Month One Totals

Okay I now have things set up in a spreadsheet so hopefully can stay on top of the numbers. Summary page coming soon.

Total expenditures for cook-at-home food in January was $81.72.

Breakdown is as follows

Whole Foods $55.07 (68%)
Compare $11.86 (14%)
Food Lion $11.57 (14%)
Bruegger’s $3.22 (4%)

The totals are a little skewed by the Food Lion purchase, which was dry milk and buttermilk, which are basically annual (at most) purchases that both happened to be needed at the same time. The total also included the BLIZZARD purchases, corn flakes and soy milk, which I may eat or may hang onto for a few weeks. We’ll see.

I made 11 trips to the store, all of them on foot except for the Food Lion trip, which I stopped at in the midst of a bunch of errands. If anyone needs to know where the IRS office is in Durham, just let me know.

The average expenditure was $7.43. The per-trip costs were generally either around $6 or around $12, with a few $2/$3 and one $15. That’s pretty standard.

As noted in the beginning, I’m not including food eaten out as part of the project, because I have work meetings and go out with friends and things like that, and if I’m doing this for three months, I’m not going to go out and drink water like I did on the Dollar a Day project. Even I have to draw the line somewhere.

However in the interest of full exhibitionism, I will report on that here as well.

I had three work meals at which I spent a total of $28.92 ($9.64 per meal) and three nonwork meals at which I spent a total of $26.39 ($8.80 per meal). That’s probably about average too. A little higher than usual for work, usually I’ll have just one or two meetings a month, and possibly a little low for nonwork, since it’s basketball season and watching games involves leaving the premises. But overall a pretty normal month.

Road Food

Events by the Truckload - BugFest 2008

One of the programs offered by The Scrap Exchange is a creative arts service called Events by the Truckload, where we take a truck filled with barrels of stuff we’ve collected from local businesses (leftover cones and tubes from textile mills, designer fabric samples from decorators, matte board from frame shops, funky plastic stuff from labs, etc.) to large festivals and events and let people make things out of it. For instance, things like this…

Scrap Fire Truck

It’s a great, fun activity, though possibly difficult to fully appreciate without seeing it. Or actually participating in it. People definitely get it once they start doing it, though it’s one of those things where the end result doesn’t always reflect the value of the activity. As we like to say, it’s process, not product. (And as usual, we seem to be ahead of the curve — I recently ran across some information about process-based art.)

I’ve been working at events since 2003 and one of the things I’ve had to try to figure out during that time is how to eat on the road without spending too much money and/or feeling gross.

Event staff get paid to work at events, and we also get a per diem of $15 per event day to help defray food costs. I don’t generally count food I get with my per diem money as being out of my normal budget, which may seem like splitting hairs (and/or CHEATING as I am wont to being accused of doing) but the reason I do that is because you really need a different mind set when shopping for things you’ll be eating when you don’t have access to a kitchen. Things that might seem not worth it if I’m comparing it with what I would make at home are likely to seem quite reasonable compared with what I’d be able to get on the road. So I need to make sure that’s how I’m thinking when I’m shopping for event food, and taking it from a separate budget line ensures that I do that.

The thing about working at overnight events is that it’s generally extremely physically demanding — you leave the day before the event, get to the hotel usually late in the evening, then up by 7 or so in the morning to get to the event location, figure out where you’re supposed to set up, unload the truck (20-30 barrels, 4+ bins filled with smaller stuff), move the truck, get back to the location and finish setting everything up, then spend the next 5 to 7 hours on your feet picking materials up and putting them back in the barrels, trying to keep things from blowing away, helping participants make stuff, explaining where the materials come from, singing the praises of reduce/REUSE/recycle, and just generally talking to people about The Scrap Exchange. At the end of the event, you go get the truck, load everything back up, and drive home.

Because the activity is so exhausting, I don’t really feel bad about eating junk food the days I’m working, and often that’s the easiest thing to do, just stop at a fast food place on the drive back and pick something up. (Beans and rice may be one of my favorite meals, but I love a Big Mac as much as the next gluttonous American. I was talking to a friend once who said she’d never had a Big Mac. I was like, “Really? You’ve never had a Big Mac?” She said no, her family had always been completely obsessed with health. I paused for a second and said, “They’re good.” She just laughed at me.)

However, if I’m doing a multi-day event, I’ve learned that I can only take so much junk food before it loses its appeal, and I’m really much better off making sure I have some good snacks with me.

Now that there’s a Trader Joe’s near me, sometimes I’ll make a trip over there to stock up, especially if I’m working at a long, demanding, multi-day event. Trader Joe’s has very good prices on dried fruit and nuts, and good snack foods like pita chips and those great peanut butter filled pretzels.

