the very next day, most can be refrigerated another 24 hours and then become a delicious sandwich. 

Let’s say your dinner started with vegetable soup, followed by poached or baked filet of salmon, steamed or roasted asparagus and hollandaise sauce.  Make extra salmon, asparagus and hollandaise sauce. 

To pack a tasty lunch, slice open a hoagie roll and spread both sides thickly with cold hollandaise sauce.  Lay on some cold salmon and drizzle it with a squirt of fresh lemon juice.  Lay some cold asparagus spears on the other side of the roll and close well. 

Pack the sandwich into a large Rubbermaid (TM) box.  Add at least three kinds of raw vegetables.  Try cherry tomatoes, carrot sticks, broccoli flowerets, cucumber slices (instead of regular cucumbers, use either kirbies or English cucumbers as they are much less watery), celery sticks, wedges of cold roast beets or whatever appeals to your family.  Avoid empty junk food such as chips and cookies.  Arrange some fresh fruit in the box and put on the lid. 

Such a lunch is filling, nourishing and pretty to look at.  It is far better for your family than sodium and fat laden cold cuts and reasonably priced.