To hate packing food to take to work

[waitingforautumn]

I live just outside and work in central London. Cost of living rising means I'm starting to feel guilty about the money spent on coffee, breakfast and lunch at work. I do somewhat 'budget' for this (i.e. am single, no kids, don't care for designer stuff etc, walk where I can rather than train or bus). However I do realise how much I could save if I were really disciplined about going to the supermarkets and stocking up for a week of homemade lunches and prepped breakfasts, which do sound appealing in theory..

Only issue is, I REALLY tend to miss buying things out - esp lunch. Just being able to pick something new each day, made with ingredients I wouldn't usually buy. I just feel like I eat more healthily/get more variety when I allow myself this. There's the option of sandwiches and baguettes (Pret/Paul/Leon type thing) plus lots of hot options where I work. I also love a good old Tesco meal deal so often have that for lunch too (love the mix and matching element).

Can cheapen breakfast by stopping at a supermarket bakery on way (£1 for a pastry rather than say £2.50). And it's still lovely (am a sucker for pastries and now associate office days with getting one). In the past I've made overnight oats and did keep that up for a while but got out of the habit after the pandemic return to work, and also loathe the washing up part at the office sink.😆

Is it me or is there something nice about strolling to work with a coffee you didn't have to make yourself, a fresh pastry and picking up a lunch you didn't have to plan way in adv or prep?!

I do wonder if this is quite a London thing with all the variety around. Have to be up around 6.30 to get around without the trains/tubes being busy so it feels to early to eat something before leaving home - and I'm always hungry when I sit down having had to walk past upteen bakeries to get in! I feel stopping for coffee/food helps make the working day nicer, I can pick something I fancy there and then. Few colleagues bring anything to eat from home and get all their meals/drinks out for the day so this really feels like the norm. We must all be spending anywhere from £5-£15 a day on all this. 🤔

Nobody single from my generation can afford to get on the housing ladder here anyway, even with decent savings. Some of my friends easily spend £35 a pop getting nails done every 3 weeks, which is outrageous to me. So I'm inclined to say whatever treats get you through life?!

AIBU? Am I lazy? Do I need to find another source of joy in my life? Writing this on the train on the way to work obvs and I have absolutely nothing on me for the day ahead!

I HATE meal planning and having my boring grey food laid out for me a week in advance. I will just never do it. Mum of two as well, and I don't plan their meals either

I don't know how people DON'T meal plan. What do you do, buy a random lot of shit in the supermarket without any meals in mind whatsoever? No wonder people waste so much food and money.

Why does it have to be boring? I meal plan so I can try and make lots of different things from online recipes and cookery books.

Honestly, I see where you are coming from but save your money OP and start making stuff at home. Not only for you to enjoy something else (like a holiday) with that money but also because are you considering how much packaging waste you're accumulating...?

Even just doing the Monday and Friday treat days it will make a difference. I hate to be preachy but we really all do have a responsibility and for the sake of making your lunch and perhaps buying a Nespresso machine to make nice stuff at home to take in reusable containers, it's really not a huge sacrifice...

Nice problem to have though!

It's a great way of gaining 15lbs a year anyway.

@RosesAndHellebores could not imagine anything worse than defrosted, ready made sandwiches 🤢

I have their crayfish and avocado salad, smoked salmon salad or falafel salad with vegetable chips and ginger drink

Dull, expensive and a waste of calories. I can make much better at home with tons more fish/avocado etc in it and at least three portions of veg. Whereas you'd be lucky to get one portion in a bought salad. Such a rip off.

This.

HAHA! Yes true.... I also gained weight WFH....all those comforting toasted, cheese sandwiches, and biscuits.

One place I do miss, particularly in winter, is Eat. I wish someone would revive them, there is nothing else like them around. Their hearty hot food was wonderful.

I make up four salads on Sundays and store in the fridge for Mon-Thurs and then eat out on Fridays. It gets me through the week! I do buy myself a coffee every lunchtime though as I need a double shot to make it through the rest of the day plus I like the walk to get it.

It's easy enough to make your own lunch but there's something different about a sandwich from a shop.

Have a look at some other options for lunch if you want variety. There are nice frozen lunch deals available if you have access to a microwave, SW lunch bowls from iceland are actually not bad (unusual for their frozen meals)

I was recently fondly reminiscing about lunchtimes when I worked in London - choosing lunch was a favourite pastime Cost me a fortune m, but it was pre kids!

