The Lunch-eater's Solution

Remember when I wrote about buying lunch? I oh-so-wittily called it the "lunch-eater's dilemma?"

Here at NPB headquarters, we've come up with a pretty good plan to tackle that problem. Now if only the G20 leaders converging on my city can do as much for the financial crisis!

What we did was this: Made a metric ton of food on Sunday. Dishes we made: a bunch of rice, chicken stir-fry, veggie stir-fry, teriyaki sauce and curry sauce. We put them in the refrigerator and each morning before heading to school/work, we made ourselves a lunch with the ingredients. It's worked out pretty well so far, with each of us remembering to bring food for the day. I like having the two sauces to choose from -- Monday wasn't a very curry kind of day, so I brought the teriyaki. Crisis averted.

It takes some time, but saving money and planning ahead always does. Now we just have to think of which sauces we're going to make in the future...

The Lunch-eater's Dilemma

One area where we can really improve is in packing our own lunches.

Yes, it's difficult, especially for two busy people who are juggling work, school, community group commitments, keeping up a house and garden, etc. But according to this calculator from bankrate.com (God I love the Internet), if we invested the money that we spent on buying lunch during the week, we could have $4511 after four years.

That's equivalent to about 15.5% of my yearly gross pay.

I was reminded of this when I forked over about $7 for my lunch today -- my fast-food, definitely unhealthy lunch. Usually we're good about this kind of stuff. On the weekends, we'll make big dinners and package the leftovers up for lunches. But this weekend we ate at other people's houses both days, making it difficult to do that. I'm going to a friend's house for dinner tonight, too, so I may end up having to buy lunch again tomorrow.

Eventually, we'll have a weekend where we'll make a big batch of soup or stew and freeze it. Until that day comes, though, I'll try to remember to wake up a little earlier in the morning to at least slap some peanut butter and jelly on bread.