Vintage reusable lunch pail

[Dan Allen]

The original lunch pail , at least around my neck of the woods , was an old lard can.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

Why are they called "lunch pails" when they're not actually buckets...?

http://www.minershallmuseum.com/portfolio/coal-miners-lunch-bucket/

 

[vitanola]

Why are they called "lunch pails" when they're not actually buckets...?

Because they once looked like this:

 

[Shangas]

Ooh okay. That makes sense

 

[St. Louis]

I highly recommend acquiring a lunch box. I have a very old dented gray metal lunch box (the dome top style) that I bring to work every day. It's roomy enough to pack a sandwich, fruit, a cookie if I'm feeling indulgent, generally a hard-boiled egg, and sometimes a tiny jar containing a pickle or two or a couple of olives. Sometimes I put in a small container of cut-up vegetables with a little bit of dressing. I do try to pack only golden-era lunches, mostly just to please myself, and I've found hundreds of great suggestions for packed-lunch menus. I'm under the impression that this must have been a very common custom-- pretty much every cookbook has a section on the best way of packing a lunch box. I feel that I'm eating a much healthier, better balanced (and certainly much cheaper) lunch than I did before I started carrying the lunch box. It's also enormous fun to peel back the layers of waxed paper or cloth napkins & find lots of little goodies in there.

The only thing that hasn't worked so well for me is the thermos. It only keeps my soups hot for two hours. I tend to pack my lunch at 7:30 a.m. and I normally eat at 11, so that doesn't work. I need to find a nice new thermos that has a good period look. I'd love any suggestions!

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ I have no rational explanation of why, but I love unwrapping sandwiches wrapped in wax paper. Glad bags, aluminum foil, etc., feel "fake" in a way that wax doesn't. I have no logical way to support this feeling, it is purely personal and emotional, but I enjoy unwrapping a sandwich from wax paper or having a few cookies from a wax paper bag (one with a serrated top is even better - again, no rational argument of why). Growing up, we used aluminum foil or Glad bags, so it isn't a nostalgia thing for me, but something about it feels right.

When I didn't work from home, I had, over the years, both brought lunch and bought lunch and, for me, bringing lunch resulted in healthier, more-balanced choices. When I bought, I was usually hungry as it was already time to eat, food places know how to play to your hunger emotions and I'd make spur-of-the-moment choices that were not as good as those made rationally the night before or morning of.