The trick is being able to eat the same meal for the entire day. Cook once and eat it throughout the day. lol
But seriously: for the week. I have multiple family members who do this and used to do it myself: most meals last up to a week in the fridge, so just put a little extra in Sunday night so you have leftovers for lunches.
My previous version of this was to start each week with giant: salad, pasta salad, fruit salad. Then I have a complete meal, including variety by just throwing a protein in the toaster oven.
I’m trying to restart something like this now that its back to just me all week: I have a 10 lb pork shoulder for the smoker!
Or for the entire month. It saves money… :'(
Then you realize cooking can be a hobby!
Since COViD, I
- make bread
- “cuisine of the week”, learn to prepare meals from around the world
- replaced teflon cookware with cast iron, stainless and carbon steel, and learned to use them
- got a steel griddle top covering my entire stove and learned to play short order cook. Played a little hibachi chef but made too much mess trying to twirl and flip things
- got a smoker
This weekend I have a 10 lb pork shoulder to smoke. Easily pulled pork for the week and unless my kids come home from school, I’ll likely freeze a bunch
I stopped reading at “make bread”. Waaay too little free time for that
Bread is probably the least time consuming thing on that list though. There’s a whole slew of no-knead recipes out there, and it takes about 5 minutes to measure out and mix together the ingredients. After that it’s just waiting for it to rise, another 5 minutes to shape the loaf, proof it, toss it in the oven and wait till it’s done. For 10 minutes of active prep time, you can have a nice loaf of crusty white bread that’s nearly as good as something you’d find in some bougie bakery. Granted it takes a couple seconds of pre-planning since the rise/proofing times are long, but most basic no-knead recipes are super forgiving on that, and if something comes up before you’re able to bake it, you can toss your uncooked dough into the fridge for short term storage, or freeze it for long term.
Yeah, but then you read my main point. Cooking can be a hobby, something you want to do. Find that
There’s a variety of lunches that are cheap and insanely easy though:
- Stir fry with leftover rice, an egg, and some frozen veggies
- Sandwich with a piece of fruit or some veggies
- Leftover soup heated up on the stove (or in the microwave if ya nasty)
- Cold pasta dishes like pasta salad with leftover protein thrown on top
- Charcuterie plate with cold cuts, crackers, cheeses, and jams
- Salad with cold leftover proteins
- Leftover fried chicken straight out the fridge, as God intended
Like sure, some of these things rely on having leftovers laying around to dress up a bit, but I think that’s a reasonable thing to expect of most people.
I’ve seriously considered buying MREs because I can’t be bothered to meal prep.
Dont forget to put it on a tray.
I’m not a monster.
Nice. Mmk…
It’s still basically canned food, it’s just that the can is a pouch. It’s more expensive too.
Most MREs that I’ve looked at are a bit more elaborate than your average canned product.
But the idea is the same, yes. It’s more interesting than your typical canned meal, and it’s more expensive, but the quality of the food, if you can call it that, is not dissimilar.
MREs usually are a more “complete” meal with a variety of components, while canned meals are just a volume of a single component.
For me it’s mainly that it adds variety.
And sure, there’s MREs that are like, stew, or soup, that you would probably be better off just grabbing a can of ready to eat Campbell’s or something… But there’s way interesting options than that too.
I once saw a “taco” MRE. It was little more than some “beef” (that you had to heat up) and “cheese” and some other fairly sad toppings on a small tortilla… But I would still take that over a can of chunky beef soup any day.
The nice thing is that MREs are shelf stable for a really long time, so you can get a box of them and shove them in your trunk, or into a desk drawer and then you don’t have to worry about lunch for a month. Longer if you occasionally go out for lunch with coworkers to local food places near your workplace.
Presently, I don’t work in an office (my job is 100% work from home), so I don’t really need it. I can get the same variety from a frozen meal, which is arguably easier, and it’s definitely cheaper than MREs.
I also have considered buying a few boxes as emergency food and throwing them in the trunk of my car. I live in Canada, and getting stranded in a blizzard isn’t impossible. I have access to my trunk from the cabin of my car, so I shouldn’t need to get out to get them and I could stay nourished while waiting for rescue. MREs are supposed to be paired with heating/cooking packs, which would help the car warm up when I’m having one, and with a decently sized container of drinking water, I could wait weeks for rescue, as long as I have adequate protection from the elements (jackets, blankets, etc), and some way to dispose of my bodily waste without contaminating my “living” area. I almost always travel with a radio (I’m a certified amateur operator, aka, ham radio), and a battery bank for my cellphone.
