With the CnD on vacation, many of us will be looking for other cheap and convenient ways to feed ourselves. The problem is that those two things seem to have an inverse relationship. Maximize convenience by eating at the caf, plaza, or another CnD, and your wallet gets minimized. Conversely, if you maximize cheapness by packing your own food, you’ve minimized convenience by having to cook and pack things from your kitchen. Somewhere in between the two extremes there must be a happy medium – you just have to find it.
Call me crazy, but it’s probably easier to pack a lunch that’s convenient than to lobby Tim Hortons to sell $0.50 bagels, so I will share some advice on how to make packing your own food as simple as possible. Before you get lazy just thinking about it and stop reading, consider that if you pack lunch or dinner instead of buying it to-go, you can easily eat a filling meal for under $5. You’ll also like what you’re eating, or at least hopefully not hate it.
The most convenient of all foods are the grab-and-go types. If you’re almost late for the bus, it’s handy to have food you can just grab while running out the door. Realistically, it probably won’t be the most delicious meal you’ve had, but you won’t be hungry and you’ll have lots of snacks. Fruit and granola bars are always key to have around, and if you ask me it’s completely legit to eat a red pepper or carrot without cutting it up. The best fruits and veggies are the ones that won’t get squished beside a textbook or pencil case. Some trusty staples are apples, oranges, pears, cucumbers, or broccoli. Other snacks you may have around are muffins, juice, nuts, or bagels. If you’re really pressed for time there’s always that mostly finished bag of bread.
However, let’s hope you have at least five minutes to plan out your food. That’s enough time to make a sandwich if you’ve got the stuff on hand, but then you’re stuck with the sandwich dilemma: use Tupperware and find it looking more like a salad mixed up in the box, or plastic wrap it only to find it obscurely deformed in your bag. My suggestion is to make a wrap instead. Pitas and tortillas are more robust than fluffy bread, and if it’s the last one in the bag, then you have something to transport it in. Spreads like peanut butter or hummus are easier to wrap up, but stir-fry or curry leftovers usually work in wraps too.
This brings us to another (almost) grab-and-go meal: last night’s dinner. If you have 2 minutes in the morning and cook in large batches, you can probably find a quick lunch in the fridge. Instead of putting the whole pot of leftover pasta in the fridge the night before, pack it in a bunch of meal-sized containers that can be stuck in a microwave. Also make sure the lids are tight-fitting and that you pack a fork! Even freezing meal-size portions works if you make too much or like to plan way in advance. But this is starting to sound like a lot of work again. One way to share the work is to split cooking or lunch-making with your roommate. Assuming your schedules and tastes are compatible, if you make lunch on days your roomie is busy and vice versa, your stress level and wallet will thank you.
How much will your wallet thank you? I re-emphasize: it’s easy to go under $5 a meal with packed food! Eating out costs at least $5 if you want to get full, and then you have to walk there, wait in line, and usually find somewhere different to eat. Having your food on you lets you eat whenever and wherever is convenient. Most of us pack meals some of the time and realize it saves money, but it’s the time (or laziness) factor that stops us from doing it more often. Hopefully this has given you a couple of ideas on how to survive the closing of the CnD and come of it well-fed and with some spare change for its grand re-opening.
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