{Today’s Lunchbox} Behind the Scenes

I have gotten a few questions lately about the lunchbox posts:

Do you publish the lunchbox the same day you eat it or the next day?
Do you show every lunchbox you eat?
How do you set up the schedule?

Honestly? It depends. In an ideal world, I would photograph the lunchbox first thing in the morning, put the post up and be off to work. But, early morning conference calls, 7am yoga and life just plain get in the way. For a while I was publishing my lunchbox in the evening of the day I ate it, but I did not love the Monday night to Friday night publishing schedule. Also, if you ever see two lunchboxes two days in a row that look pretty similar, I can almost guarantee you there is a third that looks just like them, and at that point it gets boring for you, so I do not publish every single lunchbox.

And then there are bad photo days (some people get bad hair days, I get bad photo days) – i.e. lunches that look like they photographed fine, but look something like this:

Ok, I lied, I had a feeling when I took pictures of this lunchbox that they would not turn out so great. In case you are wondering, there are Mushroom Tibs from Appetite for Reduction, Pumpkin Chia Pudding, Chia Juice Pulp Crackers, some black beans with salsa, and chard leaves to wrap around the mushrooms.

Some weeks, it all goes like clockwork – I have a couple of extra lunchboxes going into the week, the pictures all turn out beautiful and it all works out. And then some weeks go like this:

Sunday night: write Monday’s lunchbox, which is really from a few days earlier, and set it to go live Monday morning.
Monday morning: Make smoothie, throw weekend leftovers together, take picture of lunchbox.
Monday night: receive lunchbox guest blog from Faye of Raw Lawyer, thank her profusely I end up working late that evening and am grateful to have a guest post. Schedule post for next day.
Tuesday morning: Lunchbox looks almost identical to previous day’s lunchbox, so I skip photographing it.
Tuesday night: Yoga after work, followed by work emergency which means I end up going back to the office at 10pm. Wednesday lunchbox stays unwritten
Wednesday morning: no lunchbox to photograph as I have a work lunch that day.
Wednesday night: go to yoga, realize on way home that we are out of any lunchbox components, so come home, make Mellow Lime Dressing, steam broccoli, and grill tofu. Exhausted, so go to sleep once cooking is done.
Thursday night: Write Wednesday lunchbox, which is technically the lunchbox I ate on Monday. .
Saturday morning: Write Thursday lunchbox, which is actually the lunchbox I ate Thursday.
Sunday night: Write Monday lunchbox, which happens to be the lunch I ate on Friday.