Brown Bag Lunches and Other Food Ideas

Cold Prep Ramen

Cold prep ramen is my jam here lately. Just add water, it doesn't have to be hot, and I like to add a little salt and some raw veggies to it.

I typically buy either a bag of shredded carrots, a bag of broccoli and some beef jerky OR mirepoix mix (diced onions, carrots and celery) plus a bag of snowpeas. I'm not homeless, so I have a fridge to store my veggies and this is a few days worth of veggies for me.

Homeless Individuals

If you are on the street yourself and have no means to store anything:
  • Beef jerky keeps well and comes in resealable bags.
  • You could look for fresh veggies in individual serving amounts, like a single corn on the cob. If you don't have a knife to cut the corn off the cob, you can remove the kernels with a plastic fork or just eat it directly off the cob.
  • Alternately, try adding fruit, like slices from a seedless orange or cubed pineapple from a fresh fruit cup.

Programs

Cold prep ramen with a choice of veggies is potentially something you could:
  • Serve at a park or other situation where you have tables but no electricity, no running water, etc.
  • Make "brown paperbag lunches" to pass out at a free hot breakfast to get them TWO free meals in a day with minimal overhead for your program.
  • Do once in a while in place of a hot meal to educate the homeless that cold prep ramen works just fine and is a potential means to get a variety of veggies without cooking.

Serving Size

When I do Cold Prep Ramen, it seems to take at least two to four ounces of veggies and I sometimes just pile extra on a plate and KEEP adding veggies as the cup starts to empty out.

Mirepoix and Snow Peas

Mirepoix is a basic item for starting a variety of French dishes and it starts with a mix of diced onions, carrots and celery. Typically, half onions, one quarter carrots and one quarter celery.

If you are an individual on the street, you can buy "Diced vegetables for Mirepoix" in a container in some grocery stores. It's typically 10 ounces and it takes me about four or five cold prep ramen meals to use it up, so I seem to use about 2 to 2.5 ounces per ramen cup.

Snow peas are a decent source of protein, higher than vegetables like potatoes and carrots, lower than most legumes. They are lightweight and bulky and a bag seems to last me longer than the mirepoix mix. I am likely using something like one to two ounces of snow peas most of the time.

If you were running a program, you could make a brown paper bag lunch with a cup or bowl of ramen, bottle of water, plastic fork, spork or spoon, and one or two small ziploc bags of veggies, possibly keeping the mirepoix separate from the snow peas for freshness. If possible, add salt and pepper packets.

I imagine both snow peas and mirepoix veggies would keep well enough that if you are a homeless individual buying supplies at a grocery store, you could potentially use up half at lunch and try to keep the rest in your bag and keep it out of the sun to keep it cool so it's still edible a few hours later for dinner.

Possible substitutions: You can use snap peas in place of snow peas; you could potentially use just onions and either carrot or celery, depending on what you have available. If you can get to a farmer's market and buy individual veggies in small amounts, you could potentially have just an onion and a carrot to go with your noodles.

Beef Broccoli

Beef jerky is on a short list of shelf-stable, not vegetarian sources of protein that are homeless friendly. However, a LOT of homeless people have serious dental issues and have trouble chewing.

Jack Links brand is softer than some other brands of jerky and comes in at least three flavors: Original, Pepper, Teriyaki. If you tear it into pieces and put it in soup, it's even easier to manage.

I buy a bag of shredded carrots, a bag of broccoli and I go heavy on the carrots. Total weight of veggies plus beef jerky is probably under five ounces most days.

I have also just added whatever veggies I had on hand after other stuff ran out. It's fine to add JUST mirepoix veggies or JUST shredded carrots and jerky.

I happen to like my two staple cold prep recipes and I don't feel like I am in some way "compromising," as if this somehow isn't REALLY lunch. I feel satisfied with cold diced veggies added to cold prep ramen noodles and I usually add a little salt to it.

But I'm also happy that when life gets in the way and I can only add carrots or only add beef jerky, etc., that's still perfectly edible even if it falls short of making me feel like I am spoiled and "This is fine dining!"

I've also tried adding fresh corn cut off the cob to my ramen and orange slices from a seedless orange. Both were edible, though the orange works better as a side dish than as an ingredient to add to cold prep ramen.

I have seen other diced vegetables in grocery stores, such as diced peppers or just diced onions. There is lots of room for experimenting with which veggies you prefer to add to ramen.

