Help---Need Budget Lunch Ideas

[mrodgers]

Ramen Noodles. How else are you going to get a lunch for $0.16.

I eat leftovers if there is any. If no leftovers and there's no Ramen Noodles, then I usually stop at the only convenience store in my area and get a slice of pizza. Their pizza is $2 and it's pepperoni stuffed crust to boot.

Sometimes its difficult. For a while, all my coworkers were ordering lunch every day. I don't know how they could spend $10 on lunch every single day for months and months. I'm the 2nd highest paid hourly person in the plant, so I know they make less than I do and I certainly couldn't afford that. It is tough though to look at your bowl of Ramen Noodles while they are all sitting there with Chinese delivery or giant steak hoagies.

My wife usually picks up a store hoagie on grocery day. The thing is so big, she cuts it in half to fit in the refrigerator. I think it is somewhere around $4 and it feeds all 4 of us for dinner and feeds my wife and I lunch the next day. We aren't cutting small little sandwiches off the thing either. We usually cut off about a 6-7 inch chunk for each person and it is also about 5 inches wide. It's a BIG! sandwich.

 

[TxRabbit]

I pack DH's lunch. One thing that really helped us was to get him a lunch kit. Just like my DS has one for lunch, we bought DH an appropriate lunch box (which happens to be a soft sided 12-pack cooler) and I bought dedicated plastic and glass containers that fit well into the cooler.

My DH takes mid-morning snack, lunch and afternoon snack to work. We have containers that are usually used for each purpose. His midmorning snack is usually hard boiled eggs and fruit.

Lunch varies but is usually based on strategic leftovers. Could be grilled chicken with some sort of side dish like rice, pasta, sweet potatoes. Could also be a salad type thing, like a black-eyed pea salad, or a grain salad, like a cous cous thing. I pop in one of those microwaveable bags with a veggie. Could be stir fry. Could be soup or chili. Sometimes he takes a green salad instead of the starch side dish. Many times, I'll make the salad for lunch at the same time that I am making the salad for dinner. I'll just pull a serving out of the bowl to pack before dressing the salad for dinner.

The key to the whole thing is to get in your mind that when you cook dinner, you are actually ALSO cooking lunch. You might double recipes. For instance, I NEVER grill just enough chicken. I always grill a LOT so that I have left over grilled chicken for any number of things.

Afternoon snack is usually mixed veggies (crunch factor, we've been doing this for years), fruit, and some nuts.

It's a lot of food, but my DH works about 60+ miles away and that's just the way it is. It's good to eat a little something every few hours.

 

[mommy2allyandaveri]

Hummus and celery
Fresh fruit
Fiber one bar
Instant oatmeal ( for breakfast)
I usually eat healthy choice or ww frozen meals. I have found the ones I like.

We all take our lunch every day.

Dh has
Sandwich
Soda
Apple
Yogurt
Fiber one bar
Small bag of chips
Has the same thing every day...

 

[swilshire]

My wife usually picks up a store hoagie on grocery day. The thing is so big, she cuts it in half to fit in the refrigerator. I think it is somewhere around $4 and it feeds all 4 of us for dinner and feeds my wife and I lunch the next day. We aren't cutting small little sandwiches off the thing either. We usually cut off about a 6-7 inch chunk for each person and it is also about 5 inches wide. It's a BIG! sandwich.

Sounds like a huge sandwich. When Subway does their $5 foot longs, I'll sometimes get one and make it last for three days lunch. I pick up a bag of chips on sale at the grocery to go with it.

Sheila

 

[sasywtch]

I also cook dinner with lunch in mind for the next day. I have my plastic container out and before I start serving dinner, I fill up my lunch container and put it in the fridge.
I keep a can of soup at work just in case and also take a full container of oatmeal and cinnamon to work for the month and eat that for breakfast.
Other than leftovers, I check out the sales on the frozen dinners (can usually get them for 88 cents), I just found some really good low fat raspberry dressing so plan on taking a lot of salad this week. One that people get jealous at work is when I take my own chinese. I cut chicken up in bite size pieces (size of a nickle), fry or bake in terriyaki sauce, make brown rice, scramble an egg to put in the rice, dice some onion and cook some mixed veggies for the rice--some terriyaki or soy sauce and instant chinese dinner and lunch the next day.

Sometimes I microwave a potato 75% of the way, put it in my container with butter and cheese. My absolute favorite is when my bf and I pack a lunch of salami, cheese and crackers, green olives and grapes. The huge bag of meatballs at Costco or whatever warehouse type store is also good for making a quick different kind of lunch.

The trick for me is to always make it the night before so I don't use the excuse that I don't have time in the morning.