Guest post from Kate Sorenson of Coupon Cravings
Looking
Forward to Lunch: Frugal Brown Bag Recipes
Brown
bagging it for lunch, instead of getting take-out or eating at a restaurant, is
one of the easiest ways to save thousands of dollars per year. Packing your own
lunch means getting to control the price of your meals. You can watch out for
sales at the grocery stores and pay attention to coupons for different
ingredients. If there’s a special on ham, you can save money by planning to
bring ham sandwiches for lunch that week.
Zen
Habits calculates that bringing your own lunch from home
costs only $1.00-$3.00 per meal, while eating at a restaurant can cost
$10-$15 per meal. This adds up to over $3,000 a year of unnecessary spending!
Here
are many of the other benefits of brown bagging:
- Homemade lunches are healthier
than high-calorie, over-processed restaurant meals.
- Homemade lunches can often be
tastier than those from restaurants.
- By staying in and working
through lunch, you may get to leave early at the end of the day.
For some great
inspiration for making brown bag lunches more exciting, easy, and low-cost
consider some of the following ideas:
Freeze Your Food
An interesting and
timesaving idea is to
freeze sandwiches in large batches that will keep for 1-3 months in the freezer. The benefits of
freezing sandwiches include: saving
money, saving time by making large batches at once, using leftovers, and
ensuring healthy food by controlling the ingredients. Just be sure when
freezing sandwiches to keep in mind the types of ingredients that freeze well:
·
Peanut butter
·
Tuna fish or salmon
·
Most meats such as roast
beef, chicken and turkey
·
Hard and semi-hard cheeses,
such as Swiss or Cheddar
Lunch Ideas
·
Burritos – use simple
ingredients such canned beans, cooked chicken, lettuce, tomato, cheese, salsa, onions
and/or peppers. Then roll them into whole wheat tortillas.
·
Subs - use sub rolls
or pita and fill them with tuna, hummus, peanut butter, or sandwich meats. Try
adding interesting crunchy ingredients like celery, shredded carrots, cucumber,
or lettuce.
·
Pizza – use pre-made
crust, sauce and cheese. To make it a little healthier, don’t forget to add
veggies.
·
Remember to bring your
own beverages from home for extra savings.
Harness Your Leftovers
For super easy and
frugal lunches, Food and Fitness suggests using leftovers from dinner for your lunch. Some suggestions for using leftovers wisely
include:
·
Using leftover chili
to top a baked potato or put in a “sloppy Joe” sandwich.
·
Adding leftover
vegetables to make a salad, soup or even omelet.
·
Cook a whole chicken
and freeze leftovers in single portion sizes.
·
Use cereal crumbs as a
yogurt or oatmeal topping or in place of flour in muffins and cookies.
Using these frugal and
tasty tips for brown bag lunches will make overspending during your lunch hour
a thing of the past.
This is a guest post from Kate Sorenson of Coupon Cravings, a site with 30k+ Facebook Fans and over 12,000 Twitter followers. Thanks, Kate Sorenson and Elizabeth Baker for contributing this article to my blog. visit www.couponcravings.com