Frugal Eats: An argument for bringing/making lunch.
October 15, 2007
I love it when a lunch plan comes together. I confess that I’m terrible at bringing lunch because it involves, oh, thinking ahead, being creative so I don’t have the same things over and over, you know, that kind of thing. Invariably, lunch is just dinner leftovers, which gets really old and boring.
But last week I did really well. Over the weekend, Vons had their salads BOGO ($3.79). That might not be the best price because I couldn’t find a coupon. Regardless, I needed to bring a salad for our grilled steak dinner on Saturday so I went ahead and grabbed two Fresh Express Pacifica Vegetable salads. They’re great! They have the 5 types of salad greens, sugar snap peas, roasted soy nuts, and sunflower seeds. So let’s say that was $2 for the salad. I also bought two mild cheddar blocks on sale for $1.50 each, and picked up another onion. Turns out I already had onions, but that’s ok, I’ll end up using it eventually.
I brought the salad, sliced and diced onion and a tomato, a few eggs, and cheese to work. The eggs, onions, cheese and tomato slices were breakfast for a couple days. This afternoon I put together the salad with the onion and cheese (I’d eaten up all the tomato this morning) and made my own thousand island dressing with the condiments we already had, and voila! Three delicious salads: one for me, the secretary, and Little Boss. And then the secretary toasted up a little chicken pizza and split that with me.
We girls are all feeling under the weather so we did spend $4 each on a big bowl of soup, but we’re going to buy a bunch of canned soups for the winter and leave them here in the office.
Next time, I’ll remember to add my canned corn, bring more tomatoes, and maybe even a cucumber. Buying prepackaged salads has always seemed a bit on the pricey side, especially if I was the only one eating them, but split it two or three ways and it’s still 66% less than buying at $7 salad here!
Salad: $1.75
Cheese: (will last for weeks, I’ll add it to almost everything) $1.50
Onion: (dozens of servings) $1
Corn: (4-6 servings) $0.50/can
Tomato: (if the birds stop eating them, homegrown) $0
Cucumber: $0.80
About $5 for three salads? Mmm…. yummy crunchy salad.
I’m feeling like quite the underachiever…I forgot to pack my lunch today š
~SavingDiva~ Girl, don’t even! I blogged about it because this was the first good week I’ve had in a LONG WHILE. I thought forgetting to pack made me feel guilty; I forgot my lunch on the train last month! That was just stupid.
Packing lunch is a roller coaster for me. Sometimes I’m good at it, most times I’m going downhill š