I bring my lunch and breakfast every day on my backpack. I'm just careful to use stuff that won't spoil. We have a café at work so I don't have to worry about taking milk, but it's really not too hard if you had to bring individual cartons. Just package it in a plastic bag to eliminate leaks.

I like tuna. In a can or in a bag, it lasts a long time.

If you like to turn your tuna into salad, you can get a couple extra mayonnaise packets next time you go to your favorite fast food restaurant (I use Chick-Fil-A), or try this place for single serving packages of just about everything.

https://www.minimus.biz/

This place is great for backpacking supplies...I found out about it in a motorcycle touring magazine. My favorite for clever packaging is the twin pack of PB&J!

breakfast:



lunch:



ride home:

I have been a sandwich carrier for most years of life. Lately, I've been buying soup at work instead. I just ordered one of these lunch jars with the intent of carrying my own soup to work.

https://www.stanley-pmi.com/shop/prod...x?ProductID=17

It's a 20 ounce insulated food jar. I'm going to ditch the folding spoon and put crackers in the lid compartment.

It should arrive in a little over a week. I'll let you know how it turns out.

I like to freeze my water bottle, keeps it cold. Put it in the freezer at work, it than thaws to give me cool water to drink on the PM ride.

Either pb&j with some form of vegetable or leftovers in tupperware, rubber-banded shut and kept as stable as possible in the luggage (be it pannier, trunk bag, or backpack). But my commute is only 40min.

For yours, definitely icepacks and an insulated bag of some sort. They make them about traditional lunch-bag size, so it wouldn't take up too much room.

Rubbermaid plastic containers inside a pannier.

I have a similar commute length and generally have been fine with just keeping stuff in tupperware, and putting it in my panniers. However, I don't do frozen meals and usually just have dinner leftovers. Never had to worry about the stuff spoiling, even if they've been sitting in my bag for an hour before I get to the fridge.

Also, like many other posters, I keep a small pantry in one of my desk drawers with stuff that doesn't require refrigeration and can keep for a moderate amount of time (loaf of bread, jar of peanut butter, bag of nuts, block of cheddar, bag of dried fruit, rice crackers, etc.) Most of that can be grazed through for a light lunch.

In a bag in the rack trunk. A thermos container of some sort is usually involved.

A few options:

– Commute only on cold days.
– Use a thermos
– Use an insulated lunch bag and an ice pack

I carry my lunch bag in a pannier, along with tools, rain gear, etc. One small ice pack is usually enough to keep it cool until noon.

rack pack . no refridgeration needed (post tours/24hr rule). handlebar bags work well too, but not present on current commuter due to light system!

Heat-proof lunchbag + ice-packs is the way to go. I've done 35km round trips with no refrigerator at work place a good part of the summer. Always came out great.

Just so you know, because of it's high ph, commercially made mayonnaise is actually pretty safe to carry unrefridgerated. So make that tuna fish sandwich and be worry free!

After getting food poisoning from mayonnaise that was supposidly cold I do worry & will not consume it unless it is kept cold after it is opened.

I had a lunch at a hotel buffet one time. The mayo. was in a bowl on top of ice. I used it on my sandwhich. 2 days later I had food poisoning from it. WHen I was tested for it I was told it was not from the meat or the cheese, but the mayo. After that I do not trust mayo. or anything with mayo. in it, like salads if it is out in the open.

If I make a sandwhich with mayo. on it & carry it in my bags to work it will be packed with an ice pack to keep it cold.

To combat theft of food by your darling co-workers, seal your lunch in a FedEx envelope.

I keep cans of high-quality soup, crackers, single servings of fruit and applesauce, and packets of tuna in an unused, locking file cabinet drawer, and a big latte cup to to nuke the soup in, with my clean socks and skivvies. The local convenience store is my source for mayo, onion and relish packets for the tuna that require no refrigeration. If I have good leftovers, I can bring them on on an as-available basis.

Good idea but if anyone sees a fed ex package in teh fridge or freezer they may pull it out & ship it. I can imagine the perons on the other end wondering why in the hell (insert company name here) sent them lunch.

My solution - hire a cook. She shops for the food for breakfast and lunch and fixes it - does the dishes - and makes my coffee.

Questions?

I end up leaving a bunch of food stuff at work -- PB, jelly/jam/honey, soup, yogurt, whatever else. We have a small office with a small kitchen, so it's pretty normal around here.

I make a salad and put it in a tupperware container that is rectangular and pretty deep and I put it in my trunk bag. but there's not room for much else in there.

Insulated lunch bag. Keeps things nice and cool. Fits right on top of the rack, and a bungee cord holds it in place. Also keep my breakfast in a thermos in the insulated bag. Oatmeal is perfectly cooked by the time I get to work.

Isn't that called a wife?

Trunk bag in the morning. In the afternoon it relocates to my stomach.
The trunk bag is then used for unused cycling clothing for warmer temps (hopefully).

I bought one of those little soft coolers from Wal-Mart. It holds 2 sandwiches and a snack or whatever else. And I take 2 water bottles and fill them up half way from my water filter at home and freeze them. In the morning before I leave I fill the bottles up the rest of the way with cool filtered water. These keeps my lunch cold out doors all day!

Plus I have ice cold water to drink all day.

And about the food thief, my dad told me he had one of them at work once and he just got some jelly filled donuts and used a syringe to inject exlax. One of his coworkers went home sick that day and never returned. And food stopped going missing!

I bought a large section of CryoPak Flexible Ice Blanket at Costco. It's fairly thin, flexible, can be cut into smaller pieces, and is great for icing my knee as well. $3-6.

I tend to eat lunches that are very similar from day to day---a salad, something left-overish that can go in the microwave, something to drink in a little plastic camping bottle, fruit, salad dressing, napkin, fork, spoon--so I found containers that hold those items and "debugged" the container situation. Then I searched for a bag of some sort that would hold all those containers. I finally found a seven-dollar toiletry bag at Target. So now, I make my lunch the night before, pack it all in the "lunch bag," and put the whole bag into the refrigerator. In the morning, I can grab and go (if it were not for walking the dog).