The trick is being able to eat the same meal for the entire day. Cook once and eat it throughout the day. lol
But seriously: for the week. I have multiple family members who do this and used to do it myself: most meals last up to a week in the fridge, so just put a little extra in Sunday night so you have leftovers for lunches.
My previous version of this was to start each week with giant: salad, pasta salad, fruit salad. Then I have a complete meal, including variety by just throwing a protein in the toaster oven.
I’m trying to restart something like this now that its back to just me all week: I have a 10 lb pork shoulder for the smoker!
Or for the entire month. It saves money… :'(
Breakfast is the worst. Sausage, ham, pancakes, cereal, eggs, hash browns, or toast. Want a breakfast burrito? Take a normal burrito, add scrambled eggs. Want a breakfast sandwich? Swap out sliced bread with english muffin or bagel, optionally add an egg.
Screw that. I’m having leftover spaghetti for breakfast.
Avocado toast! With an egg on top!
Bread in the toaster; mush an avocado with salt, pepper, lime juice; fry an egg and put it on top
One of the greatest freedoms of adulthood is realizing you can have whatever you want for breakfast and nobody can stop you imo
Cold pizza breakfast hits in all the right spots.
Look I’m not saying that cooking your own lunch is a prerequisite for being an adult. However complaining about the quality of prepared food while not acknowledging you could just cook is sure as hell immature.
Diet shakes :)
I think something that is missing in the minds of the “but you could just…” posters here is that the mindset of the OP doesn’t always come from laziness, immaturity, or the inability to understand how to pack a sandwich, it sometimes comes from crippling or barely functional depression.
I work from home and the thought of even making a sandwich most days in the middle of the day is just too much. I don’t want to make a sandwich; I want to go back to bed for eight to ten years and I agree that lunch is the fucking worst.
(But so is breakfast, and dinner, and all of the meetings, and work, and life generally speaking, etc.)
Then you are just burnout, this ain’t complicated. If you need to rest, fucking rest.
Oh wow! My crippling depression is cured! Why didn’t I think of this before? Thank you so much!
This is precisely why always working from home is unhealthy and the context switch would be worth the psychological boost it provides if not for the commute. I know people really liked the liberation of WFH at first but I just don’t think it is going to be sustainable. It has nothing to do with productivity, but it’s the next simmering mental health crisis.
I like how the “why don’t you just” people have now moved on to armchair psychology.
it sometimes comes from crippling or barely functional depression.
For sure but here on Lemmy it seems to be the case in like 80% of posts. If that many people were actually depressed across the whole population, civilization would long have collapsed.
As a non-UKer, meal deals are amazing.
Yes georgia, it ends when you marry mr successful and he pays for everything.
I don’t understand; could somebody please explain?
Prepping food is hard and buying food is worse. The meme comments on the burden of needing to feed yourself as an adult.
Thank you for explaning. I appreciate it.
Sadly, I can’t say I share her perspective. I regularly struggle to buy food, so… ¯\_(°°)/¯
Still doesn’t make any sense at all. Is she suffering from some sort of eating disorder?
Yes the disorder is being lazy (or lacking the drive to cook) and poor (or not wanting to spend money on food). Being 30+ compounds these disorders, thanks.
This bitch has first world problems and she thinks they’re huge.
In reality it’s as simple as a sammich so she just looks dumb.
Learn how to cook. It’s not that hard to throw something together that’s good after being microwaved. The other day I made some bitter-orange chicken with rice. It was 30 minutes waiting and 4 minutes coating the chicken in the pan with the sauce.
In Brazil, if you work more that 6hs a day, the company have to give you lunch. The majority of them, give you a pre paid debit card that can be used in restaurants. This mean that they are a lot of money there that can be used in restaurants, so any office building have lots of restaurants around.
From my union contract, I get 40R daily to lunch, and the restaurant I go they serve “prato feito” (beans, rice, salad, meat) for 25, and use the rest for some icecream or to eat something with my wife at weekends.
That’s actually a very cool concept.
It’s works close with transit costs too, the employee can opt in to pay up to 6% of its salary, then what is miss to cover all the transit costs is paid 50/50 by the employer and the government. For example, if I need to take a bus (5R) and a metro (5R), that sum to 20R daily in transit costs, 20R × 22 working days = 440 at month. Suppose a salary of 2000 * 6% = 120. The employee pay 120, the employer 160 and the government other 160. I’m fortunate to be in a position where I don’t need that benefit anymore because I live in bike distance to the office, but it saved my ass when I had to take a bus to the metro station, a metro and then another bus every day.
Damn, didnt knew that brasil had such bonuses. I don’t know how good your public transport is, but having this option is great.
Cooking takes SO MUCH TIME when you’re single. But eating out is so expensive. It sucks.
