My husband and I always seem to struggle with coming up with ideas for lunches. We often end up opting for something of the Lean Cuisine variety and are always disappointed with the amount of food and how unsatisfying they are. Our second go-to lunch idea usually ends up being sandwiches, ugh, sandwiches for two (or more) weeks in a row is kind of gross. So one day while I was cruising Pinterest I stumbled upon Freezer Cooking:$0.24 Microwavable Pasta Lunch Packets from Frugality Gal and I thought, I could totally do that! So I started looking on Amazon to find some containers and found these. Perfect. Obviously the “start up” cost for these lunches the first time is a going to be higher but as long as I do this more than once the cost will go down.

I opted to make a regular red sauce spaghetti with meatballs lunch and an alfredo option. I thought about cooking up some chicken for the alfredo pasta, but decided to be lazy instead…oh well. I choose penne as my past because I figured it would freeze the best. I’m assuming a rotini would work equally as well. I decided to put veggies in the two side containers.

My shopping list:

Penne $.89

Spaghetti sauce $.99

Alfredo sauce $1.69

Meatballs (I don’t remember, I’m going to estimate $5.00 for a bag of 30)

Broccoli $.99

Peas $.89

Corn $.89

California Medley $.99

The lunches were beyond simple to make. The only “cooking” I had to do was to boil the pasta then place on sheet trays in the freezer. Once the pasta was frozen I put approximately one cup of pasta in each large compartment and topped with a quarter cup of sauce (and two meatballs for the red sauce option). The veggie containers held about a half a cup each.