For a couple hundred dollars (maybe? Maybe more? IDK what the prices are for MREs right now), myself and a passenger could survive for a while being stranded in the white wasteland of Canada, without really having to do anything… Just waiting for rescue.
With global warming, last year we barely got snow where I am, and I don’t travel much, so the whole thing is on the back burner at best. The idea was to have it, and if I don’t need it, a few months before everything expires, the MREs become my lunch, and I buy a fresh box for my vehicle.
Yeah, there’s some stuff on the side, but get a can of chef boyardee, a sealed packet of crackers and a pop tart, and that’s pretty much it. Add some Qwik and Gatorade powder for hydration, maybe. At 250$ per 12-pack it’s more expensive than eating out.
I’m involved with the Canadian cadet program, and these are the exact ones we eat when we go on expédition, they’re nothing fancy. They are convenient, though.
$20 CAD each (ish) and they come with the heater?
That’s actually pretty good for pricing. The ration heaters are not cheap.
Microwaving some leftovers might be an option. You get the great food you put effort into making, without actually having to make the effort at lunchtime.
You can just… not? Having two larger meals a day isn’t that weird.
I have adopted the “Central European” diet:
One large meal a day and then leftovers + bread and toppings.
Occasionally might have more but that’s my daily meal plan and works pretty great.
Bread is a life saver. If you don’t have time to cook just eat some bread. Healthy (depends on the kind of bread) and you don’t have to worry about beeing hungry an hour later.
And honestly, you can make a lot of really good bread quite quickly. Leaving out proofing for a bit, it’s less than watching an episode of a show. Bread it also easy enough that you can totally watch a show while making it, and not worry about chopping off your fingers lol
What does the rest of the world do then? Cook twice or thrice a day? That’s just silly.
Is this some sort of British joke that I am too Indian to understand?
Edit: There was a bit of miscommunication it seems. My comment was on the food themselves and not the price.
Start going to Starbucks for lunch, instead of the roadside stall and you’ll understand.
I’m happy with cooking at 13:00. Better than having an extra-humid, stale-feeling lunch boxWhy would you assume I am eating at roadside stalls? Cause I am Indian?? Ignoring that hopefully accidental racism, I do in fact cook lunch when I have the time with mostly rice with one of the premade mixes and quick vegetable stir frys. Shouldn’t take more than 20 mins to make something simple. When I am busy I usually get something either in office or nearby restaurant. A good lunch at normal restaurants usually costs about 100-300₹ per person and could get some light food within 100₹ as well. I don’t count the shit at Starbucks as a meal, maybe a snack but why a sandwich when I can get good Indian food.
₹300 comes at around 4 euros. 4 pounds is ~₹450, so it’s pretty close.
If you check the pricing of one of the shit-listed chains, you get hardly anything filling in that price, vs ₹90 for a full meal in some places (that was somewhere in Bengaluru).But that’s on the high ends tho. I just had a rava dosa and lime soda for 110 in udupi so still very affordable. The term affordable depends on each person but I think you would agree it’s very reasonable.
Exactly why I suggested going to stuff like Starbucks to understand the feelings of OP.
You won’t feel what they do, if you are eating good food at reasonable places.
Ah I assumed you were praising Starbucks for some odd reason. Hard to grasp intentions on text.
I don’t even like coffee
I’m betting they didn’t mean it to be racist. I wish I had roadside stalls as options to eat at where I work. A lot of times those end up being better quality and I like the thought of giving money to the people directly making the food instead of a corporate overlord that takes 95% of the money and makes the workers divide the 5% among all of them.
We don’t have roadside stalls around me, but that’s exactly what food trucks are for. When I used to work near a bunch of food trucks, the food was fantastic, always different, and so much better than a chain restaurant
I travel a lot for work so I’ve been to a pretty large number of restaurants and such. I’ve definitely had bad food from food trucks before, but it isn’t very common for it to be abysmal. It’s not like a restaurant that can have other factors like atmosphere, lighting, etc. If the food is bad they won’t last long. Never seen a true roadside stall any of the places I’ve been though unfortunately. I’m honestly so sick of chain restaurants. They completely take over and drive local stuff out a lot of the time.
I didn’t read OP’s statement as racist.
I think anyone with taste knows that a small non-chain restaurant, stall, or cart will have much better food than some corporate chain crap food made with industrially sourced ‘ingredients.’