More Brown Bag Lunch Ideas

In addition to Cold Prep Ramen for a brown paper bag lunch to give out at a free breakfast site, you could pack:
  • Organic peanut butter on whole wheat bread, a packet of jelly, granola bar and/or fresh fruit (such as an orange or banana).
  • Beef jerky, potato chips, brownie.
  • Plain or egg bagel, packet of nutella or almond butter, dried fruit.
  • Corn chips, packet of salsa, package of bean dip.
When I was homeless, I did my best to establish food stamps, find food pantries and similar resources where I could get stuff to go so me and my sons could STOP standing in line ALL DAY to try to get three meals for free.

I was happy to go get ME coffee and a free breakfast at the women's shelter, but as quickly as I could manage, I arranged to find other means to keep us fed because standing in line all day with other homeless people coughing, smoking, etc. actively put our health at risk and actively interfered with trying to spend ANY time fixing our lives.

And I had other homeless people make similar comments to me like "Why does lunch HAVE TO BE served on site? Why can't they give you a brown bag lunch at breakfast so you are free to go where you want during the day?"

Bread and Produce and More Thoughts

Two of the more useful resources I found while homeless let you get bread and fresh produce, either once a week or daily. One of them also provided a "snack pack" once a week, which contained a variety of things like a granola bar, fruit cup and similar.

Some programs gave out free bread ONLY and I stopped going to those. I quickly learned the hard way that the REASON "bread and water" was a form of torture historically is because it causes horrendous constipation if that's ALL you eat or even a HIGH percentage of what you eat.

So I made sure to find programs where I could get fresh produce of some sort with my bread and never went through that again.

In San Diego, there was a once a week meal served on the street by some church group and everyone called them The Vegans. They served a vegetarian meal on paper plates and ALSO let you get up to TWO brown paper bags with peanut butter sandwiches, granola bars and I think a piece of fruit.

I typically went alone and brought back the two brown paper bags for my kids because my kids weren't willing to eat the kind of ethnic vegetarian fare they served but were happy to get peanut butter sandwiches and granola bars. If things were really bad, one son went with me so we could get TWO brown paper bag lunches APIECE to have more food to go around.

I have a LOT of dietary restrictions and this weekly vegetarian meal with takeaway brown paper bag lunches was a huge help to us. It was the BEST free meal program in San Diego hands down.

Miscellaneous Food Ideas

Hard cheeses, like parmesan, keep well without refrigeration and can potentially be supplied in cheese packets (like you get at pizza places) or standard shakers in a small size (like 3 ounces instead of 8).

Babybel cheese is covered in wax, thus needs no refrigeration so long as the wax remains unbroken.

Butter does not actually have to be refrigerated. I sometimes bought a stick of butter, put the remaining butter in a ziploc bag and tried to keep my backpack out of direct sun. It did just fine for two or three days, though it sometimes got melty.

I used to fantasize about being able to buy a small squeeze bottle of ghee or clarified butter, no more than 8 ounces. Ghee or clarified butter keeps for up to two months without refrigeration, but in the US you currently need to make it on a stovetop or buy a glass or plastic jar that is more like 13 ounces and requires you to spoon it out.

You can nearly live on potatoes. They don't have enough B vitamins, so you also need like buttermilk, cheese, meat or seafood to supply some B vitamins, but they are the only staple food item you can nearly live on by itself. They would make an excellent staple item as a base for meals at free meal sites.

When serving something like baked potatoes, it would be better to give people a choice of toppings than to just go ahead and top it with whatever was planned. Even just putting the toppings on the side so they can decide how much of each to use would be better than how meal sites typically handle this.

If you are an individual wanting to help the homeless as an individual and reluctant to give cash, I recommend gift cards to grocery stores, e-gift cards to Walmart and gift cards to eateries like Taco Bell or Burger King rather than food per se.

Addendum 
Please be aware that people of color are more likely to be lactose intolerant than Caucasians and more likely to be poor, including at greater risk of homelessness, while Caucasians are more likely to be running charitable programs to feed the poor and may be oblivious to this issue.

Lactose intolerant people cannot have milk or milk products, like cheese and butter (however you can clarify butter to remove the milk solids and then it's safe for them to consume). Consuming milk products typically causes such individuals severe diarrhea, so if a person of color has severe diarrhea after eating something you served, your first action should be to ASK them if they are lactose intolerant and ask staff if they were served milk, cheese or unclarified butter before jumping to conclusions about food poisoning or similar.

Footnote
This is a compilation of several posts originally published elsewhere on August 14, 2023 and August 15, 2023.

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