Make Your Own Lunch: Financial and Health Benefits

I find that lunch can be a right old pain in the backside when you’re working full-time. I work in central London, which like any city may have lots of variety, but if you want quality and healthy food you often need a small mortgage to fund it. The cheapest ‘buy out’ option is the sandwich from chains that won’t be named, chock-full of mayonnaise, salt and often questionable ingredients, not matter how ‘freshly prepared’ they claim to be. Or from the canteen, if you are lucky enough to have one and it be subsidised but then knowing what I know about large-scale catering, the quality of the ingredients is not going to be as high up the priority list as profits.

This brings me to the make-your-own point. I’m a huge fan of packed lunches. Once I got over the stigma of it, that is. It was only when I was working full-time in the music industry for minus £3 per hour that I realised that the only way to remove myself from sliding deeper into the red and drowning in my overdraft was to think about ways to keep my money in my pocket for longer than five seconds. The result was the packed lunch.

Your Challenge:

• Take a note of everything you buy in a working day from the minute you step out of the door until you walk back in.
• How could you make alterations to your current habits that could curtail some of that spending?

If you think more smartly about your eating habits and options then you can save loads and for some it can be a lifeline, where you were in the red two weeks into the month, you may be able to keep yourself happily in the black until pay-day and sshhh, don’t say it too loudly, but you might even be able to save a little.

some ideas to get you going:

• Bagged salad: buy it and keep in the fridge, or bring in a small bag every day from home
• Tinned fish: cheap, cheerful and super healthy. Choose mackerel, salmon and sardines for good fats – tuna has all it’s oil removed and has lashing of mercury so best avoided if possible.
• Seeds – add to your salads for that extra crunch and nutrition
• Balsamic, olive oil and lemons – perfect for dressings, they can be kept in the fridge or buy your desk.
• Leftovers – a brilliant way to keep abreast of your portion sizes at home and have lunch for the next day as well.
• Soups/stews/casseroles – ideally homemade – bring in a thermos which keeps contents warm for most of the day

Essentials:

• Tupperware – let it be your friend. The clickable ones are the best and come in different sizes.
• Fresh black pepper and herb grinders – you can get all sorts of condiment flavourings these days, keep one on your desk or in your draw for that extra seasoning.
• Plate, knife and fork: if you don’t have basic cutlery and crockery at work, get some cheap stuff, it’s amazing how different your meal tastes when eaten in china with a real knife and fork rather than a plastic one.
• Thermos flask – no longer the size of a tank, these sleek beauties keep anything vaguely liquid hot for eight hours.

Watch your bank balance swell:

• Get a money-box: Every time you bring your lunch in, put the equivalent money into a money-box.
• Open a savings account: set-up a standing order with the equivalent of the amount you spend monthly the day after you get paid.
• Give yourself a financial goal: make what you spend your savings on matter – whether it’s a holiday, a new coat or a contribution to the mortgage. Make it something to be proud of.

Remember – if you are in control of what you put in your mouth then you are more likely to eat well. Cheap eats do not have to be bland and unhealthy – quite the contrary, they can be super tasty.

Image by RambergMediaImages

Tasty Christmas Fayre

Cabbage is not a vegetable that everyone automatically loves. I’m fortunate in the sense that I used to hang out at my mother’s chopping board as a kid and was fed a variety of raw vegetables and consequently, raw white cabbage, is one of my favourite vegetables in the world, ever.

Red cabbage is a powerhouse of nutrients including vitamin C, vitamins K, B1, B2 plus folic acid and is a good source of minerals calcium, magnesium, potassium and manganese. Additionally, as with all the ‘red vegetables’ such as beetroot it is high in anti-cancerous phyto-chemicals and health enhancing anti-oxidants.

We didn’t eat much of the red variety as a family and it was only a few years ago that I discovered how nice it could be when I was tempted by a red cabbage dish that an Ex-boyfriend’s mum cooked one Christmas. Admittedly I wasn’t sure, but after one mouthful I was converted. Unfortunately I didn’t have the wherewithal to get the recipe then and there, and it has since been lost in the annals of time.

Luckily my sister’s Mother-in-law hails from Germany, a country which in my opinion, is a specialist in Christmassy food. Every year in recent times we have been gifted some of her braised red cabbage cooked to her special recipe. Unfortunately this year as MIL has chosen to visit her own family in the mother-land it has fallen to us mere mortals from England to try and re-create it. MIL refuses to give us her recipe, as its a family secret, so I’ve dug deep into my own Germanic heritage and scoured the recipe books in a desperate attempt to find something that might replicate this dish.

Strangely enough, its not something that is a staple in many books, but I was able to find one in Leanne Kitchen’s “Growers Market” which I have altered a tad to my requirements which are: larger quanities, a lack of red wine vinegar and more alcohol.

Braised Red Cabbage:

This dish can be easily be prepared the day before and reheated in the oven when you are warming the plates or above the steaming vegetables.

Ingredients:

1 dessert spoon of clarified butter (ghee)

1 red cabbage, shredded

1 red onion, thinly sliced

2 dessert apples, cored and thinly sliced

1/2 bottle of red wine

2 tablespoons of sherry vinegar

a small glass of masala wine

Melt the butter in a large saucepan and slowly cook the onions until opaque. Add the cabbage and apples, red wine, vinegar and masala. Season with a little salt and pepper.

Cover, bring to a simmer and turn heat to very low. Cook for approx two hours or until the cabbage is soft. Stir the mixture from time to time to ensure that cooking is even and so the bottom doesn’t catch.

If you want it any sweeter then add a tablespoon of honey or brown sugar half way through. And of course, if you want to make it more alcoholic, then feel free to add more booze, it is Christmas after all!

images by avlxyz