So for a 2- or 3-day event like Merlefest — which is a total madhouse for three straight days, it’s completely insane — I’ll do a really strategic plan, stocking up at Trader Joe’s and also preparing things at home, so I’ll have snack-type foods I can eat quickly plus something like sesame noodles or hummus that has some protein, along with cheese and crackers, some kind of bread (banana bread or pumpkin bread or something like that) with nuts or sunflower seeds, and a variety of fruit and sweets. Just a good mix of stuff that will keep for a few days in a cooler and will keep my energy up throughout the day, eating a little at a time.

For a one-day event, I’ll usually just stop at Whole Foods and hit the bulk bins for some combination of dried fruit (figs, prunes, and/or mangoes), nuts (almonds, walnuts, cashews, or pecans), and maybe some granola or other snack-y kind of thing. Sometimes I’ll get a piece of fruit that will travel okay — apple, banana, orange — and usually pick up a Luna bar, which were expensive then cheap then the last time I went to get one were expensive again. I actually love Kind bars but I’m not always able to talk myself into $1.79, even when it’s coming out of my per diem money.

If I remember, I’ll stop at Bruegger’s and get a bagel and then take a small container of peanut butter with me.

This gives me something fairly substantial (bagel with peanut butter) for breakfast or lunch — or both, half in the morning half in the afternoon — plus dried fruit for quick energy and nuts to fill me up. (I find that a few handfuls of nuts really goes a long way.)

If I didn’t bring a bagel, I’ll have a Luna bar, which are nicely filling and very convenient and keep indefinitely, which is great — if I don’t eat it at one event, I can use it for the next, or just keep it in the pantry and eat it later in a pinch.

Sometimes I’ll eat breakfast at the hotel — usually there’s a complimentary breakfast buffet included with the room — but I’m not usually hungry when I first get up, and also I’ve learned that eating a little bit of breakfast, especially a little bit of high-carb breakfast, sweet rolls or cereal and juice, is worse for me than no breakfast at all. So I might have a hard-boiled egg and some milk or something, but in general, I stick with the food I brought.

Often I make my favorite peanut butter-oatmeal-chocolate-chip cookies to bring with me, which give me a good shot of energy and are substantial enough with the oats and peanut butter to last for a while. That’s how I started thinking of those as Food Cookies.

So all of that gets me through the day pretty well, then we can stop for dinner on the way home if we want. My preferred option for healthy road food is Subway, I have them put all kinds of vegetables on, no mayo just oil and vinegar, and it’s good and sometimes it really hits the spot. But if I don’t feel like being healthy, I don’t worry about it. We’ll go to Taco Bell or McDonald’s or wherever and I eat junk food and figure it prevents me from wanting it some other time.

However a few years ago, I realized that I had started to associate working at events with eating junk food. This would probably be fine if I was working one or two events a year but I had a bunch of events scheduled in a row and I was already at my maximum acceptable weight and I really didn’t need to be eating junk food throughout the entire spring. But it is true that sometimes a fast food place is your only option on a trip like that.

What to do?

I decided that as a compromise I would let myself stop at whatever fast food places I wanted, and I could eat anything I wanted, except French fries.

French fries aren’t necessary. There’s no way my brain could try to convince me that it really NEEDED French fries, the way it could convince me that I really NEEDED to stop at McDonald’s — because I was hungry and had been working all day and that’s all there is and anyway it’s cheap. It’s fine, whatever, don’t worry about it.

So I decided that everything was fair game but no French fries and what I quickly discovered is that if I couldn’t have French fries, I had no real interest in getting fast food. It just didn’t appeal to me at all.

So that was a good lesson and I go back to that every now and then if I’ve somehow ended up in junk food mode and am having trouble putting a stop to it. You want junk food? Sure, go for it. Just no French fries.

Mmm, okay, never mind.

Last week I went to Charlotte to talk to festivals and events people to try to convince them to hire The Scrap Exchange for events, and I knew I’d get food at the conference but decided to take some snacks with me too, just in case.

I spent $7.04 out of my allotted $30 per diem, leaving me with $22.96 to spend later on the trip, or to save for future snacks or junk food. (I ended up spending about $15 of it on the trip, on dinner on the way home and some juice for the drive.)

Receipt - Road Food

I got a tangelo (Tangelos Minneola) , my very favorite but unfortunately somewhat pricey kind of orange, plus some granola (Honey Gone Nuts Gr) and some whole wheat fig bars (Whole Wheat Honey). Also some figs (Unsulphured Turkis) and some nuts (Whole Raw Almonds). I also made some bread using the universal muffin recipe from the Tightwad Gazette, which I’ll write about later in a separate post.

The food at the conference was good, so I didn’t eat too much of what I brought, just the orange and a couple figs and some almonds. But the good thing about getting food like this with my per diem money is that if I don’t eat it at the event, I can eat it later in the week and it lowers my grocery bill overall.

So I had some extra snacks for the week and that was great.

And yes, I know, I’m such a cheater.

Week Four

I’ve been working on a routine where I hit Compare on Monday and re-stock the fruit supply, which has been working pretty well so far. I can always make things from the freezer or pantry, but when I rely on that too much, I end up not eating as much fruit as I’d like. Smoothies are a good freezer option, but better in the summer than in the winter. Having a frozen drink for breakfast isn’t so appealing in January.

