Trying to stop buying meal deals and having crap lunches in general

[AlansFungalFootPowder]

I manage to do all the ultra important things in life like keeping documents in a file, paying bills and hitting work deadlines. But anything I can “get away with” I am lazy about. I pay for a cleaner, buy convenience food, begrudge doing laundry etc. I am really fed up of eating a crap meal deal for lunch, but would like to hear from anyone who has been like me in the past but found a few go-to lunches they throw together the night before without too much effort. What made you change this habit? What lunches do you make for yourself?

TIA

If you’re already eating a meal deal, I’d assume it’s a sandwich and crisps. Just make a sandwich yourself at home and get a multipack of crisps, if you must, or pack a pot of veg and fruit (carrot sticks, cucumber, tomatoes, grapes, etc).

if you don’t fancy a sandwich, pasta salad is easy and you can make several days worth at a time. Or soup or leftovers.

When I go into the office, which isn’t as often anymore, I leave early and come home late, so I pack breakfast, lunch and dinner from home. Breakfast is usually a bagel with cream cheese and tomatoes, lunch is a sandwich or soup, and dinner is usually leftovers in a thermos that I heat up in the office and then eat on the train. With things like fruit, yoghurt, nuts for snacks.

Never managed to keep up making my own for more than a week. Just another evening job, of which there are more than enough already.

Same

The only reason I do make my
own lunch is because my dd has pack lunch for school.
When she leaves school I l pw I’ll be grabbing dairylea triangles and crackers!

My blood pressure got very high and I was sent to A&E so I'm on a healthy eating and calorie counting kick and cannot afford to eat junk food any more.
I'm vegetarian as well so I now batch cook or prepare all my low salt lunches at the weekend or night before if its salad to take in for work.
I'll do veggie casserole, large salads, wholewheat seeded ryvita with homemade ratatouille, baked potato with low salt beans or hummus and fruit, banana or tangerine, blueberries, strawberries and so on. Not only is it infinitely cheaper but also better for my health.
I had a health warning and realised it's time to change, I've also lost a fair bit of weight. Those meal deals are very fatty.

I only have a meal deal as a payday treat!
The rest of the time I take in leftovers, usually whatever we have left over from the previous day's evening meal (often put tubs of leftovers in the freezer -pasta, risotto etc - they defrost over the course of the morning and reheat quickly in the microwave -jacket potatoes with cheese are really good, especially with another tub of salad). One day a week I have melon, prepped the night before - surprisingly it's really filling!

I do a feta salad a lot
Merchant gourmet pesto grains (they're cooked already so can eat cold), nice tomatoes, feta, gherkins if you like them, some kind of onion, cucumber, roasted veg, crispy bacon I get the ready cooked one.. whatever you have really. Or get the supermarket own plain cooked grains and add pesto or balsamic vinegar yourself

@Rummikub I forgot! If you like avocado then
Feta, mashed avocado, red onion and chilli flakes/lime/salt/pepper on toast is really good

I’ll look out for the merchant gourmet PeloAddict, thanks!

Side note... ready cooked crispy bacon?

i once tried to make myself avocado and bacon sandwich similar to a local cafe and my effort was awful!

@PeloAddict
You must’ve read my mind!

My mouths watering at that suggestion.

Yes! Usually in the section near cooked ham. Tesco, Sainsburys, M&S do it from memory. I use it for a lazy salad, adding to scrambled egg/omelette or for a v quick bacon and egg sandwich. Worth nosying around the deli meats as sometimes they have stuff like shredded ham which is good for salads
Pics attached

Fabulous!
im adding these to my shopping list for next week.

Another lunch I’d make when organised is frittata. I think it was a phil vickery recipe. He used 6 eggs, jar of pesto, boiled sliced potato, peas. Potatoes in pan first then pour over the egg pesto and pea mix. Really tasty hot or cold.

I make a sandwich, add crisps and fruit from home. I make hot drinks at work - basic tea and coffee but free.

Many colleagues, more junior and senior than me buy lunch daily - not talking a standard cheapo supermarket meal deal but Pret or other independent eatery for up to £10 a day.

I have a monthly personal allowance of £140 for clothes, make up, hair, socialising so buying work lunches are simply not a priority for me.

I am the same as you op in terms of laziness. The only place close to my new office though is pret which is around a tenner for sandwich and cake. After two days of this I have decided I either need to make lunches or extend my mortgage!

This week I made soup. 1 pan did 3 bowls which I put in tupperwares. I buttered 2 slices of bread in a sandwich bag to dunk.