Cooking takes the same amount of time whether you’re single or not?
Like wtf.
Pasta boils at the same speed regardless of how many people are in the house.
That’s the problem. It’s more efficient with bigger meals. If you’re single, you have to cook and then clean. If there’s two of you, you can divide tasks.
I have good news for you:
Being single doesn’t mean you can only cook single portions of stuff.
You can cook two portions, and have an entire meal ready to eat anytime during the next few days.
You might even find yourself adventurous and cook three portions, and have TWO whole meals ready to go.
But be wary, most people who just learn the ability to plan ahead quickly get carried on and start preparing 5, 6 or even 7 servings ahead of time and I only recommend this for experienced meal preppers who know what they are doing.
Also, clean as you go, and cleaning suddenly doesn’t become this insurmountable task.
I swear to god half of the people in these threads are not fit for life.
The other half are armchair quarterbacks who can’t fathom that anything is ever difficult for other people.
meals ready to go.
Reheating leftovers is a gamble. Sometimes reheated food just tastes like ass, no matter how good it was fresh.
clean as you go
It still takes twice as much effort, IF the recipe you’re making leaves time for it.
Jesus, you condescending fuck, you think I don’t know this shit? Are you so damn arrogant you think no one else has figured out meal prepping? You think you’re goddamn einstein because you discovered cleaning as you go? We fucking know. And it sucks.
Douchenozzle.
of course I am being condescending.
I am talking to a supposedly grown ass man having mental breakdowns because they have to clean the dishes after cooking.
Good news, they’re making eating in expensive too, so you can get the full experience!
Hahaha learn to cook. Stir fry takes under 30 min. BLT in like 5 min. Pizza in under an hr including making the dough.
I see you never have to wash dishes or chop vegetables.
They’re like parallel processes. Rice takes about 20 min. Start that first and you can have the stir Fry done before the rice finishes with plenty of time to clean up. A sandwich leaves just a knife and cutting board. Just rinse that off. And if I was making pizza I’d make the dough the night before and the rest is simple, clean up when the pizzas in the oven.
Personally love leftovers. Make extra rice, use the leftovers in a burrito. Make extra pizza dough and put some on the freezer, etc
Yeah same. I just try to cook a meal on Sunday but it doesn’t get me through the entire week. Not to mention I usually need a second meal at night when I work out. It’s too much.
If you don’t have a freezer that can hold two weeks worth of meals, buy one. I have three homemade frozen pizzas and a half dozen chicken pot pies waiting right now.
I can cook a whole roast chicken on Sunday and enjoy chicken tacos, chicken sandwiches, etc. all week.
I can cook a five liter pot of chili/soup/stew and freeze it into pint containers; I’ve got a nice hot meal any time.
Slow cookers are another option.
My problem with that is defrosting. It requires timing and planning, which is tough due to impromptu work based meals. And some stuff once frozen tastes like crap defrosted.
I do liberally use the slow cooker.
What are you defrosting?
You don’t have to defrost anything except raw meat and even that can go straight into the oven if you want to season it after it’s cooked. If you have a frozen pizza/pot pie just throw it in a pre-heated oven.
Also, you can defrost quickly with a microwave.
Soup, beans, pasta. Also, for cooking: frozen meat. Veggies are also difficult, yeah there’s flash frozen veg that can work but that requires cookery too.
Store made frozen pizzas and pies taste like crap and are expensive. Homemade ones take a lot of time.
Soups are still good especially with a crock pot but I get so sick of soup.
I’m lucky because I have an Italian food shop near me that makes homemade uncooked pizza. I can take it home and cook right away or freeze. Same with the chicken pot pies.
The main thing I’d say is get in the habit of making giant servings and freeze them. I will make 5 liters of stew/chili/soup on a Sunday and freeze it in pint containers. A different recipe the next Sunday. Now I’ve got 20 meals sitting in the freezer.
It takes as much effort to make a big meal as a small one; make a meal big enough for four people and freeze three portions.
If you practice and prepare you can cut down on some of the time. I used to live right next to a street of fast food joints so it was never worth it to cook myself from a time standpoint unless I was just having some frozen garbage. Now it’s a 15 minute trip to pick something up if there’s no line so I cook a lot more and with experience I’ve been able to streamline things so it goes faster. Also make enough for 2-3 meals when you cook and then “leapfrog” through the week eating the leftovers. That way you don’t have to cook every day but also don’t have to eat the same thing every day.
If you find a few recipies you really like and learn how to do them from memory, and then make them a lot, you learn lots of efficiencies and shortcuts that save a ton of time. Making stuff without a recipie at all is even faster.