So in Week Four (1/25 – 1/31), I continued the routine and went to Compare on Monday.

Week Four, Part I

The main purpose was to get some citrus (tangerines, oranges, grapefruit), but also I knew I was going to make black beans and rice later in the week so wanted to get what I needed for that (tomatoes, green pepper, jalapeno). Avocados were on special for $0.69 each, which is exceptionally cheap even for Compare, so I picked up one of those while I was there. I had onions and garlic at home, and was using dried beans and rice from the pantry, and lime juice from the freezer, so all I had to get were the fresh vegetables.

For dinner on Monday, I decided to cook one of the spicy Italian pork sausages I had in the freezer, with onions and peppers, on a roll (also from the freezer). The sausage is from Whole Foods, and it’s really really good. Usually I’ll buy two or three, fix one for dinner the day I buy it and put the rest in the freezer. I had one in the freezer from December.

I figured the sausage was a good combination with the black beans and rice — you only need a little bit of peppers and onions to go with the sausage, so I could cut just a few slices of pepper on Monday then use the rest the next night with the beans. Usually I cook more than I need and then freeze the leftovers and use in omelets down the road.

Along with the sausage with peppers and onions, I had oven-fried potatoes using the Russet potato I bought the prior week on special at Whole Foods. I cut the potato into thick slices and soaked them in water for 10-15 minutes before cooking, which really makes them much better. They cook up softer on the inside, with the outside still brown and crunchy. I actually like these as much as french fries. (For specifics on the recipe, search for “Cooks Illustrated oven fries” and you’ll get links to the official version.)

I also had some leftover collard greens from the prior week, and some grapefruit sections for dessert.

On Tuesday I made black beans and rice with tomato salsa, with the addition of meat from the last of the roasted chicken drumsticks from the prior week, served over brown rice. I had some chocolate from the pantry for dessert.

On Wednesday, I had black beans and rice again, this time over white rice, with half an avocado.

On Thursday everything all went to hell. I had things I had to get done before I could leave the house and things I had to do out of the house before a certain time and things I needed to work on and try to get done before the end of the week and things I really, really had to get done by the end of the week. I ended up not finishing stuff when I wanted to and then just leaving so I could get out of the house and try to get through some of the other stuff.

I have two go-to places when this kind of thing happens, where I can get out of the house and get good cheap food without a lot of hassle. One is Cosmic Cantina, which is great if I’m really hungry and/or if I’ve been spending a lot of money lately (you can get a great giant burrito for $3 at Cosmic), and the other is Bahn’s, which I like if I want vegetables or just a little peace and quiet.

So Thursday I went to Bahn’s and had ginger tofu and it was well worth the $5.29 I paid for it, for a beautiful little plate of perfectly cooked broccoli and carrots and tofu, with fresh ginger slices on top, over steamed rice.

Then I was able to go work and get some things done.

Week Four, Part II

On Friday I had a work lunch at Nantucket Grill and stopped at Food Lion on my way home to pick up dry milk (fl inst nonfat dry) and buttermilk (saco cultured btrm). Of course it was chaos because of the impending BLIZZARD.

But I’d been wanting to make a quick bread to use up the butternut squash that I cooked a few weeks ago and didn’t get around to eating immediately so stuck in the freezer to use later, but I used up the last of my dry milk before the holidays and kept forgetting to get a refill when I was near a conventional grocery store. There are no good dry milk options at Whole Foods.

Dry milk isn’t necessarily cheaper than fresh milk but it has the huge advantage of not going bad — an $8 box of dry milk lasts me for more than a year. Having dry milk in the pantry means I can make anything that uses milk — biscuits, pancakes, muffins, mac & cheese, hot chocolate — without having to go to the store for milk.

I was scheduled to go to Charlotte on Sunday and I like to have snacks to take with me when I’m on the road, and some kind of muffin/quickbread thing is always a good option.

For dinner Friday I had the last of the black beans and rice and salsa with avocado.

It started snowing Friday night and some form of precipitation was still falling on Saturday. I started to get nervous about freezing rain — I’m always woefully unprepared for weather. We had an ice storm in December 2002 with no power for four days and I didn’t even have a flashlight, I just had to go to bed at 5 o’clock when it got dark. And no heat or hot water. It was a drag.

But anyway, I was supposed to be leaving for Charlotte early Sunday morning to spend Sunday and Monday working for The Scrap Exchange at the NC/SC Festivals and Events Association trade show, Showfest 2010, and wanted to get snacks for that, but also decided I needed to get something in case it iced up and I didn’t go to Charlotte and had no power. And then it seemed like I should get something in case I didn’t go to Charlotte but did have power. But that was way too many things to think about.

I ended up getting the travel snacks on a separate receipt, because I get a $30 per diem for food for the two days. I’m planning on writing that up separately in a post about trip food.

