How much do you spend buying lunch a day: £4? £5? How about a week: £25? More? Well, try this for size: the average worker spends £90k on lunch in their lifetime. £90k! That’s insane. It’s also totally unavoidable if you work nine-hour days and commute. One working friend calls her daily trip to her local sandwich shop her ‘falafal wrap tax’ – the price of employment.
Thankfully, for you, we know two women who laugh in the face of excessive expenditure to the extent that they wrote a book about it – The Little Book of Lunch – which (they promise) will save you millions. Well, maybe twenty quid a week. Which, hey, when you're on an internship earning not-enough-for-even-the-occasional-trip-to-Topshop is more than a welcome addition to your bank balance, right? Ditto: If you've just started a £18k a year job and you're still learning how to budget. And how critical tea is.
Anyway, we digress. Sophie Missing and Caroline Craig met while working at Penguin and immediately became packed lunch buddies. ‘We wrote the book because we were sick of work lunches being seen as something of an inconvenience, something "grabbed" or "nipped out to get", explains Caroline. Aside from cost, the downsides to buying out ranged from the crushing disappointment of a chain discontinuing your favourite sandwich, to lack of choice. 'None of the lunch places I went to ever sold what I really wanted to eat, and I would always be slightly disappointed that I’d wasted four quid on something I didn’t really fancy,' says Sophie.
So the book was born and the wonderful thing about this one is that every recipe is accessible, doable and leftover-friendly. Plus, they geared everything around the sort of thing you would normally spend money on – think sandwiches, salads and soups – as opposed to, you know, deconstructed trifles.
Here, they’ve given us five recipes – that’s a recipe for each working day – the ingredients of which cost less than a tenner. So put that in your basket. No, like, do…
Week’s Shopping Ingredients:
1 avocado
3 peppers
1 carrot
1 bunch spring onions
1 bunch mint
1 bunch coriander
1 punnet of cherry tomatoes
1 bag of limes
1 packet rice noodles
1 cucumber
1 small packet mini chicken fillets of the £2.50 variety for Faux pho and noodle salad (assuming you aren’t using leftovers)
1 tin anchovies
sourdough
Store Cupboard Basics: salt, pepper, sugar, olive oil, vegetable oil (or a nut oil, which tastes better) paprika, chilli flakes, fish sauce, soy sauce
Sesame Noodle Salad
1 portion dried rice noodles (egg noodles would be fine too)
3 inch piece of cucumber, sliced
2 spring onions, thinly sliced
1 portion leftover chicken, shredded
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp cider or white wine vinegar
1 tsp sesame oil (if possible)
½ tsp sugar
to garnish
A handful of coriander, washed and leaves picked
Chilli oil (shop bought, or for a speedy DIY version see below)
Method
Fill the kettle, and boil water for your morning tea/coffee.
Add the dried noodles to a heatproof bowl and pour over the excess boiling water, then cover with a tea towel to trap the steam, and leave for 5 minutes.
While you wait, slice the cucumber and onions, and combine the soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil and sugar in your lunch container (mixing well so the sugar dissolves).
Drain the noodles and rinse under cold water, then shake off as much excess water as possible (blot with kitchen towel if necessary).
Add the noodles, chicken, cucumber and spring onions to your lunch container and mix together well. Bring the coriander leaves to work in a separate container, and add these and a drizzle of chilli oil before tucking in.
This is meant to be eaten cold, so you don’t have to worry about battling to get in the office microwave queue at 12.58 on the dot. Any salad-y bits you have in the fridge, like radishes, are a welcome addition.
Extras
To make DIY chilli oil
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 spring onion, thinly sliced
1 tsp chilli flakes
A few black peppercorns
A hefty glug of vegetable or groundnut oil
Cook everything on a medium heat, removing as soon as the garlic begins to colour. Decant into a clean jar and keep for a couple of weeks.
Faux Pho
You’ll need a few utensils for this one – foil, nail scissors, Tupperware and a Thermos. But it’s worth it.
2 spring onions
450ml chicken stock (we like Knorr stockpots)
Dash fish sauce
½ lime
Handful of mint, coriander, basil, leftover chicken
1 portion rice noodles
Fresh chilli to serve
Fill the kettle. Add the chopped spring onions on a low heat and cook until they start to colour. Put the stock in another pan and add the fish sauce, and a quarter of a lime. Heat until almost boiling.
Meanwhile, in a separate container, wrap your pre-cooked chicken in foil. Set aside. Then, place your noodles in a bowl and cover with more boiling water. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave to soften for three minutes.
Your spring onions should be almost done so remove, place in foil and set aside. Now take the stock mixture and decant into a thermos. The noodles should be soft so pour them through a colander, rinse well, and place in Tupperware.
To serve, place all the ingredients into the Tupperware, adding the stock mix last. Snip some chilli with nail scissors, add the rest of the lime and enjoy, preferably outside.
Roasted Red Peppers
This is so easy to make and prepare because it requires very few ingredients. Delicious served with bread or couscous to soak up the juices.
2 red peppers
16 cherry tomatoes
4 anchovies from a tin
1 garlic clove
Olive oil for drizzling
Preheat the oven to 180c/gas 4. Slice the peppers in half and remove the stalk and seeds. Lay the peppers on a baking tray, line with cherry tomatoes, anchovy and garlic, all evenly distributed. Drizzle with oil and roast for 30 minutes. Once cooked, wrap in foil – be careful, the juices will flow freely from this one.
Avocado and Carrot on Sourdough
A sort of lazy open sandwich – the kind of simple, uncomplicated food we all need from time to time. The high-protein and high-fibre toppings make this lunch pretty filling.
2 slices of sourdough bread
1 large carrot, grated
½ ripe avocado
1 spring onion, chopped
1 lime
Olive oil (optional)
½ tsp Paprika
Sea salt
Pepper
At home, pack all of the above ingredients into containers: Bread in one, vegetables in the other. Use little parcels of foil, or folded kitchen roll to transport the dry seasoning.
Lay out your two slices of sourdough. If your office has a toaster, give them a minute or so under it.
Spread the avocado over one slice, and squeeze over half the juice from the lime, plenty of salt, pepper and finally, the paprika. Cover the other slice with the grated carrot, and top with spring onion, the rest of the lime juice, and some more salt and pepper. If you keep olive oil at the office, drizzle some over to finish. Enjoy.
Pearl Barley Salad
Cook the pearl barley the night before and, in the morning before work, all you will need to do is chop and add the fresh ingredients.
40g pearl barley
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 spring onion, chopped
½ red pepper, chopped
½ ripe avocado, scooped into bite-size bits
1 tbsp coriander leaves
1 tbsp mint leaves
5 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
Juice of up to 1 lime
Sea salt
Pepper
Rinse the pearl barley before adding to a pan and covering with plenty of cold water. Add a pinch of salt and bring to the boil, then simmer for 40 minutes, or until the grains are fully cooked.
Once the pearl barley is cooked and cooled, stir in the olive oil, along with the remaining fresh ingredients. Finally squeeze over the lime juice and salt and pepper, tasting as you go until you are satisfied with the seasoning.
Some extra tips
The Little Book of Lunch is published by Square Peg, £15.
And for more tips and tricks to help you through an internship or first job, visit our friends at GoThinkBig.co.uk
Follow Caroline and Sophie on Instagram @carolinecraig and @sophiemissing
Pictures: David Loftus
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.