Take Your Lunch to Work- January 2023

BlueJ94

Morning all! In the air fryer for todays work lunch is salmon with honey and then I’ll be adding that to a brown rice!

CMD79

First day back for me today, and I'm starving!

In my frenzy to declutter the house yesterday, I have bought into work today:

2kg Ryvita
2kg Picked beetroot
2.5kg various leftover Christmas chocolate
1kg leftover Christmas cheeses

The best part about Ryvita is that when you have usually eaten your packed lunch by 10:00am, you somehow do managed to save it for when you're REALLY hungry! So this is a total winner for me! Barring getting a pack or two of cream cheese once my Christmas cheese supply has depleted, I think I've got about 6 weeks of lunch here. I'll maybe bring some fruit each day too...

outoftheviciouscircle

CMD79 I'm glad I'm not the only one that does that!! Quite often my lunch is gone by mid morning.

You all have some lovely sounding lunches. For me it was just a Pot Noodle, packet of crisps and a Freddo.

Matron_Midge

I’ll join you if I may.
I’ll be working 17 days this month and am aiming to take lunch every single day. Not only will it help with my spend less challenges but with my waist line. I’m a SlimmingWorld member and am very keen to shed 18lbs by Easter.
Im lucky that we have kettle, toaster and microwave in our break room.
For completeness, yesterday I had some SW onion bhajees and salad and today a wholemeal sandwich with good old Heinz sandwich spread.

Coveredinbees!!!!

My lunch is often gone waaaaaay before lunch time, sometimes by 10am. The worst thing is when there is an accident on the motorway and you are sitting there with your lunch staring at you saying, 'eat me, eat me!'. Was at home today so no shops to pop in to at least not very walkable shops, just sandwiches and a couple of Heroes minis for lunch. My wife came home with some reduced price smoked salmon so got a posh lunch to look forward to tomorrow, assuming it makes it that far.

peb

I've found with sandwiches and food that doesn't need preparing before eating that it's easier to have a second breakfast.  I'm currently on soup - have a microwave at work - was salad in the summer.   Big thing for me is that if I have sufficient nice lunch I'm less likely to meander around the shopping centre and acquire nice things or top ups 

peb

Having just thrown my tupperware of homemade mushroom soup all over the work kitchen I'm having to go buy a sandwich.  ☹️

outoftheviciouscircle

peb said:

Having just thrown my tupperware of homemade mushroom soup all over the work kitchen I'm having to go buy a sandwich.  ☹️

Oh no!!!
I've ended up home sick for 2 days this week so lunches have been easily sorted for me as I just haven't fancied anything. 
Next week, I'm away for the week with very little internet signal. I'm kind of looking forward to switching off from everything for a week.

CMD79

peb said:

Having just thrown my tupperware of homemade mushroom soup all over the work kitchen I'm having to go buy a sandwich.  ☹️

outoftheviciouscircle said:

peb said:

Having just thrown my tupperware of homemade mushroom soup all over the work kitchen I'm having to go buy a sandwich.  ☹️

Oh no!!!
I've ended up home sick for 2 days this week so lunches have been easily sorted for me as I just haven't fancied anything. 
Next week, I'm away for the week with very little internet signal. I'm kind of looking forward to switching off from everything for a week.

Oh no to  both!!!

I have realised this week, there was a reason that those Ryvita had been in the cupboard for so long.....

But I have been good, and not bought ANY food out! (taking the Christmas chocolate has helped greatly soften the blow of the Ryvita Age as I will refer back to it).

Brie

I'm happily beyond the point of needing to pack lunches and am, in fact, trying to stop some of the habits built up for the years of putting little pots of leftovers in the fridge/freezer ready to take to the office.  For some reason eating lunch when one's home all day doesn't seem to be a thing.  Don't know why.

Anyhoo....here's a couple of ideas from the vaults.....

Prep your breakfast - a microwave soup pot with a short inch of oatmeal (not cooked), top with fruit (frozen raspberries are great, or chop apple, peaches etc), add a large spoonful of yoghurt, add milk until you can just see it.  Leave over night and it's ready to eat.

prep a few salad snack bags - carrot sticks, celery, baby plum tomatoes (no cucumber as it's horrid!!).  They'll last a few days in the fridge ready to chuck in your bag.  Mini pots of hummus are nice but so are a little dip pot of dressing - buy one of those tiddly hotel jars of jam (about 50p for one - outrageous for the jam but cheap for the jar) and use that for a serving of ranch dressing or mayo or whatever.  

prep fruit - you can buy stuff all ready to eat same as with carrot sticks but fresh is nicer.  Do pineapple spears, melon wedges, quartered apples, pears, nectarines.  Some things may need a tablespoon of orange juice to be added to keep them looking nice.  Tinned fruit is good too - a large tin divided into 3 - 4 servings is quite cheap.  Mandarins and/or peaches are nice.

Pot noodles can be made - there's loads of recipes online - just needs a jar/container that you can seal and to which you can add hot water.  Dry noodles on the bottom, thinly sliced veg and meat on top, a small spoonful of soup mix will make a sauce.

Stop when you're almost finished eating dinner - most of us will be happy with a couple of spoonfuls of left over rice and a half portion of chicken for lunch.  You don't need a huge amount.  

On the road working?  If you get a roll with your dinner (or breakfast) is there anything you can make for lunch?  yes I know that places will frown but if you've paid for the buffet breakfast why not nab that roll and the sliced cheese & ham and wrap them up in your (paper) napkin ready for later.  Lots of time there's a bowl of fruit so grab a banana and don't forget the blueberry muffin.  (Once ate in an American diner where we were told specifically to make sure we made our lunch before the table got cleared.)

Don't forget that you don't always need to make a sandwich the day before - all you do is ensure that you've packed all the bits you need.  Helps if you save the little packs you get at KFC etc - mayo, ketchup, whatever it is that makes a sandwich a bit nicer.  Good to have a little supply of these, salt, pepper, hot sauce and some cutlery handy at work.

Emergency supplies....there's always going to be days when you forget/don't have time/can't be asked.  So plan for it.  My locker at work had some boxes of oat cakes as well as cuppa soup.  I was lucky that a local Polish market sold jars of instant borscht which could provide 20 mugs of beety soup at under 10p a serving.  It was very tasty too!!  The oat cakes are handy in case the only thing in the fridge is a half tub of hummous or you down have bread for sandwiches.  Anything that is packaged so you are always opening it fresh is great as stale items can really ruin one's afternoon.  

Good luck to you all.  Here's to saving lots of money!!!