Week Four, Part III

So for emergency preparedness food I got corn flakes (Corn Flakes Cereal) and soy milk (Og Vanilla Soy Mil), which I can keep in the pantry for a few weeks until we are safely out of ice storm weather. I got peanut butter, which I was out of and figured would be good in case of weather, and a three-pound bag of Granny Smith apples (Granny Smith 3# Ba), which I wanted because I’ve mostly been eating citrus lately and needed something different, and also would work regardless of weather, along with some bananas (Yellow Bananas CV). Another safe bet no matter what the weather.

I got popcorn (Organic Popcorn) to eat as a snack when I got home and a refill of brown rice (Short Grain Brown) and a little bitty acorn squash (Squash Acorn Og) to cook for dinner or save for later, depending on how I felt.

When I got home from the store, I made popcorn and had an apple and a tortilla with peanut butter and jelly.

For dinner I cooked brown rice and ate the last of the collards that I had almost forgotten about, along with a vegan sausage that had been in the freezer since December when my friend Cathy was in town and we bought it to put on our health food pizza. It’s pretty good for fake meat, though I need to check the next time I’m at the store to see the sodium level. I didn’t notice when I was eating it, but later that night I started to feel like the water was being sucked out of my body; I really can feel high sodium foods an hour or two after I’m done eating them.

Sunday I got up at what one of my friends likes to call the butt-crack of dawn and walked to The Scrap Exchange to get the truck.

When I was young, just learning to ski, and my brother and parents still skied, we would go to Kissing Bridge on Sundays for the Dawn Patrol ticket — 6am to 9am. My parents liked this because you could ski and then come home and still have the whole day. I remember it as mostly being effing freezing. Once it was so cold that our adhesive tickets wouldn’t stick to the wire holder on our jacket zippers. What I learned that day was that if it’s too cold for your ticket to stick, it’s too cold to ski. Just go home.

But anyway, that’s what I thought of walking to the Scrap through the frozen tundra of Durham, my Dawn Patrol skiing days in Western New York.

So I picked up the truck and drove home and loaded it up and after a series of phone calls with the person who was supposed to be working at the conference with me, but who ended up being too nervous about the weather and decided to stay home, I drove to Charlotte by myself.

And it was actually quite a blissful drive. There was hardly anyone on the road, everyone was going a safe speed, no one was talking on the phone or putting on makeup, and no one was weaving in and out of traffic trying to get past people they thought were going too slow. If everyone drove like that all the time, there are a lot of people who are dead right now who would still be alive.

So I made it and the conference was good and I was well-fed and stayed in a nice hotel and got to watch tv, which is always exciting for me.

Sunday I ate at the conference, so nothing to report on that.

For breakfasts for the week, I had the usual mix: bagel with peanut butter, orange, tangerine, soft-boiled egg, grapefruit, steel-cut oats with toasted sunflower seeds.

And that’s it.

I know this is lame, but I don’t actually know what my total for the month was because I haven’t gotten a chance to add it up yet. But I know it was under $100. Money was not really a limiting factor at all last month, the problem I’m having is being organized enough to get everything done — work and shopping and cooking — and also write about it in a timely fashion.

I am planning on putting together a summary page that gives the weekly totals for my shopping trips and what I ate and cooked, like I did for the Dollar a Day project. But I haven’t gotten to that yet. Soon, I promise. One thing at a time.

Recipe Week Four

My Favorite Meal

At first I wasn’t going to post this recipe because it seems so basic that it didn’t seem worth it, but then I decided that just because something is basic to me doesn’t mean that it’s basic to everyone, and also I eat this all the time, so it seems like I should put it up early and get it over with.

I think this is probably second only to peanut butter and jelly sandwiches as the meal I’ve eaten most in my life. (PB&J has to be the clear winner, as I took that for lunch every day — every day — throughout all of elementary, middle, and high school. Every now and then my mom would say, “Are you sure you don’t want me to make you a different kind of sandwich?” But I never did.)

I started making this dish when I lived in an off-campus house my senior year in college when I had limited cooking skills and no income. I would cook the beans and rice, and then mix with sour cream and bottled salsa (Frito-Lay/Tostito’s salsa, which was then and is still now my favorite) and stir it all together to make a big tomato-y, sour cream-y, soup-y mess. Didn’t look so good but tasted great.

I don’t generally keep bottled salsa around anymore and it’s much cheaper to make salsa fresca at home, so that’s usually what I do now.

It’s definitely a very flexible dish, you can add different vegetables (or leave them out), add leftover chicken or other meats, use different spices, serve with different kinds of rice (white, brown, jasmine, long grain, short grain), etc. You can use canned beans or cook them yourself if you want to save money and reduce sodium.

Usually I get about four meals out of one can of beans. I serve it over rice for one or two meals, and then put it in a tortilla for a burrito for one or two meals. Sometimes I add cheese or drained yogurt (or sour cream if I have it, but I’d rather buy yogurt, it tastes almost as good and I can eat it for breakfast — if I buy sour cream, I have to keep thinking of things to use the rest of the sour cream in) or make scrambled eggs and add that to the tortilla with the beans.

