Lunch Notes | My Crunchy Sandwich Recipe & A Style Diary.

THE ONE WITH THE PANTS AND THE STYLE JOURNEY. Also, with my detailed sandwich method. I'm embarrassed about that.

Welcome to Lunch Notes.

Lunch Notes is born out of a desire to use my daily lunch break better. Not in a productivity, “optimize for everything” way, but in a “use it or lose it” sort of way.

I hope that this feels like a note that someone tucked into your lunchbox. Or like a class newsletter tucked in your cubby that a cringy keener kid made for you.¹

In today’s issue, we have…

• My go-to-sandwich routine

• A recent style experiment that you can joyfully steal (but please tell mehow you end up doing it!)

• Lil treasures from the last week.

As always: if you have ideas for what you’d like to see in Lunch Notes, I’m all ears! For now, Lunch Notes will be in your inboxes on Thursdays at 12 PM MST.

It’s another long one, so reading in the Substack app or expanding the email in your browser will mean you see everything included here.

Without further ado - welcome to Lunch Notes. 🧡

For a long time, I’ve been a lover of sandwiches — I ate them at my Pake and Beppe’s growing up, I worked at a general store where I made myself an elite sandwich every day for lunch, and the five dollar footlong from Subway was a staple of my university years.

But the summer of 2022 reignited my sandwich love, and that’s because of

Claire

. That summer, she started yapping on TikTok about Crunchy Sandwiches™️ and I had no choice but to partake. In that moment, a love was re-ignited, and a Good Sandwich™️ has been a go-to lunch for me since.

If I haven’t forced you to listen to the sandwich making process yet², the recipe is as follows for me:

• Heritage Sourdough from Costco, toasted twice. First toast is on both sides. Second toast is using a time honoured tradition from Claire - doing it on the bagel setting, so it gets really toasty on one side, giving optimal crunch, but doesn’t hurt the roof of my mouth.

• While the bread is toasting, I thinly slice a tomato — then I put some salt and pepper on it. I also slice some red onion, grab a dill pickle to let dry, and pull off some iceberg lettuce (controversially, my favourite of the lettuces).

• I grab my slices of meat - I love the Citterio Sliced Assorted Meat pack from Costco - and two slices of cheese — we have havarti right now, but cheddar or marble are also favourites. (I make this into one and a half so there’s no cheese build up on the sandwich, and Pip and I split the leftover half of cheese.)

• Hopefully by this point, my bread has had time to cool.

• To assemble, I do…

  • Lots of mayo, a dash of mustard

  • Meat

  • Cheese

  • Lettuce

  • Tomato

  • Pickle

  • Red onion

  • Fresh ground pepper on a mayo side

• Then I slice it in half, right down the middle, and pop some Miss Vickie’s Salt and Vinegar chips on the side.

And that’s my crunchy sandwich recipe! If there’s something I should do differently, please share - I’m open to optimizing my sandwich experience.

Style Diaries - Entry #1.

This year, one of my goals was “Define my personal style.” That felt more goal oriented and professional than what I wanted it to be which was “Have fun and try new things with clothes more often.”

Aspirationly, I say my style is if your CEO was formerly an art teacher. Dave says it’s modern with an 80’s twist. Practically, my style is what is clean and available, what is functional as I work from home, and for six months of the year: what goes with my Blundstones and my parka. But I have been wanting more aspiration for my wardrobe and less parka!

There are some fun things I’ve done this year to work towards defining my personal style. We had a Pinterest board analysis night, where Caitlin looked at our Pinterest boards and pulled out outfit formulas she saw. I’ve intentionally bought a few items out of my comfort zone and filled some wardrobe gaps I’m excited about. I’ve loosely tracked my outfits. I obsessively re-read at this post from

early bird

(unfortunately only available to paid subscribers but this was worth the price of admission for me!)

no. 16: classic, minimal, whimsical

But… I also impulse bought a lot of “quick & it’ll do” clothes during a spring and early summer travel marathon and my clothing situation felt out of control in early August. When I came home, did all my laundry, and had a reckoning with my closet, I came up with one small style challenge I could do to make clothes fun for me again.

Today, I’m sharing the style challenge, the outfits I came up with, what I learned, and tips if you’d like to do this too.

The Challenge: Style a Pair of Pants for Five Work Days.

The pants in question are a pair of pants that are really out there for me - a pair of pants I got from the Gap Factory Outlet after a loose look around at “wide legged jeans” on Pinterest, being inspired by them, and finding ones I like.

Before the challenge, I didn’t mind the pants and the fit, but I didn’t reach for them. They felt a bit uncomfortable to wear because they were unlike the skinny and straight jeans I’d been wearing. I also didn’t like the ways the pockets lay, I didn’t feel comfortable when I wore them, and I never knew what to pair them with.

Enter this style challenge.

The Rules: I wore this same pair of pants five times within the span of one week. I had to do a different top option every time, using clothes I already have. And I had to wear it all day long.

“But why couldn’t you just try on five different outfits in front of the mirror?” Wonderful question. There are two reasons!

1. I wanted to see how I felt about the outfit for a whole day - did it really fit my lifestyle?

2. I wanted to feel more comfortable with the pants, and knew that living a full day in the life in them would make me feel more confident.

And it did!

