Hot Lunch
Like all, I have been trying to get down from my ultra high wedding weight. I have been doing HMR and find the lack of choice to be very helpful. I do the shakes and fruit all day then eat a healthy meal made by lovely kin-wife.
Today I forgot my fruit and veggies, so I had a co-worker grab me a salad. A small salad. Cost? $5.80. Thinking back to my McDonald days, my value meals were always over $5. WTF? Is there such a thing as a sub-$5 lunch anymore? Everyone brown baggin it? How do you feed yourself at work?
The Corcoran Brothers 
These days I’m surprised if lunch costs under $10. Even if I’m in solo run & gun mode, it’s usually in the $6-8 range.
I don’t have the discipline to brownbag. Or as I prefer to say: I enjoy the chance to get out of the building.
Being as I’m in a fancy new loft style office development in the industrial district, food choices are fairly limited. The going joke in the office is too find an eatery that isn’t named “The Slab” or “The Butcher Block” and doesn’t have a 1970s “Coors On Tap” sign out front. We ate as a Mexican joint in Five Points the other day that was pretty solid. Had a window view where some gang bangers were doing a drug deal in the parking lot. I figured due to the shadiness of the ‘hood, lunch would be $6 (it was at a solid $8). Found a little dump of a sandwich place today and got a sub-par meatball for $6.50 w/chips. The $6 range seems like the new $5 to me, but I would say most “out” lunches average in the $8-$12. I will be brown bagging it at least 3-4 times a week starting Monday. We have some cool outdoor eating locales (parks, picnic tables, etc) around here so it will feel like I am getting away and I may actually finish some of the books that have been piling up on my shelves.
there is a small chain of places here called cali sandwich. vietnamese sandwiches for $2. you can get pork or chicken, or tofu. they also have cold spring rolls, four for $2. it’s cheaper to eat there than it is to cook at home, and pretty good quality.
You can do a salad bar for under $5 at the soopamahket, even if you load up on some of the heavier items like beans and an egg or something. But you probably think salads are for wusses :-).
I like Panera…too much…and that’s typically $7 even if you bring it back to the office and get your own drink.
Wheat bread: 2 pieces
Smoked Turkey: 2-3 oz.
Havarti Cheese: 1 slice
Horseradish mustard: 1-2 tbs.
pickles: to taste
Make a sandwich, you coont.
The mustard should be ‘teaspoons’, but fuck if I remember that abbreviation.
Could you price that sammich out there, buddy?
I answered this to the administrator’s face last evening over sushi, but I neglected to say how bummed out I have become now that the Providence Place Mall has lost the Japan Cafe. Mall sushi had never been better. True, lunch would shoot up to the $8 range, but that was for a sizeable maki roll with a side of tasty brown rice and a soda. Now I’m stuck either bringing microwaveable meals, packing sammiches, or going to Cathay Cathay for their limp vegetables and fatty grilled chicken. And for all the folks pimping the chicken soft taco, eff Taco Bell. I would rather hunt bugs than eat that gah-bahge.