Inspiring ideas to liven up lunchtime

What did you have for lunch today? Here’s a couple of ‘highlights’ from mine from the past few days: hummus, pitta and olives, something vaguely uninspiring on toast, leftover pasta, and half a pack of Haribo and an innocent smoothie.

Buying lunch was always one of the the best thing about the working day in an office. Now I work from home, I tend to just eat whatever’s easiest and save cooking for the evening. So I was intrigued by the premise of Warburton’s ‘creative sandwich’ blogger event I was invited along to last week. Any ideas that could possibly inspire me into livening up my lunchtime sounded good to me.

The event took place at the Food at 52 Cookery School in Islington, which is like a members club with a really lovely, huge basement kitchen.

It was hosted by chef James Ramsden, and there were three different sandwich challenges for us all to create: the first was contrasting flavours, then British with a twist, and overseas inspiration. We were all unleashed on a table of ingredients, a whole load of Warbuton’s Sandwich Alts (wraps, pitta and sandwich thins).

Faced with a room of proper foodies and food bloggers, I’m not going to say my creations were the, ahem, best…my first was salami, mozzarella and caper wrap, my second was a tuna concoction, and my third was a thai-inspired crab, pickles, and sweet chilli sauce affair. There were some fantastic ideas from everyone else though – from bacon and chilli chocolate, a fruit salsa, a chip sandwich as well as chickpeas and coriander. The winning one was banana and cheese – who’d have thought?

I’m already a lifelong fan of the humble pitta, but I really like the idea behind the Warburtons products – they’re so easy and much less stodgy than bread. The wraps are my favourite, and are great for toasting or putting on the griddle if you want everything to melt (top wrap tip: use them instead of naan bread).

It was a really fun event – you can’t go wrong with sandwiches and wine in the middle of the day – and it’s definitely inspired me to think a bit more creatively about my lunch.

Thanks Warburtons! I was invited to the event and given a fee for expenses.