Lunch Notes // 013.

Here's a little interlude from lunch to talk about vacations & three different ways you could document them.

Welcome to Lunch Notes.

Lunch Notes was born out of a desire to use my daily lunch break better. You know, until work gets busy or I get bored or something happens in my life that kind of throws me on my back.

But! I just did my mid-year goal check in, and one of the goals was to send 40 Lunch Notes and I am… *checks notes* significantly behind on that goal, so here I am. Sitting at a Joey’s happy hour, having a late lunch of their hummus with these warm pita chips and a crisp Coke, ready to share a little work or life (or work life) essay and small things I’m loving.

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…

• A call for your best lunches and snacks - inspire me!

• Three ways I documented a recent trip (that truly feels like the trip of a lifetime, the more I reflect on it).

• Three travel favourites from that trip. I’m not saying buying things makes the trip… but these things did make my travelling better (and I’ve travelled a lot over the last three months).

I hope you enjoy, & welcome to Lunch Notes. 🧡

PS. Because I never stop yapping, it’s a long one! You’ll either need to expand in your email or read it right in the Substack app (always my favourite way to consume Substack writing!)

Talk Lunches to Me.

I’ve been so out of the game of feeding myself that I have forgotten what I actually like to eat and want to prep and make — for snacks and for actual lunches. I need some inspiration!

I’ve been making a list in my journal — a number of regular rotation favourites that have been featured here have already made it onto the list, but I’m curious to hear from you all: what are your favourite lunches and workday snacks?

Tell me all about them in the comments below. Please! Don’t even ready the rest of this note - run and tell me about your favourite lunches right now! Who cares if you read about travel traditions? Go!

Three Ways You Can Document A Trip (That Aren’t Journalling)

On Saturday, I returned home from a wildly fulfilling vacation.

I spent just over two weeks in Zambia, visiting with family. It was such a treat to be Auntie Hanny² for fourteen days straight, to be the most trusted car DJ, to always say “yes!” to a card or board game. To laugh a lot, to see a world wonder, to ask my classic questions about morning routines and everyone’s top three ways to consume potatoes³ To ask a niece, “What are your hopes and dreams for today?” and to hear her say, “Snuggles and games!” while she’s snuggling into me. To flex my creative writing muscles by collaboratively writing an Amish romance with my nieces and nephews that have never read an Amish romance. To have long talks guessing Olympic hockey rosters and to wake up at 2 AM to watch Connor McDavid not be good at hockey.⁴

All that, and I didn’t even mention the joy of a safari where I had a Coca-Cola break with elephants or hanging off the side of waterfall while two men held my legs and I panicked because heights!

In my mind, it feels sparkly and special. The memories fill me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. And it wasn’t a trip without it’s hardship and darker moments. Even still - I got home and just loved talking to my husband (& really, anyone with ears) about all of it.

One of the other things I loved is the creative ways we documented the trip. Maybe you already do some of these things, but there were three things I did on this trip that I thought, “Yes. I have to do this on every trip I go on from now on.” (Yeah, I’m fairly unbearable.)

If you’re travelling this summer or just want a different way to document a trip this summer, here are three different ways that have Hannah’s Zambia Trip of 2025 seal of approval. (& if you do any of them, I want to hear about it!)

1. Make a Collaborative Playlist.

First, some backstory: last summer, some old friends came and visited me.⁵ Music is always something I’ve bonded over with their dad, so I set up a collaborative playlist for us, especially because we were taking a roadtrip during their visit.

I loved bearing witness to their music taste and listening while we drove through the moody mountains. It ended up that our playlist gave us a theme song of the visit: Trompsingel by Donovan Woods. We couldn’t stop playing the song for the rest of the weekend. It was the soundtrack behind playing Five Crowns and a particularly vicious Wizard game. I love coming out of an experience with a theme song.

That happened for our Zambia trip too. While on the plane over to Toronto, I started the collaborative playlist. Songs were slowly added by everyone — not a lot when we were starting out. But every day, we probably added 1-2 songs. It could be songs someone mentioned throughout the day, songs someone just wanted on the playlist, songs that reminded them of an experience we had — Waterfalls by TLC added the day we went to Victoria Falls, Highlands (Song of Ascent) added because we sang it at church, If Today Was Your Last Day by Nickelback added for… a reason I still can’t discern but I’m not mad about it.

I loved hearing, “Aunt Hannah, can you play our playlist?” as we got into the car. I loved that we also had a trip theme song emerge from it — Family by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors got a lot of mileage any time we stepped into a vehicle. And I love listening to the playlist even now — although if I put it on shuffle, all the sad goodbye songs jump up and can be a real sad jump scare if you’re not expecting it.

So that’s my first recommendation — no matter the trip length, make the playlist. It’ll be a music time capsule for you and your travelling companions.