Surely a sandwich that you've made the evening before (or even at 7am that morning) and hauled into work is going to have lost much more of its nutritional value than something that Pret made at 10am for you to eat at lunchtime

Nope. Hot smoked flaked chilli salmon open sandwich on a slice of dark rye sourdough, with a bit of olive oil on the sourdough, lemon squeezed over (protein, fat, fibre, carbs), cut in half, and sandwiched together for ease of wrapping up in foil, hard boiled egg (more protein/fat), cucumber sticks, cherry tomatoes and celery sticks (four portions of five a day). Five minutes to prepare, (ten with boiling the egg but I do a few at once). Straight in the fridge when I get to work, just as fresh as when I made it by 12.30pm. 530 calories and will keep you satisfied all afternoon without a blood sugar dive.

oh not this judgy toxic-confusion again 🙄 I'll say it again-
*not everyone has supportive children (I have no partner) mine take meal food so there's none left
*some children decide they don't like things they liked last week
*not everyone knows when they'll be home, my shifts always change during week (always something "unforeseen") and often overrun so I'm too tired to cook the extravaganza I'd planned
*I also get severe migraines so it'll be beans on toast for children and nothing for me
*displaying a list gives kids a chance to say "oh in don't want that"
I sometimes meal plan I sometimes don't and just buy basics plus fresh stuff it doesn't make any net difference 🤷🏽‍♀️

Why has no-one mentioned the main problem with taking lunch into work? I.e. that you start to want to eat it at about 10.30 and then cave in at about 11.30 (meaning you are the biscuits at about 2pm). Happens to me every time, no idea why. Whereas if I have to go out and buy lunch I can last out until 1.30 or longer

I think the answer to that is never plan to cook an extravaganza in the week, my meals take <30 minutes always and when I'm tired but I know exactly what I'll be cooking it makes things so much easier to just get on with it. I cook for five with loads of different likes and dislikes - inlcuding DH and veggie DD1 who do not like eggs or mushrooms, or quite a few other veg.

The answer to stopping cravings at 11am is to eat breakfast later if you can. Or plan a snack for then. Hard boiled egg or banana. I find a cup of tea with a spoonful of sugar will power me on until lunch time.

I tried making crayfish salad using supermarket crayfish and it was awful as it was pre-frozen. The Pret crayfish was super fresh and delicious.

Smoked salmon tastes the same whether it’s from Pret or supermarket.

I could make the hummus salad from home but it would take some preparation:

Sweet potato falafel you can get in Waitrose. Ditto hummus. But then I’d have to cook rice and quinoa, mix a fresh mint and parsley dressing, for which I would need both to hand, and also a fresh pomegranate. Source some pickled cabbage that I like - there’s a lot I don’t, slice cucumber and carrots.

In my first on the thread I said that some Pret/Leon/M&S stuff can be made from home, but I wouldn’t bother making that one.

Yes quite, definitely must be a London thing, because us poor oiks in the north just stick to our lane and eat our fried egg and chips for breakfast 🙄

I find that if I don’t eat breakfast I can make it through to lunch fine, if I have something to eat before I start work my stomach is rumbling by half 10. I realise that’s not ideal though 🥴

I tried making crayfish salad using supermarket crayfish and it was awful as it was pre-frozen

Good crayfish* can be hard to come by but you might be able to get some nice fat prawns instead.

*Though there are loads in the river near me. That might be going a little far in my lunch preparation. "First catch your crayfish..."

Yes, I sometimes find that I'm less hungry when I skip breakfast.

Nobody had to hunt out comments, they replied to what the OP actually said! And I doubt anyone's actually offended, just taking the mick out of the "clueless londoner" stereotype, which, has been a joke trope for probably at least two millennium!

Even OP has since acknowledged that she should have said people who work "in a city" rather than London although I still think that's (or your "highly urbanised area") is still incorrect - lots of towns or even bigger villages have multiple and varied food options, whereas there are offices in industrial estates all over "highly urbanised areas" with barely a food van in walking distance.

Besides which, honestly, to query "hmm perhaps people are more likely to buy food if they work in a location with multiple options to easily and quickly buy food rather than somewhere out of the way without any opportunities to buy food" is a question where the answer is so flipping obvious ("well...yeah!")

We eat break at home and take food in. It is a bit of a London thing buying lunch, at least a city thing -with only greggs and Waitrose close you get fed up quickly of sandwiches

You aren’t being lazy, I was exactly the same pre kids. I once worked out I spent on average £30 on food per day with the coffees/pret/Leon etc!

That sounds delicious - I wasn't having a go at the idea of bringing in a sandwich, just querying the idea that a sandwich made in Pret's kitchen at 10am will have lost loads of nutrients and require lots of preservatives while a sandwich made in your own kitchen the evening before or first thing in the morning won't.