Step 3: Lunch

You can go ahead and give a large sigh of relief because this post is going to be a lot shorter than those last few novels.

Yeah, that totally didn't happen.

So what do you usually eat for lunch? According to your staples list, how much do your lunches cost every week?

Now, I'm going to be perfectly honest here, I am not a big fan of lunch. I'm not really a fan of breakfast either but I'd much prefer to make breakfast than have Paul ask me "what's for lunch?" In my head, I think, "What? are your legs broken? Are your arms painted on? Can't you just make yourself a sandwich?" This is mostly because lunch time is when Pearl naps and if I have to stop and make lunch, I miss out on extremely valuable productive time.

Paul is very forgiving about my dislike of thinking about what to eat for lunch. I only offer him a few options- in fact, lunch is our meal with the least options but that's simply because I don't care enough about it to be creative. As Pearl eats more and more I think I'll try harder but I'm at the point where it's neither important nor efficient.

The first thing you should know about lunches is that unless you're down to only lunch portions of a dinner, leftovers should only be left for another dinner. This is because dinner is usually the most expensive meal of the day and costs a lot more than lunch, so it's cheaper to use a meal for multiple dinners rather than just one dinner and then lunch. When we get to the point where there's only enough for one person to have a meal, it becomes Paul's lunch (he requires more variety than I do), but other than that, Paul gets the following options:

Popcorn

Ramen noodles (Paul has a bizarre love of Ramen noodles and since they're 9 cents a package and he doesn't eat them a lot, I'm resigned to let him have them even though they're terrible for you)

Salad- you can usually find a head of lettuce from $0.80-$1.00 and we only use 1/3 to 1/2 of a head at a time, combined with tomatoes or other veggies from our garden and an egg or two and homemade dressing, it's a fast meal that costs less than $0.75.

Most of the time though, we eat sandwiches-

I LOVE peanut butter and jelly/honey sandwiches. I could eat them every day for the rest of forever and probably not get sick of them. I even purposely buy peanut butter jelly beans and raspberry or strawberry jelly beans just to eat them together for a peanut butter sandwich taste- and yes, I am fully aware that that is strange. Eventually though, Paul gets tired of peanut butter so he'll sub in ham from Sam's Club.

The key to affordable sandwiches (or affordable toast or french toast, etc) is HOMEMADE BREAD.

With the advent of "cheap" sliced bread, women just stopped making homemade bread and somehow or another the idea that making bread was hard or impossible or expensive became accepted as fact. When bread machines became popular in the mid to late 90's, people started making bread again but the loaves are so small that it's almost a waste if there are more than 2 of you.

I've used several different recipes and I find I prefer the taste, texture, and variability of my grandmother's bread the best. It takes about 3 hours from idea to bread but it's so worth it! I have other recipes that can be finished in around 45 minutes- total- short enough you can't blame a time shortage on not making bread.

Using bulk yeast purchased from my local "health food" store and bread flour from Sam's Club, a loaf of plain white (and super delicious!) bread costs just 50 cents- it's even less if I make the bread half wheat (I grind my own) or cracked wheat.

An average loaf of not-cheap-paste-bread costs about $2.50 at Walmart which runs about 12.5 cents a slice compared to a little more than 2 cents per homemade. If you were to get the wholly unappetizing and unhealthy bread for $1.00, its still around 5 cents a slice- double the price.

Something else we do to save money is that we make our own freezer jam. I promise you that there is not a single average priced jam on the market that tastes as good as strawberry freezer jam. It takes just half an hour to make enough to last 6 months at least and it's 1/3 the price or less of store bought preserves. The trick is to watch for fruit in season and when it's really on sale because stores always overstock and you can get ripe fruit for a steal. If you don't like jam on your sandwiches, buying honey in bulk is a really good option too- Cox's honey is just about the best stuff I've ever had. It comes in a 5 lb bucket and while it's not the cheapest, $0.14 cents a serving is pretty decent.

Lunch time is also where we have a sort of splurge. I didn't grow up with a lot of money- actually I grew up with VERY little money but we always had Jiff peanut butter. After we got married, I started using the Walmart brand because it was cheap. I didn't eat as many peanut butter sandwiches for a long time just because they just weren't hitting the spot until last summer when I was at my mom's house and had one for lunch. It was the best thing I could remember eating in a long time (and I only make food that I think is great). I asked Mom about it and she was like, "Um, yeah, there was a reason we always had Jiff peanut butter even when we had no money," (my mom loves peanut butter sandwiches just as much as I do). I'm serious, I have no problem just eating it straight out of the jar, something Paul finds really weird but he's very accepting of my quirks.

I purchase my extra-crunchy Jiff in bulk from Sam's, so it's definitely cheaper than picking it up at the normal grocery stores, but you really don't have to buy brand name peanut butter if you don't want to- I'm sure that to most people, peanut butter is just peanut butter- and there's nothing wrong with that. If you want to be more adventurous, you could try purchasing peanuts and making your own peanut butter. I've heard it can be cheaper but since I have something I like and it works budget wise, I have seen no purpose in pricing it out. If you have any experience with it, please comment and let me know- I'm interested in the cost comparisons even if I'm not interested in switching.

While I don't care about a lot of variety for lunch, I'm sure there are infinite possibilities. I forgot to mention that if we haven't had fruit yet, I make sure that we have some with lunch. Usually we have apples that I get in super bulk (from orchards) or, when we run out of those, we eat whatever apple is on for $1.00/lb or bananas because those are decently cheap. Depending on sales we may have grapes and during garden season we grow our own melons and go blueberry picking.

I guess what I'm saying is, think of your favorite lunches- are there ways you can think of off the top of your head to make them cheaper? Can you think of other cheap non-perishable things for lunch (like Mac and Cheese) that you can buy in bulk to make them more affordable? Let me know what you come up with- I'm sure Paul would appreciate some more variety.

Wow. So much for the promise of a shorter post. Sorry about that but you're probably used to it by now.