To have found the best cheap lunch

[Overthebow]

with the cost of living going up I’m trying to find cheap lunch ideas for work.

this week: pot of pate £1, loaf of bread £0.80, bag of apples £1.50. Pate on toast and an apple, cost for the whole week only £3.30 and really filling.

anyone else got any cheap lunch ideas?

One of my favourite lunches but I've had to stop because I can eat the entire baguette and pack of pate in one sitting 🤫

Tuscan bean soup - dried cannelloni beans in a pressure cooker for 25 mins, sauté an onion add garlic, a couple of chopped carrots, tin of tomatoes, stock cube, dried oregano or basil, salt, pepper.

Cook it all together for 25 mins before squashing a few beans with a fork to thicken it up. Most expensive thing is tinned tomatoes which can cost as much as you want them to these days.

This is a good chickpea soup www.seriouseats.com/mollie-katzens-lablabi-tunisian-chickpea-soup
Harissa in the yellow tube with red writing is quite cheap and I think it would be fine without the cumin.

Almost all of these rely on heating facilities. Something I and I am sure many others do not have where they eat lunch.

Put it in a flask?

I improvise with tins of chickpeas. Eastend brand are about 40p a tin and a tin lasts me two lunches. I mix the chickpeas with whatever I have to hand that needs using up - cucumber, tomato, odd bits of cheese, other salad, veg or herbs, and dress with lemon (usually from a bottle!).

probably already been suggested but how about leftover from dinner? we cook surplus to dinner requirements so there's enough chicken, for example, to make chicken sandwich or a bit of leftover fish with some salad.

once had a work colleague who everyday, without fail, had pita bread with hummus and carrots/cucumbers. she'd get her stuff on a monday morning at the shop local to work and that was her - day in day out. all I could think of was how utterly dreary.

Probably a stupid question, but if you make dhal with red lentils, can you taste them? Or are they disguised by the spices? I like other lentils, but hate red lentils. But I guess you need them to go mushy because other lentils keep their shape?

Cheap and quick- frozen sliced mushrooms - microwave and pile onto buttered toast.

I have been eating cereal, yoghurt and banana the past few days for lunch. I have toast and maybe an egg for breakfast and had loads of cereal that no-one was eating.

I am really loving it. Weetabox from Aldi, banana, milk and a drizzle of honey. (Plus some chocolate chips because the DCs have gone off them post Easter). It's hitting the spot right now.

I quite often make a giant root veg stew of a weekend, portion it up and freeze some for lunches. This is pretty versatile, so you can make it into a few different things.

hodgepodgedays.co.uk/recipe/slow-cooker-root-vegetable-stew/

GS has stopped having school dinners, about £15 a week. He's having pasty with a pesto sauce. Costing me about £1.50 to £2.00 a week.

Pasta not pasty.

I invested in a good Thermos flask to keep the pasta warm till lunch time.

I don't recognize the prices quoted on here, they seem extraordinarily cheap? I shop in Asda, Aldi and Tesco and buy own brand but I'm sure stuff costs more than is being quoted...

Chickpea Vegan Tuna is great for chickpeas
homemade hunous
chickpeas and tomato-based sauce in rice
roasted chickpeas with veg

BBC good food 10 minute cous cous salad. Absolutely delicious. The pine nuts are expensive, but I leave them out if trying to save money. Easy to make, cheap and keeps well in the fridge.

If you can commit the time and effort I but ten chicken carcasses for £1 from the butcher (or save up your carcasses) and make 'Jewish penicillin' soup.

I use a recipe by Marlena Speiler. Can be found easily online. It's quite basic ingredient wise but requires some faff with picking chicken off, cooking, skimming fat. But it is so worth it. I can't get bored of it.

I add spring greens too. The batch I made at the weekend will do about 8 lunches.

£2-3 for the whole lot.

I just priced up that Guardian Daal recipe

£18

I mean sure the spices will do more recipes

Oh I'm obsessed with quick, cheap lunches. Disclaimer: I work from home

We buy big packs of frozen parathas from the Asian supermarket - cook from frozen in a dry pan, fry an egg, smear of mango chutney and/or gochujang paste on the paratha, so good. Both gochujang and mango chutney keep forever in the fridge.

Nonstick pan - tip in a beaten egg to make a very thin omelette then drop a wrap or paratha in, flip the whole thing so the wrap is on the bottom, then add some grated cheese, flip it in half then press down so the cheese melts, like a sort of quesadilla basically.

Frozen falafel on a ciabatta roll with some pickled cucumber, hot sauce and salad.

This is more of a snack than a lunch, unless like me you are post-menopausal and now have to eat like a bird...

Quarter an apple.
Generously spread one side of each quarter with crunchy peanut butter.

Food of the Gods.

I just try to make a bit extra the night before and take that in. So easy if it’s pasta or quiche, or even curry and rice.

Soup and oatcakes are my favourite though.

£21 a week on 7 x Tesco £3 lunch deal?

Example - Jimmy's iced mocha. Chunky Kit Kat, Roasted vegetable wrap.

We stopped off for fuel in a Tesco station and I had a nose at the lunch deal and that's what I bought and it was very nice and a bargain price of £3!

If I had to survive on basics for a few months, I reckon I could eat that every day alternating the Kit Kat with a packet of crisps and the wrap with a sandwich or pasta or even a cheese pastry slice!

£21 a week on lunch is roughly £90 per month and over £1000 per year though. Just on lunch! Can easily cut that by a third without trying very hard.

Cut it by two thirds I mean, spending £1 per lunch instead of £3!