Sunday 31 May 2009

weekday lunches

Weekday lunches have become a bit of a daily grind. Some days I'm good and bring lunch from home (which negates the task of deciding what to eat) but for the most part, I'm not that good and I resort to whatever is available near the office (i.e. arduous task of deciding what to eat). About a year ago, it was great that we had Broadway and its foodcourt just 5 minutes away but a year on, the excitement has definitely gone, I've tried everything that I want to try and really don't like eating things over and over again. And it's not just me, a few of us in the office have been feeling it.

Last week, I did the usual walk over to Broadway with my friend L and it was in this trip that the two of us decided to go shopping, split the costs and make our own lunch. We spent $38 between the two us and bought enough to feed us over 3 days, lunch and breakfast included (with a $10 top up on the 3rd day as we'd run out of sandiwch filling.)

Smoked salmon, cream cheese, red onion and capers sandwiches with a Rocket, spinach leaf, grape tomato, red onion, avocado and balsamic vinegar salad.
Top with fresh cracked pepper!

Not to be boastful but I think we did a rather good job! The sandwiches and salad were fresh, had all the ingredients we wanted in them and it works out to be slightly cheaper than buying lunch out. Whilst we had the same thing two days in a row, it was actually quite exciting come lunchtime, to head into the kitchen and assemble our own lunches.

Mind you the $38 did include snacks, on one day we had these funky freeze dried apple and peach slices (which I don't recommend cause they tasted like cardboard) and on the second day, we had those dessert creme caramels. Anyway, the plan is to continue this in the forseeable future - let's see how we go...

6 comments:

Stephcookie said...

That looks so good! I always struggle with figuring out what to have for lunch during the week. I've tried stopping by the supermarket with a workmate before, it's so much cheaper than eating out. But the best we could do is a baguette and meats from the deli, yours looks way better!

panda said...

It's quite funny cause bread happened to be on special and we ended buying 2 loaves of helga's bread for $6. So much bread! Hopefully we'll be able to keep it up and I'll be able to save some money!

Howard said...

This is a great idea! I use to do this with 2 other work mates when we were on the same project. We'd go shopping at Coles in Wynyard Station and stock up on snacks and brekky stuff and just share it, worked out heaps cheaper than buying brekky and going for snack runs.

panda said...

i reckon with 3 people you'd be able to get costs down and also have more variety during the week. but yeah, when you start buying brekkie and lunch out, it starts costing a fortune!

Anonymous said...

Great idea! And that way you get everything that you want on your sandwich and it's made to your liking :)

panda said...

agree! and it's actually quite fun coming up with different sandwich combos!