I'm very much tied to a schedule for mealtimes.
We had a schedule of sorts when I was working. We did have a degree of flex time, but if we had, say, 9 am meetings, I'd want to get in at 7 or 7:30 to get preliminary work done prior to meetings. On those days I'd nab a hard egg or two, a little salt, and head on out. Or if I had quick-eating leftovers, I'd nuke those and run. If I had a bit more leeway, I might stop at Panera's on the way in and nab one of their breakfast sandwiches to eat the rest of the way.
On less busy days I never got there after 8 am. The highway liked to back up something fierce.
The cafeteria served a hot breakfast between 7 and 9:30 - I could sometimes get there at 7 and grab something. If we had no morning meetings, and my schedule permitted, sometimes I'd go for the Hobbit Second breakfast - eggs if I hadn't had them earlier, or oatmeal that I drizzled with a little milk, a dab of butter, and perhaps a half teaspoon of brown sugar. The oatmeal was the REAL stuff, not instant (which I cannot stand). Failing that, a little breakfast sausage.
In order to meet my crew for lunch, I aimed to get to the cafeteria about 11:45 (when I had that option). Other times we worked through lunch and (since we usually had a good idea what we'd be doing that day) I'd bring in my own lunch and try to eat at my desk while working, which was only something I could do in my last few years there. (Prior to that, I didn't have an office - my desk was in the lab proper, and it was verboten to Eat in a Lab, for very many good reasons... I was glad when I got an office, and it was also private enough that if I felt like bringing in fish and nuking it, no one was gonna complain. (I got grandfathered in a microwave from a previous supervisor who moved on to another company... although they did have other nuking machines elsewhere in the building. I left that equipment to the guy who took my office when I retired.)
Sometimes there were team lunch meetings, where people brought food from the cafeteria or home to eat, around noon. This was fine, although on days when I had to present data, I simply waited until after it was all over, to eat. We had a monthly pizza party at noon, too.
Work was out anywhere between 4 pm to 6 pm. Plus near the end, some 7 pm times didn't typically leave me much eating time in the middle of the day, and usually meant I was there by 7:30 in the morning, if not earlier. I was gonna need dinner! (Commute time to work - 25-35 minutes. Home - the later I got out, the longer it took, plan on over an hour...) I ended up on some longer days slow-cooking brisket, the only only only thing I have ever discovered that can stand that much slow cooking. Or, on the worst days, stopping at Whole Foods for a grass-fed/finished burger or a slice of pizza if the pizza had something interesting on it and did NOT have their vegan "cheeze". This also gave traffic a chance to die down on the highway... I knew that, even if I was usually quite happy with salad for lunch, I didn't want salad for dinners on lengthy days like those!
(I was usually in bed by 9 or 9:30 pm, no matter how work went.)
BTW, I enjoyed the career, and did manage to work around the food necessities. You figure out what to do, and you do it. And, unless there was an emergency, we always knew a day or three ahead of time whether the date in question was going to need adaptations or not. Most days were the usual, eat something, go to work, bring lunch in or purchase shortly before noon, go home and night and prepare a "quick and easy" dinner with foods I enjoy.
So... the point is, now meals are quite a bit easier to plan around, for me. I still do want a bite to eat ahead of time if I drive anywhere over a half-hour from here - unless it is a planned early brunch.