“And what if someone screams at me, LIZZIE MCGUIRE, YOU ARE AN OUTFIT REPEATER?” Ah, fear of the Kates of the world. I get it. I work from home, so that wasn’t a huge issue for me, but I also find that people are rarely paying that close of attention to me, so outfit repeating is easy to get away with. That might not be true for you! I do think there’s value in doing this little challenge in a short time span — you’re able to closely compare how it felt to wear it with something else!

What I Noticed.

It was only a five day challenge, but I felt like I walked away with a bunch of important learnings and noticings for myself. Like…

• I got comfortable in the pants the more I wore them. It was a new mindset of, “I don’t know what to do with these pants” and more “What can I pull together for this outfit?” I loved that mindset shift (and have really missed it as I’ve been getting dressed the last few weeks!) I also got complimented, which only helped my comfortability and confidence in the pants.

• It was fun to play around with my clothes. This is different than the way I’ve felt about clothes before. Part of it has been paying more attention to style in the last year: using Pinterest more, talking about clothes and styles with friends more. But having a little challenge, trying to do something different - it was fun for me.

• There are so many ways to style an outfit that aren’t just your clothes. I loved picking out the right belt, jewelry, or hairstyle for the day’s outfit. It was also fun to think about how I could elevate the outfit, while still being comfortable for being around my house.

• This fun challenge cost me zero dollars. If you’re looking for a low or no spend activity that reminds you how much abundance is in your life, I highly recommend doing a style challenge like this.

• It also reminded me that I do not need a new item of clothing to make an outfit feel pulled together. Maybe you don’t struggle with this — but I definitely do. It’s easier to think, “I can grab the exact right thing that’s new” and the exact right thing is probably already in my closet if I commit the time to this.

• I now have an easy photo reference of ways I can wear these pants — and a few types of clothes that I’ve added to my wish list. I love using the Shuffles app for packing lists, and now I have five more outfit options that I can reference when creating my packing list.

I’m already coming up with what item I’ll pick next for a little five day style challenge (I’m thinking of a blazer or a blouse or boots I’ve had a hard time styling.)

Steal This Idea.

Please! Do this challenge if you’ve been looking for a small, short, low-stakes way of being delighted by your clothing again. A few quick tips from me:

• I think it’s great to pick an item of clothing you’ve been frustrated styling or haven’t cracked the code on yet. Or something you want to wear to feel more comfortable in! You get five tries at styling it. If it’s not something you’re excited by at the end of those five days, maybe the item goes in the donation or clothing swap pile.

• Make sure all your clothes are clean and ironed so you’re working with an abundance of options, not waiting for your perfect favourite shirt that’s still in the laundry. You’ll be annoyed the whole time, wishing you were wearing that.

• Take a picture every day and maybe write down 1-2 sentences of what you liked about the outfit at the end of every day. (I wish I had written down what I liked!)

And that’s all! Like I said, I’m dreaming up my next style challenge but am already thinking of some other style challenges I can do — both to make getting dressed easier and to have more fun with clothes. (Thinking of maybe the 75 clothing challenge I’ve seen around, building a master clothing tracker Notion board, a few 10 items x 10 days challenges, or setting a goal of number of clothing items to buy!) I hope you have fun digging around your closet and doing something similar!

In the Lunch Box is a collection of treasures in my life from the last few weeks - media I’ve consumed, products I’m loving, things I can’t get enough of… in a condensed, digestible, aesthetic format (I hope).

1. My Home Office Snack Box: It’s not fancy - it’s just some fibre bars, some apples, and trail mix. There are times when I have back to back meetings where leaving my office in between feels insurmountable, but getting hangry in client meetings is not the vibe. I quickly made this snack box to keep on my desk. It’s already helped me eat trail mix and an apple. 100% success rate on day one.

2. The Master Portable Charger: I was on a number of trips with my friend, Katherine, this spring and when it got to the fifth time of me asking her to borrow this charger, I thought, “I need to grow up and get my own.” What’s so worth it to me is having ALL the chargers I could ever need attached to it - right down to my laptop. I could truly travel with just this, my laptop charger, and my Watch charger and be delighted.

3. Collaborative Playlists on Spotify: Did you know you can set up a collaborative playlist on Spotify? If you are remote or have long-distance friends, can I please recommend this as a community building activity? At work during the school year, we do a weekly add to a playlist called Friyay Finds. Each week, everyone adds a song and shares why in a Slack channel. (An idea everyone should be stealing!) Last week, I also hosted some old friends & knew we were road tripping to the mountains — so I started a collaborative playlist for the road trip. (And played it ultra cool when the 20-year old dude, who had not indicated he was reading my text messages, started adding songs and they were good!) We played it all weekend long, got super obsessed with one song, and it was all very good. MAKE MORE COLLABORATIVE PLAYLISTS WITH YOUR FRIENDS, is what I am saying.

I hope this was a nice break away from you - whether you’re reading on a work break, your lunch break, or with your coffee on Friday morning. I am having so much fun with this, so I hope they are enjoyable and useful for you.

If you have ideas for future Lunch Notes topics or things you’d like to see me write about here, please let me know and I’ll add them in to my (chaotic) content calendar.

And as a teaser for next week… I’m introducing something & someone new to Lunch Notes. Can’t wait to share!

Thanks for reading, and enjoy your lunch!

1. I can own it, fine. Yes, I did this. I’ve always been who I’ve always been.

2. Shocking considering I’ve made co-workers, my mom, and close friends listen to this!