This time, avocados happened to be exceptionally cheap at Compare — $0.69 each — so I picked up one of those along with the tomatoes for the salsa and the green pepper. I also had some leftover chicken from the roasted drumsticks I made at the end of Week Three. The avocado wasn’t quite ripe when I cooked this, so Meal One (pictured) was black beans and rice with salsa plus chicken, and Meals Two and Three were black beans and rice with salsa plus avocado.

[Full report on what I bought and ate in Week Four coming soon. I had a work trip Sunday and Monday and a bunch of things to do to get ready for that, so I'm still a little off schedule but hoping to get caught up. Soon.]

Since this is a recipe I make all the time and is not really based on any recipe I’ve ever read, it’s going to be a little vague. You should adjust to suit your tastes.

Black Beans and Rice

1-3 tsp olive oil (or other kind of cooking oil)
1-2 cloves crushed or minced garlic
1 small-to-medium onion
1 medium-to-large green pepper
1 can black beans, or 1-2 cups home-cooked black beans
spices to taste: salt, pepper, cayenne, chili powder, crushed red pepper, cumin, oregano
approx. 1 cup cooked rice per person

Put the garlic through a garlic press or chop fine. Chop the onion and green pepper into small-to-medium sized pieces.

Put the olive oil (enough to coat the pan) into a skillet or frying pan (I use a cast iron skillet) and heat over medium-high heat.

When the oil is heated, add the garlic and onions, and cook until the onion is translucent. Add the green pepper and cook for a few minutes (this is sort of a personal preference thing — I like my green peppers not overly cooked) then add the beans and season to taste. Usually I add salt if I’m using home-cooked or no-salt-added beans — most canned beans have plenty of salt already –plus black pepper, cayenne, chili powder, and crushed red pepper .

Turn the heat down to medium and heat the beans through and let the flavors meld.

If you’re using white rice, start the rice before you start chopping the vegetables and the rice and beans will be done at about the same time. If you’re using brown rice, you should either start it ahead of time, or plan on letting the beans stay warm on the stove while the rice finishes cooking.

Serve the beans over the rice, and top with…

Salsa Fresca

The minimum essential ingredients for this salsa are

chopped onion
chopped tomato
lime (and/or lemon) juice

useful but not absolutely necessary are

crushed garlic
salt
pepper

nice to have if you want to get fancy are

jalapeno pepper
cilantro

Combine the garlic, chopped onion, and chopped tomato. Squeeze fresh lime juice or use lime juice you have saved in a small jar in the freezer. (Put the jar in a bowl of warm water to thaw, or run hot water over the jar to melt the outside so you can pour some out.)

Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Add chopped cilantro and chopped jalapeno, if desired.

The proportions should be adjusted to meet your taste — more or less onion, tomato, garlic, lime juice. A little jalapeno or a lot. After you’ve made it a few tmes you’ll figure out what you like best.

Southern Snow

“Winter in Neely is a monotonous time of year and nothing much can really break the spell of the season except for a healthy snowfall, which tends to drive the good sense out of most people since very few of the natives have seen enough snow to have become indifferent to it. We are accustomed to sleet and to the sort of rain that freezes in treetops and downs powerlines, so even the rumor of flurries makes people’s eyes bright.

…

There is a tendency among Neelyites to panic in the face of poor weather, and the reaction to snow is no less frantic, just a little more lightheaded. Before the first few flakes have had time to settle in and melt, every school in the county closes down and any merchant who does not specifically deal in provisions, what are usually called groceries, has locked up his shop and gone home. When we children arrive from school, the mothers and housewives of Neely begin to expect the worst and busy themselves making shopping lists for such indispensable items as dishpowder and confectioner’s sugar and institutional-sized cans of ravioli, just the sorts of things no family can be snowbound without.

…

Sometime after midnight and before sunrise it is not at all uncommon for the clouds to blow off leaving the moon to break through and put a glow on things. Daddy says because the light is extraordinary and unnatural, it inflicts a kind of madness on some people while they sleep and they wake up in the morning wanting to drive their cars. Daddy says he cannot explain it otherwise since there’s no reason at all for a townful of people with absolutely nowhere to go to wheel their Buicks and Pontiacs and oversized Fords out into the streets of Neely where they pass the day veering off into ditches or phone poles or just running up onto the fenders of people going nowhere in the opposite direction…. Daddy holds with the notion that there’s nothing for a sane man to do on the day after a snowfall but plant himself on the northeast corner of his cellar and hope for the best. He’s always said that if Washington had kept company with Southerners at Valley Forge the whole group of them could have passed the winter making snow angels and igloos and generally having a high time of it.”
–from A Short History of a Small Place, a novel by T. R. Pearson

Week Three

Week Three started with a call from my friend Bryant who needed help with some blog features, and who offered freshly-made granola in exchange for a little assistance. Unlike my last project, where I was committed by buying everything I ate, I am accepting free food on this project and was happy to take a little granola-for-tech-support trade.

