Liven Up Your Lunch Hour

By Christian Rose-Day (09 Jul 10)
Tags: summer lunch break hour desk eat drink bar restaurant special offer gizzi eskine monster recipe pancetta faro bean soup courgette cheese tart pinenut brie rye avacado advice London summer lunch break hour desk eat drink bar restaurant special offer gizzi eskine monster recipe pancetta faro bean soup courgette cheese tart pinenut brie rye avacado advice London summer lunch break hour desk eat drink bar restaurant special offer gizzi eskine monster recipe pancetta faro bean soup courgette cheese t

One way to make the most of your lunch break is to check out some of our Lunchtime Special Offers. Another way is as follows.....

This summer celebrity chef Gizzi Erskine and recruitment site Monster.co.uk are on a mission to Bring Back Britain’s Lunch Hour! Following a survey showing a massive 19% of us take under 15 minutes for lunch and over 10% of us never take a lunch break, Gizzi has put together five mouth-watering recipes.

Gizzi says: “Cooking great food is often seen as something we do on the weekend or for a special occasion, but taking time to prepare a delicious lunch is really important.

“Lunch should bring pleasure as well as providing the right nutrients for a productive afternoon’s work. Sadly, lunch in this country means grabbing a soggy sandwich while catching up on e-mails and I want to change that!”

Gizzi’s perfect lunches include a nutritious soup, fresh, protein-rich salads, a tasty tart and superfood sandwich:

Pancetta, faro and bean soup

Courgette, goats cheese and toasted pinenut tart

Smoked salmon, avocado and brie on rye

Rare roast beef and crushed potato salad with horseradish, radish, watercress and roasted tomatoes

Tuna and caponata salad

The dedicated website www.bbblh.co.uk features advice, tips and ideas from Gizzi and a range of experts including nutritional advice from Fiona Hunter and life-coaching from Carol Ann Rice. The site will also allow workers to share lunch time recipes and ideas and win their ‘Perfect Lunch’.

Monster believes the lunch hour is time to enhance work/life balance by spending time away from the desk. Eating good food, learning something new, reading, exercising or just relaxing, will enable smarter working in the afternoon.

As leading Life Coach Carol Ann Rice comments: “It is essential that we give ourselves permission to have a full lunch hour. To have a proper break; a nice walk, a mini workout, a little retail therapy, a nutritional lunch away from the workplace – all helps us to honour ourselves during the working day. Thus we feel energized and more able to keep the stresses of the day in perspective.”

For full recipes and tips from Gizzi visit www.bbblh.co.uk.