Ja-NEW-ary 2013 - Take your lunch to work thread

kittiej

Morning and it's New Year's Eve :j

I'm in work all day today and going to the cinema tonight to take my son to see Life of Pi as part of his birthday pressy for tomorrow so I will call in tonight.

Please feel free to post up if you are taking lunch to work tomorrow and let us know what you are taking

Cannot wait for 2013!

clairey_em

Morning! Please can I join? Not making lunch is my worse habit, my boys are usually pestering me in the kitchen when I'm making my breakfast so I just think, forget it, I'll buy something later. So my challenge also involves making it the night before!

I must spend at least £3 x 3 a week, so x4 is 36, so can u put me down for £40 please?

Thanks for starting the thread :-D great idea!

lionheartedgirl

Morning,

I've planned out my days in college for Jan, I'll be in 12 days and will probably only need lunch on 3 of them.

I'd probably spend between £2-5 per day normally (horrified just reading this!), on lunch and coffee. I got really lax towards the end of term and was having coffee most days.

I'm going to keep my Friday morning hot chocolate but am going to try and reduce my food-away-from-home spends to zero.

I will be in on 3 Fridays, and as the cafe has a loyalty card scheme and I am almost up to a free drink, my target will be 10 no food spend days (NFSD??!). I think this will work better for me than a saving target.

My normal lunch is a cheese and pickle sandwich on granary bread (if I eat at home). I had a bit of an M&S Turkey Feast addiction over Christmas but tbh they weren't as a good as last year anyway and Christmas has finished, so i just need to not buy any more!

If I'm organised I take cereal bars, bananas or little packets of biscuits in with me. I've been thinking about baking muffins and freezing these (as someone mentioned above) so will get myself in gear for this. Thanks for the suggestion!

Good luck everyone

pavlovs_dog

re-establishing the packed lunch habit was one of my January resolutions to keep me on the financial straight and narrow next year. I'm not back until the 7th, so have a week of lunch at home to look forward to first.

I find I eat so much more healthily when I take packed lunches, as I seem to gravitate towards fruit and salad. Want to get back into the habit of making 2-3 days worth of salad/sarnies/fruit salad at at time. It is all I have space for in the fridge, but it saves time. Much less arduous if you only have to make lunch 2-3 days a week but eat 5 pack ups.

mineallmine

Pav - I never thought about making up a "batch" of say fruit salads to take to work. That's a good idea. What do you add to it, if anything, orange juice? - what mixes of fruit do you do?

Lion - it was me that mentioned freezing muffins. Even if you buy them (think Tescos is £1.20/£1.50 for 4) then that's much cheaper than buying them individually while out and about. If you get them out in the morning, they're nicely defrosted by lunchtime.

pavlovs_dog

MAM it depends on what is going cheap to be honest. I usually add something tinned to it to add a bit of the exotic more cheaply and with less faff than chopping pineappple/mango, with the added benefit that a teaspoon or two of the juice stirred through the fruit stops it from discolouring.

Apples and kiwis are normally cheap enough as a base (or at least they were, cost of apples seems to be rocketing lately). Tinned peach slices/mango/pineapple adds colour. tinned pear is a nice texture.

I deliberately leave out fruit that is easy to eat in its own right (bananas/satsumas) for grazing on during the day.

If I'm feeling REALLY virtuous, I sometimes do what I call mid-day breakfast of champions... take some greek yoghurt and granola to put on top of fruit salad before eating. Gets lots of envious looks from colleagues

Ihatethemoneypit

Can I join please? I spend at least £4 a day on work lunch on just a sandwich and a drink!

I will be working 18 days in January so that will be £72 saved!

I will be making and taking soup Which will cost me no more than £12 meaning I will have saved £50 for the month...which will go directly to paying off my credit card

365days

Not sure if anyones mentioned this, but if work has a microwave don't forget the trusty jacket pot. Bake at home then reheat at work.If you aren't mega fussy one wrapped tightly in a few layers of foil would probably still be warm by lunch. Make up a batch of filler (I've just made cheese and ham) and you'll be sorted for a couple of days.

Looking forward to decieding what to take for lunch next Monday now.

pavlovs_dog

I'm yet to try it but baked sweet potato is supposed to be very nice too

Ihatethemoneypit

baked sweet potato is very yummy