Be Prepared!

Here at A Family Against the Flow we're always trying to find ways to save money and time. One of the ways money gets wasted is when you buy a lunch everyday for work. It's understandable that we all do it, it's convenient and the last thing you want to do in the morning (or the evening before) is make a lunch to take to work.

This past year JD and I have had a go at prepping lunches at the weekend for the week ahead. We bought some cheap plastic boxes with lids from the supermarket. Then on a Sunday afternoon we make up a batch of food to be heated up for lunch each day. If your workplace doesn't have a microwave you can buy a food flask. We've made a few different things so far. Pasta with bolognese sauce, spicy minced beef and broccoli, chilli, macaroni cheese and corned beef hash.

Spicy minced beef and broccoli

Pasta with bolognese sauce

Pasta bolognese is filling and really cheap to make. We can make a week of lunches for about £6. Most meal deals you can buy cost around £3. That gives us a saving of at least £24 a week. Almost £100 a month!

Another thing we like about making our own lunches is that we can add as much veg as we like to make sure we get our 5-a-day. We often add spinach, peas, sweet potato, sweetcorn or brocolli to our lunches.

In the warmer months when we don't really want a hot lunch we switch to prepped salads. When our shopping is delivered on a Sunday I prep all the salad ingredients in boxes ready to be made up on the mornings. It's really quick to make up a salad when all the ingredients are chopped ready. We store the prepped ingredients in the fridge to be kept fresh.

It's really nice to be prepared and save time on busy mornings. It's also great to have home-made nutritious lunches with plenty of vegetables.

On the negative side it does take time to prep meals. About 30-40 minutes to make up a huge batch of lunches or to chop salad ingredients. It can also get a bit samey sometimes unless you make an effort to source new recipes quite often. We've had pasta bolognese a few more times than I'd like.

Overall though it's a great money saver. We always feel pleased when we've made the effort to prep our lunches. I'd recommend giving it a try if you want to save money this year :)