So I helped Bryant, then got some other things done, then went to gym and then to the grocery store where I planned to get some leafy greens and some chicken legs, which have been very cheap lately, but my shopping plans were thrown into disarray when there were no cheap chicken legs. Doh! It was like a horror movie, me coming to the butcher counter and stopping short. Cue the close-up and scary violins.

I asked the friendly butcher man where his cheap chicken legs were and he said he had sold all of them but would have more tomorrow.

I’m way under money-wise for the month, there’s not much risk of going over at this point, but I’ve really been trying to highlight cheapness, so, after a moment of thought, decided not to get the more expensive thighs or a whole chicken. I decided to come back later when the legs were back.

But that meant I had to come up with something else to eat when I got home, and nothing seemed very appealing to me, except the granola Bryant had brought.

Week Three, Part I

So I got some milk and a pear (Pears Bosc Og) and a very big grapefruit (Grapefruit Red Lg) and a dozen Latta’s Egg Ranch eggs and some dried plums a.k.a prunes (Bulk Orgainic Pitte) and the collards I planned on eating with the chicken that I didn’t have yet. (I also still had fruit around from the prior week.)

When I got home, I mixed the granola with some Chex cereal I had left over from the Chex Mix I made for the Scrap Exchange holiday party. (If you like cereal, you should definitely shop at the Super Target; the Chex was $2.04 a box, which is substantially less than at Kroger or Food Lion.)

I also made a fruit smoothie with the rest of the apple juice in the fridge plus fruit from the freezer (cranberries, banana, peaches).

And yes, that was dinner.

On Tuesday, I had more Chex and granola for breakfast, and a banana.

I had meetings starting at 6pm so I had an early dinner of vegetarian chili from the freezer (that I made in Week One) over brown rice. That chili came out really good this time. I still have two servings in the freezer and will be sad when it’s gone.

On Wednesday, I needed to create some space and time to figure out some work stuff, and I have a few undisclosed locations where I go for that, that get me away from the phone and the internet and able to think about one thing at a time.

Usually when I’m planning a day like that I’ll either try to eat a fairly substantial meal before I go out, or go somewhere where I can eat and work, or plan on getting something when I’m done. Which is usually a burrito at Cosmic Cantina because it’s usually midnight by the time I’m done. Not a lot of food options at midnight in Durham.

I wasn’t going somewhere with food this time, so I decided to have an omelet before I left, which I made with herbed cream cheese and mushrooms sauteed in olive oil and garlic, and spinach, along with the last English muffin from the freezer, with butter and jam, and an orange.

There was a basketball game at 9, so I decided I could work for a few hours then stop somewhere on the way home and watch the game and get something to eat. Which is what I did — I stopped at Devine’s to watch the game with some friends who I figured would be there, and ordered a patty melt, which is something I love and it tasted really good but I have to say it really felt like it sat in my stomach for a while.

So Thursday I had a light breakfast, half a grapefruit with some cereal. I was out most of the latter half of the day and ended up pulling stuff from the freezer for dinner — some macaroni/sausage/mushroom stew in a tomato sauce that actually felt a little like lasagne. All it needs is some mozarella and maybe a little ricotta stirred in and that’s what it would taste like.

Also the end of the almost-forgotten pomegranate for dessert.

On Friday, I had a work lunch at Shiki Sushi, and ordered Thai yum noodles with chicken, and the noodles were great but the chicken wasn’t so great so I didn’t eat most of that. If I were to do it again, I’d get it with tofu. It also came with a side salad.

For dinner I had cereal and fruit, which I know is lame but my stomach was still feeling off. Also I really like cereal, and I don’t usually have it, and milk goes bad if you don’t use it up, so I decided just to use the milk on the cereal and get it all out of the way and not worry about the fact that I’m eating like an 8-year old and am going to have to post that on the internet. Sometimes that’s how things go.

As you may have noticed, I hadn’t managed to make it back to Whole Foods for the chicken legs, or to cook the collards. I had meetings in the evening on Tuesday, on Wednesday I needed to go and figure stuff out, and on Thursday I needed to catch up from being sequestered on Wednesday. I didn’t need a big dinner after eating lunch out on Friday and I didn’t feel lke dealing with the grocery store anyway, so it had to wait until Saturday.

So finally on Saturday, after a breakfast of half a bagel with cream cheese and an orange and a glass of milk, I managed to make it back to Whole Foods for the chicken legs.

Week Three, Part II

I also bought some more rolled oats (Bulk Organic Rolle) and a potato (Russet Potatoes), because they were on special for $0.99/lb, which is only slightly more than at Compare ($0.79/lb). And I know that potatoes are a much better value if you buy a 5lb bag — I saw bags at Target on special for I think $3 for 5lbs before the holidays — but I’ve decided that I don’t want to eat that many potatoes. I’d rather pay more for one every now and then.