Don’t eat lunch. When you finally convince your boss to let you work 8 hour days with no break instead of 9 hour days with an awkward 1 hour unpaid break you can do nothing with, that’s 1 hour you can spend on yourself that you didn’t have before. Also, now you don’t have to waste as much of your spare time exercising (to fight weight gain caused by eating 3 meals a day as an adult) so the time savings are twofold.
Not everyone can do that unfortunately as it is illegal. We’re “forced” to have a lunch break, which I support the idea of, I just hate that I have to stay the extra hour when “normal” full time jobs are 9-5 and the lunch is in that 8 hours…
That was
one of the fewthe only advantage of living in Texas. It was not difficult to get out of that 1 unpaid hour “break” so I could go home earlier and get paid the same for spending less time at work. Lawmakers pushing for mandated unpaid breaks are helping corporations keep their employees at work longer.Mandated breaks should be paid. Nothing personal gets accomplished in an hour, it is just a chance to recharge so you can work even harder. For that reason, it serves the company, and should be paid time.
Most of my lunches are leftovers, but many of them are things like a burger or a bratwurst that I can cook with little effort. Or I can buy something.
Imagine complaining about £4 for lunch, I’m lucky if I get out for under $20.
I interpreted it as a 4 pound tv dinner. But maybe I’m reading it wrong.
[Edit] Now I am doubting what even a meal deal is
british people are poor
I’ve seriously considered buying MREs because I can’t be bothered to meal prep.
It’s still basically canned food, it’s just that the can is a pouch. It’s more expensive too.
Most MREs that I’ve looked at are a bit more elaborate than your average canned product.
But the idea is the same, yes. It’s more interesting than your typical canned meal, and it’s more expensive, but the quality of the food, if you can call it that, is not dissimilar.
MREs usually are a more “complete” meal with a variety of components, while canned meals are just a volume of a single component.
For me it’s mainly that it adds variety.
And sure, there’s MREs that are like, stew, or soup, that you would probably be better off just grabbing a can of ready to eat Campbell’s or something… But there’s way interesting options than that too.
I once saw a “taco” MRE. It was little more than some “beef” (that you had to heat up) and “cheese” and some other fairly sad toppings on a small tortilla… But I would still take that over a can of chunky beef soup any day.
The nice thing is that MREs are shelf stable for a really long time, so you can get a box of them and shove them in your trunk, or into a desk drawer and then you don’t have to worry about lunch for a month. Longer if you occasionally go out for lunch with coworkers to local food places near your workplace.
Presently, I don’t work in an office (my job is 100% work from home), so I don’t really need it. I can get the same variety from a frozen meal, which is arguably easier, and it’s definitely cheaper than MREs.
I also have considered buying a few boxes as emergency food and throwing them in the trunk of my car. I live in Canada, and getting stranded in a blizzard isn’t impossible. I have access to my trunk from the cabin of my car, so I shouldn’t need to get out to get them and I could stay nourished while waiting for rescue. MREs are supposed to be paired with heating/cooking packs, which would help the car warm up when I’m having one, and with a decently sized container of drinking water, I could wait weeks for rescue, as long as I have adequate protection from the elements (jackets, blankets, etc), and some way to dispose of my bodily waste without contaminating my “living” area. I almost always travel with a radio (I’m a certified amateur operator, aka, ham radio), and a battery bank for my cellphone.
For a couple hundred dollars (maybe? Maybe more? IDK what the prices are for MREs right now), myself and a passenger could survive for a while being stranded in the white wasteland of Canada, without really having to do anything… Just waiting for rescue.
With global warming, last year we barely got snow where I am, and I don’t travel much, so the whole thing is on the back burner at best. The idea was to have it, and if I don’t need it, a few months before everything expires, the MREs become my lunch, and I buy a fresh box for my vehicle.
Yeah, there’s some stuff on the side, but get a can of chef boyardee, a sealed packet of crackers and a pop tart, and that’s pretty much it. Add some Qwik and Gatorade powder for hydration, maybe. At 250$ per 12-pack it’s more expensive than eating out.
I’m involved with the Canadian cadet program, and these are the exact ones we eat when we go on expédition, they’re nothing fancy. They are convenient, though.
Dont forget to put it on a tray.
I’m not a monster.
Nice. Mmk…
It’s not even an age thing, but more an economic issue, I never ran into this as an issue when the cost of eating out was affordable. Don’t feel like prepping lunch the night before? Screw it, I’ll pickup something during my lunch break for $3-4. But now that $3-4 is $10+
my weekly work lunch is a soda and a sandwich with a bag of chips. It’s $20. 5 years ago it was $12.
I find you can’t even get a sandwich anymore for less than $15.
(Fast food may be slightly cheaper. I wouldn’t know because I don’t frequent fast food chains.)
For some reason fast food is even more expensive. You’re not missing out on anything.