Lunch Box Ideas On A Budget

*Advertorial Feature With Aldi*

The new school year has started and I am sure I there are lots of parents like me that cherish the idea of lunch box ideas on a budget.

Kids sandwiches are all well and good but lets face it they can be boring and costly so I have been looking at things we can add into lunch boxes that are cost effective and even more so as I am using only ingredients from Aldi.

Fruit Snacking Pots 

Please tell me I am not alone in getting really agitated with the cost of single serving snacks?! 

Nothing infuriates me more than hiked up prices and so I have stopped buying single packs of raisins for a while now. These often cost in the region of £2 for 14 servings of 14g. This means each serving is 14p 

I have been buying 500g packs of raisins and decanting them in to our old reusable pots for snack and buying the bigger pack of raisins from Aldi for £1.19 means I can get around 33 snack pots from the £1.19 meaning that they cost me around 3p a snack! 

Another think my kids adore but I hate paying still prices for is fruit jelly pots! At around £1.50 for a pack of 4 making them appox 37p each, these are ridiculously expensive especially if you have 2 kids eating them.

I have been buying fruit cocktail in a tin from Aldi at 59p and a packet of jelly for 39p (total 98p) and I have been making them myself and using our old weaning pots again I have been able to make 9 fruit jellies making them about 11p per jelly pot! 

Mini Blueberry Muffins 

I am afraid when it comes to packed lunches I love to find things I can make cheaply and preferably batch cook and freeze. 

Mini blueberry muffins work really well for me. Both kids adore blueberries and love my mini muffins. 

The bonus is once they have completely cooled you can freeze them too and take out however many you want at a time. You just need to store them in an airtight container in the freezer and use within 2 months. 

These mini muffins are super easy to make as it really is just about adding the ingredients and mixing together then popping in the oven, all in all taking only 10 minutes prep time!

The recipe below is the one I use to make 24 muffins:

Blueberry Mini Muffin Recipe 

Cook Time – 20-25 mins 

Ingredients: 

340g Self Raising Flour 
1 tsp Baking Powder
3 Eggs 
100g Caster Sugar 
220g Milk
120g Butter (melted, but cooled)
1 tsp Vanilla Extract
200g Fresh Blueberries 

I tend to pop these into the lunch box and cover using a beeswax wrap to protect it and it obviously cuts down on plastic wrap too! 

Ditching Sandwiches For Pasta 

My kids get bored with sandwiches easily. However, both kids are totally in love with pasta so making something for the kids like Tuna Pasta is a great alternative to sandwiches. 

Tuna Pasta can be made in advance and I tend to make it when we are all wanting lunches making or if I can make enough for 2 days for all of us it can be even cheaper as I make a massive batch and pop it in the fridge till its time to make up packed lunches! 

I tend to add extras into our pastas as the kids are great with vegetables as long as they are the ones they like. In this pasta I added in peppers and sweetcorn but I have been known to add in, cucumbers, tomatoes (deseeded) and even spring onions. Cheese is something that also goes well with this pasta so it really is about playing around with not only what you have in the fridge but also what your kids are enjoying anyway. 

This lunchbox above cost approximately 80p make and has 1-2 servings of your child’s fruit/veg servings in it too! 

For me being lunch box ready and planning in advance can obviously be a real money saver. As can heading into your local Aldi to buy your lunch box essentials at a fantastically low price!