And I have no idea why I’m getting extra money for multiple bags. I only bring one bag. Whatever they give me is what they give me. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

I actually got hungry in the middle of the day on Saturday so I made some egg salad (basically hard-boiled eggs mixed with mayonnaise and a little mustard and salt and pepper and a shot of tabasco) that I ate on crackers, with carrot sticks and a tangerine.

Saturday night I roasted the chicken drumsticks and cooked the sweet potato that I bought way back in Week Two and sauteed the collards and had an actual meal, with actual food, that had never been in a box or the freezer. It was very exciting.

For dessert I had the pear I’d bought earlier in the week.

And on Sunday I had oatmeal with raisins for breakfast, and leftover chicken, potato, and collards, along with a little bit of soup from the freezer for an early dinner, and a late-night snack of cereal with milk and some cookies that have been in the freezer since December and that are starting to taste like the freezer but that are still okay and will be gone soon.

So I didn’t spend a lot in Week Three, and I don’t think that diet is going to win me any awards but, as with Week Two, it could have been worse.

Recipe Week Three

Leafy Greens

I’m quite certain that the next nutritionist who analyzes my diet in great detail on national television will comment on my lack of salads.

I find it difficult to make salads cost-effectively unless I eat them every day, and I don’t like salads enough to eat them every day, so I don’t make salads much at home, but it’s pretty easy to get a good salad when you’re out, so I never really feel very deprived by this.

I think if you like salads a lot, it’s not too expensive to eat them at home regularly, especially if you make your own dressing which is very easy and also much better than bottled dressings. Also it’s not hard to grow lettuces and other greens, if you have the space/time/inclination for that. So that’s what I would do if I liked salads (and/or gardening) more than I do at this point in my life.

But instead of salads, I prefer to eat leafy greens like kale and collards during the winter months.

I nearly always cook it using a technique I learned from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables cookbook, which is really a great resource. It lists individual vegetables in alphabetical order, with a beautiful color illustration of each vegetable, along with a description of the vegetable, when it’s in season, and what to look for when buying, followed by a few simple recipes. Perfect if you’re interested in trying different vegetables but aren’t sure what to do with them.

There was only a little bit of green kale at Whole Foods last week, and it was not the happiest-looking kale I’d ever seen, but the collard greens looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed so I got some those instead and cooked it the same way.

I served it with roasted chicken drumsticks and a baked sweet potato the first and second nights and am still working through the rest. (Receipts and full outline of Week Three meals to come.)

I’m putting the original recipe here, though I don’t actually measure anything when I make this recipe; it doesn’t really matter. I like it very vinegar-y so I think I probably add more vinegar than the recipe calls for; I rinse the kale before chopping and have never noticed a problem; and I add pepper as well as salt while cooking. This is really just a general technique.

Sautéed Kale with Garlic and Vinegar
from Chez Panisse Vegetables by Alice Waters

This is a basic method of cooking greens that works equally well with nearly all the leafy greens. It also makes a simple pasta dish: Put on some pasta to cook while you sauté, and when the noodles are done, toss them together with the greens, moistened with a little more olive oil and a ladle of the pasta cooking water.

2 bunches kale (about 2 pounds)
3 Tbsp olive oil
salt
2 cloves garlic
1 to 2 Tbsp red wine vinegar

Strip the kale leaves off their stems and cut away the tough midribs of any large leaves. Chop coarsely and wash in plenty of water. Drain well, but do not spin dry.

Heat a large saute pan and add the olive oil and enough kale to cover the bottom of the pan. Allow these greens to wilt down beforer adding more. When all the kale has been added, season with salt, stir in the garlic, and cover the pan. The greens will take anywhere from just a few mintues to 15 minutes to cook, depending on their maturity. When they are tender, remove the lid and allow any excess water to cook away. Turn off the heat and stir in the vinegar.

Serves 4 to 6

Is It Bigger Than a Bread Box?

My friend Bryant Holsenbeck has taken on a challenge that I think is way harder than trying to eat for a dollar a day — she’s trying to go for a year without using disposable plastic. Whoa!

I’ve been working on helping her think of alternatives. My strategy is to step back and think about what people did in the old days before plastic was used for everything.

I was thinking about bread, and how bread gets stale if you don’t put it in plastic, and what they did before plastic. And I thought about bread boxes, which I’ve never really thought about before except for the “Is it bigger than a bread box?” question in Twenty Questions. So I told Bryant she needs to get a bread box. (I think she did.)

The latest conundrum is how do you get diswashing liquid without getting a plastic bottle? We’re a little stuck on that, though I have some ideas and am running some experiments and am hopeful that I’ll be able to figure something out.

Check out her blog The Last Straw at bryantholsenbeck.com.

Also while you’re there, be sure to check out her fabulous art — including my favorites, the birds made from credit cards. Love ‘em!!

