Lunch recipes

it depends what you like, where you live and with means cheap for you.

If you like beans and legumes, it's usually really cheap. I like making mock chicken salad sandwich with chickpeas: Mash rougly a can of chickpea, add some add-in that you have on end like thinly slice celery, carrot, pepper, pickles, olives, fresh herbs etc. Add a few sprinkly of your favorite spices like paprika, garlic powder, curry, etc and a mix as per your liking of mayo, greek yogurt and dijon. Spread on a piece of bread for an open face sandwich, add spinach or lettuce to make it more sandwich like. Bread included it would cost about 5$ for the whole week.

Salads are really easy as well: Start with a base like quinoa, pasta (bigger like penne or small like orzo), couscous, rice. Add veggies to bulk it up (roasted veggie like cauliflower, potato/sweet potato, carrot, beets... or Fresh and crunchy like cucumber, tomatoes, fennel, carrot, avocado..., add some flavor like onion/green onion, cheese, fresh or dried herbs. To keep it lower in calorie skip the dressing and just add lemon or lime juice, or splurge on a low cal dressing at the store.