Personally, I’m always looking for the small restaurants that serve food on Styrofoam or paper plates. Bonus points if it’s attached to a gas station or the owner’s little kids are in the dining room or kitchen playing and coloring.
Ethnicity doesn’t matter, it can be a barbecue joint or some sort of Asian culture I’m ignorant of.
You see a little kid quietly coloring in a booth by themselves, you know that shit is going to be good.
I think anyone with taste knows that a small non-chain restaurant, stall, or cart will have much better food than some corporate chain crap food made with industrially sourced ‘ingredients.’
With my aversion to food made out in the open, right next to running cars and open-coughing people, I stopped eating from roadside stalls by the time I started having enough autonomy.
I tend to prefer non-chain restaurants with viewable kitchens [1], but due to lack of any such desirable place in my area, eating out nearby, usually means subway (which is just, less bad).Then I realise that with the amount of money I would spend to pay for the cheapest local meal place, I can actually cook with Ghee at home. And that topples the equation over its head.
- Morning: Sandwich in Ghee/butter/peanut oil depending upon the mood
- Afternoon: Fried rice in Ghee
- Evening: Gram/Kidney Beans/Lentils in Ghee, with rice
Definitely not going back to outside food with nobody knows which oil they use.
those places tend to hire cooks who actually mind their coughing ↩︎
We try and only eat out as a treat. Almost all of our my meals are eaten at home as we work from home these days. Also, my wife is an amazing cook and her food is better than most restaurants. We usually have leftovers or a sandwich for lunch.
I’m not familiar with your currency symbol? What country do you live in and are the health standards low enough that eating from a stall is a concern? That’s a different situation.
I’m in the US, so food trucks, stalls and gas stations actually have decent standards. (Often, the cleanliness in these places is heads and shoulders above corporate chain places.)
I learned to always check the bathroom of a restaurant. How clean they keep their bathroom tells you a lot about how they keep their kitchen. Small, family run, places tend to have the best food and the cleanest bathrooms, in my experience.
I’m not familiar with your currency symbol
Try
qalc.- Arch:
pacman -S libqalculate - Debian:
apt install qalc - Red Hat:
yum install qalculate - Otherwise: http://qalculate.github.io/
It’s got both, a terminal frontend and a Qt GUI one. (Actually 3. Also a GTK one)
You can copy the currency text along with the symbol into it and by default, it will convert it to your Locale’s currency, so you can know the exchange rates at least.
Also, ₹2000 - ₹3000 per 8 hour day tends to be what an engineering fresher would normally expect in a place like Delhi, where a Subway sub will cost around ₹400.
❯ qalc > 1/0 1 / 0 = 1 / 0 >Running stock Android on my phone and use Jerboa for Lemmy, my computer is Windows 10 as Linux still is lacking in CAD/CAM. In particular, CAM at a professional level. My home server is running Linux, however. Been playing with Linux for a long time.
Wish Mastercam worked in Linux and I’d happily make the jump.
- Arch:
The first statement sounded like I am always eating at road side stalls and never had a lunch at a restaurant. Not that I would bother going to a chain like that to begin with. I am obviously not a native speaker so maybe I misunderstood it.
I am not a fan of those road side stalls, I am not a germaphobe but at least my food should be made in a clean Kitchen. Maybe because my mom would never let me try those and I grew up that way.
It’s rare, in America, for there to be an actual stall. Food trucks or carts are much more common and serve the same function. Stalls can be found at festivals and fairs.
Some of the best food comes out of food trucks. There’s a whole little culture around food trucks.
I’ve seen stalls in other countries on TV. Anthony Bourdain, for instance. He seems to accept a certain amount of food poisoning and dubious ingredients. Some of it still looks really good.
We also have the Tamale Lady phenomenon here. If you see a Hispanic lady or old man selling tamales out of a cooler, you better get some. They’ll be the best damn tamales you’ve ever had.
Here in the Netherlands a lot of people just eat sandwiches. I usually take them with me to work. Not a lot of effort
Same in the UK, where the post was written.
Also, there’s literally a Greggs on every corner or a greasy spoon that’ll make you a sandwich for 2.50
I’ll never understand how can people eat sandwiches every day, especially those with some kind of meat in them. I’m not vegetarian but eating sandwiches for more than two days in a row make me want to puke.
Peanut butter? Upgrading to natural peanut butter made all the difference for me, so it’s no longer just for kids.
