Ideas for lunches under £2

livewire_82

A little background information for you....
I'm getting married next year and as we all know these things are generally not cheap. To help find ways to save for the big day I want to reduce my weekly lunchtime budget.
I work right in the heart of London's west end on Oxford Street and I try to resist the more expensive sandwich bars and restaurants and usually opt for the nearby M&S which is just over the road.
Up until now, I have been generally buying myself averages priced lunches of between £3-4. I tend to get salad pots, ready meals, soups or sandwiches. I need to reduce this and would like some ideas.
One thing to note, my office continuously stocks cereal, bread, peanut butter and chocolate spread. I usually utilise these for breakfast but have recently found myself taking advantage of the bread for lunches aswell.
So far I haven't really found anything <£2 other than beans on toast unless I'm lucky enough to stumble upon something with a reduced sticker on it. Does anyone have anything a bit more inspiring?
I know batch cooking at home a few times a week is an option but I sometimes get home quite late and the last thing I want to do is start cooking.

[Deleted User]

I've just made just over two litres of HM soup from a lb of carrots and three tea spoons of coriander and half an onion and a couple of chicken stock cubesThis will do me for lunches for four days with a few crackers and some cheesecost for the whole of the four lunches probably around 25p per lunch.HM soup is so easy to make and what you don't take to work with you you can store in the fridge at home and take in daily to reheat or get a small flask and heat it up before you go to work and it'll still be hot at lunchtime

Luckystar

I assume you don't want to make a packed lunch and bring it to work each day ? Have you thought about going into M&S and buying stuff to make a few days worth of lunches and leaving it in your office (assuming they have a fridge) you could buy rolls or wraps, cold meat, tuna, salad and make it fresh each day.budget £10 for the whole week you'll get quite a lot for your money. Where I work a lot of the staff do this, much cheaper than pre-packed sandwiches

Beccawte

I tend to go to the supermarket once a week to buy that week's lunch ingredients i.e cans of Tuna (or salmon, or eggs), salad leaves, a caesar dressing, a cucumber and some own brand tortilla wraps (usually get 8 wraps in one pack from Tesco!). Obviously there are plenty of alternative fillings you could have depending on what you like.
I then make a homemade wrap using those ingredients each evening and pop in the fridge ready for taking to work the following morning (let's face it, nobody has time to faff around making a tortelli wrap in the morning before work!).
When I did this last week, I shopped at asda and the bill came to around £4. Although this looks the same price as the pre-packed lunches you by each day, remember this £4's worth should last another 4 days worth of lunches and would save you approx £16 each week!
To stop this getting boring, I alternate the fillings each week and sometimes revert to just a ceasar salad without the wrap.
Hope this helps!

~Chameleon~

Tin of mackerel mixed into a third of a pack of couscous (Ainsley Harriot range are delicious and faff free). Healthy lunch and takes literally minutes to prepare.

Roxy07

Pasta, Tuna and Sweetcorn in Mayonnaise

MysteryMe

If you have access to a microwave a jacket spud with whatever topping you like.Pasta salad is easy to make and you could have that for 2 or 3 days, perhaps a fruit salad if you come across some cheap fruit.

I make sandwiches for the week and freeze them, obviously you can't do this with all fillings but I have done it with cooked meats, cheese, egg, tuna mayo.

paadzer

If there is free bread at your work place you could buy the fillings in the supermarket and make a sandwich (they do deli fillings in some supermarkets in the fridge which are not expensive and/or you could buy other fillings to use for a few days like cold meats, cheese, salad, etc).

With regards to soup it's always cheaper to buy tins along with some bread - maybe pitta breads. Assuming you have a microwave at work.

I realise that supermarkets are smaller in central London therefore i am unsure what options are available and at what prices.

I used to always buy reduced bread from my local co-op and defrost what I needed in the morning and make a sandwich when I got home from work using the deli fillings or cold meats but now I'm being healthy i buy tins of tuna (not in oil) and frozen chicken and add either to vegetables I buy frozen and have a light salad dressing and some dried herbs on them. A healthy but inexpensive lunch and I can get jacket potatoes with a filling at work for £2.30 which i sometimes get if I don't make my own lunch (I always ask for no butter and avoid cheese!). You can get chips too for 60p but I'm avoiding them now.

System

innocent veg pots are usually £4, but sometimes half price, they're great but expensive. They're cooked in the microwave/on hob.

~Chameleon~

paadzer wrote: »

With regards to soup it's always cheaper to buy tins along with some bread - maybe pitta breads. Assuming you have a microwave at work.

I beg to differ! I can make a whole pan full of soup giving 6-8 servings for less than the price of a tin of soup!

ska_lover

My lunches for work generally are:-

Baked Beans on toast - or just with a roll

Home made or tinned soup - I can make at least three days worth for about 70p (Lentil and tomatoe and smoked paprika, inbox if you want recipe, its delish)

Left overs from last nights dinner

Tin of fruit salad

Bowl of cereal

Cup of soup and bread to dip

I absolutely refuse to buy food whilst I am at work, so if a slice of bread and butter was all I could muster from home, then that would be what I would take. I never prepack sandwiches or anything like that far too lazy

Having said that, if my office provided cereal and bread and penut butter, I would deffo be eating these EVERY DAY. One place I used to work, used to have staff buiscuits, so I ate 3/4 of them for my lunch every day. Not the healthiest no, but shows what a tight wad I am