I like salads but I find them a fad in my life as I never have all the ingredients and then when I do, il either not keep up with replacing it or it goes bad.

Long term lunches which work for me:
Tin of soup and bread
Frozen sliced bagel with tin of mackerel
Wrap with filling

As a PP said, buy a slab of cans of drink and a multipack and keep in office.

@Rummikub

Feta is also good in an omelette, eg with grated courgette. Or in risotto, again with grated courgette.

Or with watermelon. I've been having a lot of the Feta and watermelon salad from the 30 minute mowgli book which has a dressing of lime, honey salt and a bit of cumin, but I'm sure there's lots of recipes available.

But you don't need to 'panic use' it anyway, the use by date is usually ages and I once ate a packet that had gone past by some months and it was still fine.

I know it's not the motivator for the OP but cost of bought lunches really does add up if you do it every day, so could definitely make a big difference to your budget unless you have a large disposable income.

Even a low cost lunch and a coffee during the working day could cost a fiver and if you were going somewhere like Pret and possibly having a couple of coffees, it could be over a tenner.

So you're easily looking at £100-200 pm while some of the home made alternatives are probably a third of the cost or less.

Over a year you're looking at the cost of a holiday and over ten years the saving could add up to the cost of a very decent second hand car, just for making your own lunch most of the time.

@Rummikub I think so

I used to get meal deals.

I wouldn't buy crisps/chocolate without them, but I got into the habit because it was cheaper to have crisps/chocolate than to buy a sandwich and a drink.

I put on weight over the years. And then I thought about the habit I'd got into, and how I was unthinkingly eating junk food every single working day because it saved me money.

So I tried a few things: asked the cashier if they could scan crisps so I'd get the meal deal but I wouldn't take them (no). Left the crisps behind in a food bank box (this worked but there aren't always food bank boxes). Binned the crisps (didn't tend to have the self-discipline as I don't like wasting food; it would get to 3pm and I'd eat them.)

Then I realised that I didn't need a bottle of Pepsi max. I actually just wanted a sandwich and I already had a water bottle. The cost of the sandwich - which was the only part of the meal deal I needed - is less than the cost of the meal deal. So no more buying junk food to save money.

I used to get meal deals. Now I buy myself a sandwich.

Starting point is do you need to travel five days a week to the office. If you can work from home even for part of the week, an opportunity to avoid meal deals and have a cooked lunch. Even some vegetables and maybe fish or chicken can be done easily.

When I was in the office I would batch cook and freeze! Take one out in the morning and a pack of express rice. It would be defrosted by lunch, bang it in the microwave

Bean stews, curry, chilli, lentil bake

I actually quite like the pasta salads that Tesco does in the meal deal .

I bring my own coffee and breakfast in and £3 is nothing compared to the Pret extravaganzas I see people buying each day. Plus I'm only in once or twice a week.

Not read the whole thread, just came to give some ideas based on the facilities at your workplace. Ignore if no longer relevant.

Jacket potatoes: all cooked the night before a few days at work. Or even just when you've got the oven on and frozen ready. Can be left in the fridge for a few days and grabbed as you go out the door. Various fillings work, beans/tuna/cheese etc. All easy to batch prep, say on a Sunday night ready for the week.

Micro rice with your choice of protein mixed through. I pick up the supermarket own ranges in various flavours and add either cooked (by me) chicken, mixed beans, diced chorizo, chopped pork etc. Add some diced veggies or some peas. Sprinkle of cheese maybe.

Pasta salads made on the Sunday night for a couple of days. Loads of fillings you can choose from. Tuna and salad, pesto and pine nut, roasted veg and feta....

Soup, homemade or tinned. With a cream cheese bagel or a sandwich. Add some yoghurt and some fruit.

Batch some bolognaise and freeze in portions to grab.

Lunch at work is the highlight of my day to be honest, so I don't mind the effort of doing some prep on a Sunday evening. I also don't have kids to sort. No judging from me if it's easier for you to grab a meal deal, so what you gotta do.

We have a roster at work and I bought one of the Crimpits that I saw on FB. It's a quick option if I forget to decant the leftovers from dinner or if we've had something that doesn't travel well. You only need a little bit of filling and they use the 'thins' rather than normal bread and I'll have some salad on the side.

I second the PP about buying a good flask - soup, pasta, chilli, curry all work well.

• That should have been a good food flask.

• And a toaster not a roster.

I give up!