Week Two Clarification

Bagels that you get from bagel places like Bruegger’s are very large, usually between three-and-a-half and four ounces, which is three to four servings of bread.

I always cut the bagels in half and put them in the freezer, and unless I’m making a bacon and egg sandwich, I only eat half at a time. So everywhere it says “bagel with cream cheese,” that’s really half a bagel with cream cheese.

I had discovered a few ounces of cream cheese in the fridge that I had forgotten about, and wanted to use up before it went bad, so that’s one of the reasons I ate more bagels than I might have otherwise during Week Two.

Week Two

Week Two was a little crazy.

I think some people tend to spend more money when things get crazy, they eat out or buy prepared food from the grocery or get take-out, but I actually tend to spend less because I end up skipping meals and/or eating what I have around, and often I go for the lowest common denominator of straight carbs.

That’s pretty much what happened in Week Two.

I had a deadline and a work meeting on Tuesday (separate projects), and a seminar on Wednesday that started at 8:00am and was 45 minutes from my house, plus another project I was trying to finish up by the end of the week.

So money-wise things were fine, but whole grain and vegetable-wise not so great.

I started out on the right foot with a trip to Compare for some fruit, and I also bought a sweet potato/yam while I was there, because I was hoping to make some kind of whole-grain stew thing with sweet potatoes.

Monday is actually kind of a blur, I’m not exactly sure what I ate but I think it was oatmeal and fruit, and then soup — or something else from the freezer — for dinner.

On Tuesday, I had a Thai chicken wrap at Mad Hatter’s before my meeting, and often when I eat out, that’s my only real meal for the day. Restaurant portions tend to be so large that someone my size doesn’t really need to eat again. Also I ended up being out late working, so even if I had wanted to eat, I’m not sure what I would have done.

I went to bed very late on Tuesday and then had to get up very early on Wednesday — I’ve had naps that are longer than I slept on Tuesday. I went to the seminar, and I was tired but not at all tempted by all the little pastries and sweet rolls they had, I’m not sure why. Usually when I’m tired, I’m very happy to eat sugar. It was really cold in the room so maybe that had something to do with it. But for whatever reason, I was not interested in eating.

So I got back from that some time after 12:30pm or so and went to the gym and headed towards Whole Foods.

I was planning on making the Peanut Millet with Curried Vegetables for dinner that night, but by the time I was getting to the store, I was really hungry and really tired and decided I needed to eat sooner rather than later and deal with the curried vegetables at some future point.

So first I went to Bruegger’s and bought a bag of day-old bagels (I rarely buy fresh bagels, because I slice them and put them in the freezer, so by the time I eat them they’re all more than a day old anyway), and then went to Whole Foods and picked up things for the curried vegetables — red onion, carrots, mushrooms, and peanuts (Unsalted Peanut Bu) plus a quart of milk (Mapleview Dairy in a glass bottle; I’ll get the $1.50 back when I return the bottle) and some bacon (Applewood Loose Sm). And some bananas.

My plan was to make a bagel sandwich with scrambled eggs and bacon, which is my favorite thing to eat when I’m very hungry.

At some point in the past, I tried the bacon in the package, but the bacon you get from the butcher is a million times better, and I like being able to buy a few slices at a time; I seem to ration it better when I have just a little in the freezer. I think I got 3 slices this day — around a quarter of a pound — but a slice of loose bacon is equivalent to two slices of the packaged kind. It’s thicker.

So I made the bagel sandwich, with spinach in the eggs for a little green, and had that with a fruit smoothie (apple juice, banana, cranberries, peaches) then took a very long nap, then got up and worked for the rest of the night and went to bed very late again on Wednesday.

When I got up on Thursday, I was still hungry, and Wednesday’s bagel sandwich had been so good that I decided to make another one. So that’s what I had.

Then for dinner Thursday I had spaghetti with bread crumbs and some pomegranate for dessert, which was very good and really hit the spot, but as noted, not so good in the veggies department.

On Friday, I had to head out to finish up a project, so I had a bowl of oatmeal and an orange for breakfast, and then I worked in Chapel Hill and stopped at La Vaquita on my way home and picked up a chicken burrito, which was very good. Then I had a late-night snack of a bagel with cream cheese and some cereal with milk and a banana.

More carbs, still no veggies.

On Saturday, I had a bagel with peanut butter and a soft-boiled egg and fruit and some cereal with milk for breakfast, and I finally got around to cooking the vegetables I had bought on Wednesday for dinner — Saturday is when I made Peanut Millet with Curried Vegetables, which I posted the recipe for last week.

On Sunday, I had a bagel with cream cheese and a banana for breakfast, and leftover millet with curried vegetables for dinner. I also had a snack of popcorn, popped on the stove in canola oil, with a little bit of salt and a little bit of sugar and a little bit of powdered ginger sprinkled on it, and a root beer that had been in the fridge for months.

Thus Endeth Week Two.

So like I said, not the greatest week health-wise, but not expensive either. Could have been worse.