Cheap, super easy, and healthy lunch ideas?

Well I hate cooking too, but I can put something in a pan or nuke some frozen veggies. Or make a salad, eggs etc. You just manage.

Make a huge pot of soup and eat that for lunches for the week (or freeze half and eat it later). I just made a super-easy lentil soup (dried lentils, onion, carrot, garlic, celery, tomatoes and a few herbs). Huge batch (it'll feed two of us for about 4-5 days) and it cost a few dollars to make. I've also done a cream of celery and a carrot soup in the past few weeks. Again, really cheap and easy but healthy. Otherwise, eggs and tuna are good cheap protein sources. You can make your own yogurt for ridiculously cheap (just need a crock pot). Cheese can be inexpensive and is great with everything. Make double meals at dinner and bring the leftovers for lunch: never just cook a "meal for one". Make enough food to have leftovers for at least a meal or two. Saves a lot of time.

Tuna (in water), plain greek yogurt, your choice of a vessel. Cheap, lots of protein and easy.

I add dehydrated onions for a crunch if you eat it right away or a nice onion flavor if you store it. I also add some brown mustard and some cayenne pepper as some (me) like it hot.

My favorite vessel is triscuits red bean line.

As another said, spending a few hours making soup and freezing it can provide weeks if not months of easy lunches. My sister, god bless her, does this for me every few months.

I would invest in a slow cooker. Cooking would consist of putting in the main ingredients, opening up a can or packet of something, adding water, turning it "ON" and walking away. HUGE time saver and even the worst cook in the world can use one. It is literally impossible to screw it up. There a hundreds of slow cooker recipes online, too.

As someone said before, soup. Use in-season vegetables to make it cheaper. Low calorie, healthy, filling and you can make in advance.
I make a pot or two on the weekends and it does about 8-10 serves. It freezes well too.
Omlette style muffins or bacon and egg muffins are good. I make these in advance for my husband to have for brekky, but they would work for lunch too.

I like chicken sausages (chicken sausage with apple, chicken sausage with artichoke & garlic, chicken sausage with cheddar -- I can't think of a brand name offhand, but you can find these at almost any store) sliced into coins, browned a little in a pan, and thrown into marinara sauce to add to quinoa or pasta. It's not hard to make at all, it tastes delicious, and it's pretty cheap.

Another easy one is to cut up a couple of potatoes (I sometimes skip these depending on how caloriffic I want this to be), dice a stalk of celery, open a couple cans of stewed tomatoes, dice up a strong onion, and slice some carrots into coins. Pour three cans of Swanson's vegetable broth + 1 can of water into a stockpot, bring to a simmer, add your veggies, and let cook with a lid on low heat until everything's tender. Toss in some (drained, rinsed) kidney or garbanzo beans right at the end and you have a delicious veggie soup. Optional: cut a salmon filet or two into bite-sized pieces and add them at the last five minutes of cooking. This is cheap and easy, and it makes enough to last for a week or more -- and it's totally freezeable.


Quiche is really easy, too. Buy a premade deep-dish pie crust (look for low-carb or low-cal if you want), dice up whatever veg you like (I enjoy a strongly flavored quiche so I use tomatoes, spinach, sliced black olives, and strong green onions), whisk together six eggs and mix them with the veg, pour the mixture into the pie crust, grate some cheese over the top, and bake at 375F for 30-40 minutes (or until the center is not jiggly). You get eight servings, you can slice and freeze it for quick morning reheats, and you can put literally whatever you want into it -- I add a few tablespoons of bacon bits, most times. For extra oomph season the egg mixture with white pepper and just the merest sprinkle of nutmeg.

If you're looking for a good way to mix up tuna, try mashing it together with 30-40g avocado, a tablespoon of light mayo, and -- weirdly -- some diced beets. Sprinkle in some nutmeg to enhance the sweetness of the beets and the richness of the mayo and avocado. Dip sweet veggies like yellow peppers or baby carrots in it.