I even get decent marmalade, which definitely doesn’t work for kids, or a dark amber maple syrup. I currently have apple butter, which goes nicely on a peanut butter sandwich, or with a scoop of cottage cheese on the side
Might try it, I never ate peanut butter or maple syrup
Do you eat the same thing for breakfast every day? I do. But for whatever reason, lunch and dinner is different. Can’t eat the same thing twice.
Dumb brain
I don’t. But I’m a rich american who can afford to be picky and eat different stuff for every meal and eat 1-2 meals a day from restaurants regularly.
Why?
Idk
this was a productive thread
I also eat pretty much the same breakfast every day. For lunch I can vary what’s on the bread and the type of bread. That’s just how things are here. It’s not the nicest, but it saves a lot of time and money and can also be quite nice
a lot of people eat the same food several days in a row, or several meals in a row.
you only feel that way because you see food as pleasure to be enjoyed. not as a necessity for living. lots of people eat to live.
I don’t want to enjoy every meal
Just not to feel sick because of them
Genuinely, why? Personally, I’m happy to eat basically same meals for a few days before they get boring, and you can vary your sandwiches a lot of you so desire.
You don’t have to make the same sandwich every day.
A sandwich can be a thousand different dishes if you get creative
Not Mongolian I take it?? Lol
I eat sandwiches every day, and the same thing or small variety. I’m not eating for the experience, I’m eating to not be hungry. I can make and eat a sandwich is less than a minute, so I can get back to doing what I want to be doing.
If I really don’t feel like a sandwich, there’s always toast.
I am one and it’s peanut butter every day. For 3 years basically every working day has had a peanut butter sandwich. And that’s how the next 30 some years are looking too. It’s fine. I can live that way.
That’s a fucking delicious 33 years.
I will ask my cousin about it lol
Yeah I just make a peanut butter sandwich and prep some fruit and bring it to work. Easy, healthy, and filling
Same in Germany. We have bread with butter and cheese. It’s a blessing with a good bread
Lunch is my favourite. Nothing beats a fine sandwich with cheese.
Peanut butter and provolone is one of my favorites
Eating is a chore, I watch a video so i dont think about it, instant noodles are real easy to make at work, toss in some broccoli if youre feeling like a but fancy
Sorry to hear you don’t have functioning taste buds
Yes georgia, it ends when you marry mr successful and he pays for everything.
Imagine your biggest realization as an adult being a wrong opinion.
In Brazil, if you work more that 6hs a day, the company have to give you lunch. The majority of them, give you a pre paid debit card that can be used in restaurants. This mean that they are a lot of money there that can be used in restaurants, so any office building have lots of restaurants around.
From my union contract, I get 40R daily to lunch, and the restaurant I go they serve “prato feito” (beans, rice, salad, meat) for 25, and use the rest for some icecream or to eat something with my wife at weekends.
That’s actually a very cool concept.
It’s works close with transit costs too, the employee can opt in to pay up to 6% of its salary, then what is miss to cover all the transit costs is paid 50/50 by the employer and the government. For example, if I need to take a bus (5R) and a metro (5R), that sum to 20R daily in transit costs, 20R × 22 working days = 440 at month. Suppose a salary of 2000 * 6% = 120. The employee pay 120, the employer 160 and the government other 160. I’m fortunate to be in a position where I don’t need that benefit anymore because I live in bike distance to the office, but it saved my ass when I had to take a bus to the metro station, a metro and then another bus every day.
Damn, didnt knew that brasil had such bonuses. I don’t know how good your public transport is, but having this option is great.
If only not stuffing your face for one meal was a thing.
Where is your tupperware lunch box? hmmm?
I think something that is missing in the minds of the “but you could just…” posters here is that the mindset of the OP doesn’t always come from laziness, immaturity, or the inability to understand how to pack a sandwich, it sometimes comes from crippling or barely functional depression.
I work from home and the thought of even making a sandwich most days in the middle of the day is just too much. I don’t want to make a sandwich; I want to go back to bed for eight to ten years and I agree that lunch is the fucking worst.
(But so is breakfast, and dinner, and all of the meetings, and work, and life generally speaking, etc.)
This is precisely why always working from home is unhealthy and the context switch would be worth the psychological boost it provides if not for the commute. I know people really liked the liberation of WFH at first but I just don’t think it is going to be sustainable. It has nothing to do with productivity, but it’s the next simmering mental health crisis.
Then you are just burnout, this ain’t complicated. If you need to rest, fucking rest.