2. Keep a game book.

One of the enduring memories I have of my grandmother is the game books she kept for all of my life.

A spiral bound, lined, Hilroy notebook. Her perfect cursive handwriting. And years and years and years of documenting a card game called Shanghai. Whether it was with friends, grandchildren, cousins, her own children — eons of games were documented in these game books. I remain hopeful that she didn’t throw out the game book that documents me having a Shanghai score of 9 (positive) — that’s an accomplishment I’m still proud of.

In our own house, I often say, “I’m honouring an age-old Van Dyk tradition — keeping score” when I bring out the game book. While that’s true, it really comes down to that I love having a record of who has sat around our table. A record of how I can never beat Dave’s dad at Wizard and how I often lose to Dave in dramatic fashion in Five Crowns.

On this trip, we also had a game book.

I knew I was walking into a group who could play Five Crowns and Euchre as easily as breathing — and instead of scrambling for a piece of paper every time, we could have a full record of all the games we played. What was more fun was capturing little funny quotes along the way — little things the kids and adults said while we played that we wanted to remember.

It wasn’t a journal record of my feelings on the day or a beautiful picture… but it does bring me a lot of joy and bring back a lot of memories when I thumb through it.

3. Buy the postcards and record memories on them.

Full disclosure: I got this idea from this Instagram reel on the day we were going to a market… and I had just made fun of my sister-in-law for buying a postcard she didn’t need the day before. I digress.

If you’re off Instagram and aren’t going to look at the reel, here’s the summary: someone buys a postcard everywhere they visit and do a mini-travel journal on the back of each one.

My only wish? That I had come up with the idea and also that I could have been doing this tradition for years.

But there’s no time like the present to start! I bought a bunch of postcards at the market and asked everyone on the trip to write down their favourite memories.

postcards (more like for real cards, but whatever) that I picked up at the market; one glimpse of postcard memories from a niece

To their credit, everyone did it and no one complained — and with ages 7 - 40something represented on the trip, I thought maybe someone would get out of it. But now? I have beautiful postcards and the sweetest memories of our trip, and I get to display that in my home.

New travel tradition for me: unlocked.

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If you have a way that you always document a trip, I want to hear it! Or if you are going to take any of these documentation ideas, I want to hear about it! Wishing you a safe and fun summer of travel & adventures. ✨

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1. Travel Infinity Pillow: I used to travel a significant amount internationally and managed to do that travel while being marked safe from the travel pillow. Until this trip. One thing I learned from a trip to Zambia in 2019? The travel pillow would be worth it. But I didn’t know if the neck pillow would help me enough. Enter: the travel infinity pillow. My con of this: it doesn’t solve the problem of travelling with something bulky / awkward, just like the neck pillow. But my pro: It was perfect to cocoon myself with. If I wanted to sleep with my head to the window, I could. If I wanted to rest my head on the tray table, I could. If I wanted to have it all wrapped around my head, I could. I’m looking forward to using this more! Note: it was spendy, but with the rate I’m travelling, I know my cost-per-use will go down and I’m not forcing you to get it! I’m just saying it worked for me. Okay bye.

2. This Charging Dock Station Thing: After a trip to Ontario in April, I said, “I’m not travelling with this many cords again.” When I have to find outlets to charge all my things, it’s annoying and I feel like all my devices are dead, all of the time. Enter: this charging dock station thing. Please don’t ask me why it took me this long - but it’s a hero item at home and on the road. I love having all of my devices set up nicely and all charged brilliantly! A super worth it purchase for me.

3. This Hanging Toiletry Bag: I was influenced by a TikTok-er! Sue me. She said her trick for travelling was to have a hanging toiletry bag - it comes in handy if you have limited counter space. Guess what? IT DOES. I thought these kinds of toiletry bags were just for boomers but I’m happy to be wrong! I got this black one in medium and that was plenty big for me. As a recovering Pouch Packer (as in, how many different pouches can I use for my packing?), I’m liking packing almost all my stuff in here.

I hope this was a nice, short break away from whatever you have on your plate - whether you’re reading on a work break, your lunch break, or with your coffee at some leisurely moment you’ve been able to steal away.

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. (Seriously, I would love topic ideas - I can brainstorm some more ideas but I always love yours! And I need to get back to my content calendar! So tell me what you want, what you really really want!)

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. Or Hantie Annie, or just plain old Aunt Hannah, depending on the day and which niece or nephew was hollering at me

3. The potato question is always a hat tip to this post from Claire.

4. Connor McDavid is good at hockey, but I still in my post-Stanley Cup Finals and the Oilers Not Winning depression, please think of me at this time.

5. I actually used to babysit them but now that most of the kids are in their twenties, they don’t love when I lead with that fact.