bring my lunch to work.

Not together, obviously.

Last Monday evening I spent $8.32 on a bag of Smartfood, a loaf of bread, and a thing of Oscar Mayer salami. I had cheese at home. For the next four days I ate just that food for lunches – though I did wind up having peanut butter on Friday.

Today I got lunch at Au Bon Pain. It cost me $8.14.

Holy crap.

I’ve gotten into the habit of going to Starbucks each morning to get a non-fat grande chai, extra hot, with a lemon poppy muffin. The people there know me. I know them. It scares me to have the kind of intimacy with the crew at Starbucks wherein I call them by their names and they do the same to me… and they just start making my order when I walk in the door.

But the biggest part of the Starbucks issue is that it’s really freakin’ expensive. And the goal of taking my lunch to work is partly about health and partly about expense. So my next mini-goal is to try to split things up – I am allowed to buy breakfast OR lunch each day, but only one. Never both. If I can bring both breakfast & lunch, nifty… but if not, I must make the difficult decision each morning as to whether I want to go see Jamie and David and Rachel for my morning repast, or save my money for lunch like normal people.