How to stay healthy and live better

When you work in an office it is often very tempting to eat or order out. However, this quickly becomes very expensive. When I worked in an office, I found that lunch costs were eating into my monthly finances, and I decided to start making my own lunches.

Top 3 Cheap Healthy Lunch Ideas

There are many ways of putting together cheap lunch ideas for the office. The great thing is that many home made lunches are often healthier than lunches bought from a deli or take-away. Making your own lunches will not only save you money, but also make you healthier. I had some favorite lunches which I used to make, and I thought I would share some of them with you.

How to Make a Quick and Easy Tomato Soup

Tomato soup is really easy to make. I never used fresh tomatoes, instead I opted for tinned sieved tomatoes which works just as well. This simple lunch idea can be made in a crock-pot or cooked on top of the stove for 10 minutes. 

For this recipe you need two tins of sieved tomatoes, 2 sticks of celery, one onion, one stock cube and 4 cups of water. You can add your own favorite spices, and mine were basil or rosemary, but thyme is nice as well.

Put all the ingredients in a pot and crumble in the stock cub. If you are using a crock pot this recipe will take about 2 hours, but on the stove it only take 10 minutes. 

If you can't heat your soup up at work, invest in a good quality Thermos flask. This healthy lunch option tastes great with a crusty bread roll.

Top Tips for a Healthy Sandwich Lunch

A sandwich lunch is always amongst the top the of cheap healthy lunch ideas. There are many different versions of this lunch, but a nice idea is your classical chicken sandwich. Chicken is rich in protein and will give you energy for the rest of the afternoon. 

If you want to be extra healthy, you can always replace the mayonnaise with a yogurt dressing. Carrots and celery both mix well with yogurt style dressings. Add an apple and you have a really healthy energizing lunch. Just what you need when you are busy at work. By the way, why not spice up your lunch time sandwich with some guacamole.

Make Your Own Salad Lunch

You can't eat tomato and chicken sandwiches all the time, so a salad lunch is a great summer option. Lettuce does tend to go limp quickly, but green sprouts such as alfa alfa will stay fresher for longer. Sprouts have a high nutritional value, and are fun and easy to grow yourself.

There are many ways of making your salad lunch tasty. Try to experiment with different pastas, dressings and main ingredients. A really healthy main ingredient is cold water fish such as tuna or salmon. Cold water fish are rich in Omega 3 Essential Fatty Acids, and will help to keep us healthy. Tinned tuna is just fine in your salad, but you may want to buy fresh salmon. Steamed fresh salmon is really tasty, and goes well with many different dressings.

I could carry on with many more cheap healthy lunch ideas, but I learned that it is really important to experiment in your kitchen at home. There are so many healthy foods which are easy to use. However, I would like to point out that cheap healthy lunch ideas should never be boring. The key to a good lunch is always variation, you don't want to eat the same thing every day.

Cooking from scratch is not difficult, and there are many reasons why you should cook from scratch. Home cooking is often much healthier as you know exactly which ingredients go into a dish. When you buy ready made food from a super market you might also be buying a lot of extra ingredients which you don't really want. Ask yourself if you really want to pay for all of those E numbers, and other artificial ingredients such as monosodium glutamate. When you cook from scratch, you don't need to worry about artificial ingredients. Another problem with ready made food is that it is very high in salt. Salt can cause high blood pressure but when you cook at home you can add a suitable amount of salt.

Food cooked from scratch also tastes much better. Scratch cooking with fresher ingredients means that the nutritional value of the food is retained. Ready made from the supermarket is normally low in vitamin B but fresh home cooked food retains the vitamin B. Also the food is only cooked once, ready made meals are normally already cooked once when you buy them in the supermarket and heated up at home. This means that even more of the nutritional value is destroyed, and water soluble vitamins such as B and C are lost. Both vitamin B and C are crucial for better health, and in today's modern world of ready made food, many people suffer vitamin deficiencies. Home made food will also boost your health, and you will soon notice that you have more energy.

Another reason is of course taste. Cooking from scratch does not have to be complicated, and you can also use your favorite spices. If you have ever watch a cooking show on TV, you would have noticed that most famous chefs do not use a lot of complicated ingredients. Instead they focus on some good quality base ingredients complimented with two or three spices to make up a dish. Making food less complicated is an art in itself but there are some excellent cook books available. Once you get started you will notice how simple home cooking can be made. Try to find a couple of recipes that you really like the look of and experiment with difference ingredients. Excellent starter recipes are pasta and rice dishes as it is easy to add different ingredients and flavors.

You will also find that home cooking will save you money. Ready made food can be quite expensive to buy. Once you have stocked up on your base ingredients such as pasta, rice, potatoes and spices, you can look out for special offers in the supermarket. Vegetables are often on special offers but rather buying lots of one particular offer focus on buying little and often. You will be surprised at the difference in taste, and how much more enjoyable a meal becomes once you start adding more fresh ingredients to your cooking. Also look out for special offers on meat, and cheese. Meat is great to buy when it is on special offer as you can always freeze it, and get it out of the freezer when you need it. Cheese is another useful product to always have at hand. A cheese like mascarpone can be used in both savory and sweet dishes. It is excellent when making cheese cakes but it is also useful when it comes to making pasta sauces. A lot of people presume carbonara is a complicated pasta sauce to make but it can be made from mascarpone cheese, mushrooms and bacon.  You can also add mascarpone cheese to tuna bakes, or a peppercorn sauce for steak.

Perhaps the way to look at scratch cooking and home cooking is as an exciting opportunity to learn something new. Who knows, you might even be the next super chef.