Day 30 + 1

Figured you’d want know what I bought today, and I took a picture of it but somehow managed to kill it in my photo editing program after I’d deleted it from the camera.

So you’ll have to settle for the receipt.

Receipt Day 30+1

I suspect I’ll be spending more than I usually do over the next few shopping trips until I can get back into my regular routine, having the things I need and filling in the gaps when I shop.

Today’s splurge was the nova lox. Crackers always seem like a lot but they last for a while and I felt like I should get food that can be eaten a little at a time while I get used to eating more. I’m going to make some guacamole kind of thing out of the avocado to eat with the crackers.

I had a lunch meeting, so my first meal turned out to be a bowl of minestrone soup at Parker and Otis. Then an Odwalla carrot juice, some whole wheat honey fig bars, and some roasted almonds.

Did a little filming with Inside Edition (I’m getting to be a pro at fake shopping, and cooking things and pretending like I’m eating a meal) then had a toasted sesame bagel with cream cheese and nova lox and half an apple.

So that’s what I ate today on my first day off.

I know that might be the most exciting post I’ve put up yet. (For all you who asked for more … be careful what you wish for.)

Day Thirty

What I Ended Up With on Day Thirty

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Well I made it with $1.40 to spare, as I ended up not spending any money today because of a complicated situation that I don’t feel like trying to explain right now.

[Note Added 3/12: I realized after I went to bed last night that it might have sounded like I didn’t eat anything on Day Thirty, since I didn’t spend any money and I forgot to tell you what I ate.

I finished up the things I’d been buying over the past few days:

steel-cut oats and toasted sunflower seeds and a tangerine for Meal One, chicken soup, and cabbage stir-fried in chicken fat with garlic for Meal Two, and peach yogurt for dessert.]

I still don’t know what I’m going to eat tomorrow, but it’s actually been kind of nice eating less, and having no processed food, so I’m not in too much of a hurry to get back to eating like a “normal” person. (As I believe I’ve stated elsewhere, I’m not that good at being normal.)

I think this is greatly disappointing to everyone who’s asked me what my first meal is going to be.

I told People magazine it was going to be a ham and cheese omelet with a side of cheese grits, because I like ham and cheese omelets and cheese grits, and it sounded like the kind of thing someone who has spent the month eating for a dollar a day might want to eat. And it was even possible that I myself might want to eat a ham and cheese omelet with cheese grits when I was done.

But now that the day is actually upon us (or nearly upon us) what I really want is yogurt with grape nuts and fruit, which seems vaguely un-American after a project like this.

But, really, is that so wrong? To want a nice bowl of yogurt with a banana and a little bit of molasses sugar and some grape nuts?

I don’t think so.

So we’ll see how I feel tomorrow, and what I end up getting. And maybe I’ll tell you about it and maybe I won’t. (After all, I only committed to 30 days of reporting, and my 30 days are up.)

For those of you who care about the mainstream media, note that there’s an article on my project in this week’s People magazine, which hits newsstands tomorrow, and also I’ll be on Good Morning America tomorrow. (The irony of my being on a show called “Good Morning America” is not lost on me—if anyone is watching tv tomorrow between 7 and 9am, be sure to let me know how it turns out. I should be up by 11).

Also I’m scheduled to be on The State of Things on Friday, so those of you in the WUNC listening area can tune in to that. The show airs from noon to one, and it might also be available on the WUNC website, but I’m not sure about that. Hopefully I’ll do a better job answering questions on that than I did for the Good Morning America taping. They needed me to be concise. And I’m sure everyone who knows me can just imagine how that went.

Oops… One More

I can’t believe I forgot this in my list of meals…

I will definitely be going to Cosmic Cantina for a burrito very, very soon.

(And I would link to their website, but I couldn’t find one … which I find enormously pleasing. And is probably why they can sell huge, gigantic burritos for $3. Keep that overhead down.)

Day Twenty-Nine

What I Bought on Day Twenty-Nine

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One more day. Hooray!

More yogurt—one for today, one for tomorrow.

Today I ate steel-cut oats with toasted sunflower seeds and a tangerine for Meal One, and half the quart of chicken soup (30 cents worth), along with the rest of the Jiffy bran muffins for Meal Two, followed by a nice walk over to the Whole Foods and back, and a 6 ounce container of blueberry yogurt when I got home.

All good.

One Quart of Chicken Soup: Sixty Cents

$1.40 left.

I’m going to go to the store tomorrow and see if I can find anything for exactly $1.37—but I don’t think I’ll be able to, because most things are priced at 9 cents (e.g., $0.99, $1.29, $1.39, etc.). And I’m pretty good with those bulk bins, but I don’t think I’m good enough to serve myself exactly $1.37 worth of food that I’ll want to eat tomorrow.

Receipt Day Twenty-Nine

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What Are You Going to Eat?

Many people have asked me what my first meal is going to be when I’m done. I still don’t have an answer to that (what I want seems to change daily), but it’s made me think about all the meals I like, and what my favorites are.

The last chapter of How to Cook a Wolf is called “How to Practice True Economy,” and in it, M.F.K. Fisher writes about “half-forgotten luxuries and half-remembered delicate impossible dishes.” She offers ruminations on and recipes for things that aren’t available due to wartime shortages, but that are still beautiful to think about.

“Such impossible delights are necessary, now and then, to your soul, and your body too. You can cope with economy for only so long…. Sit back in your chair, then. Drop a few years from your troubled mind. Let the cupboard of your thoughts fill itself with a hundred ghosts that long ago, in 1939, used to be easy to buy and easy to forget.”

So in that spirit, here are a few meals I’ve been thinking about…

I might take a trip to Carrboro and go to Neal’s Deli for a sandwich— pastrami or smoked turkey with avocado are my favorites so far. (And I’ll see if my friend Kristy wants me to pick up something for her and bring it over, so we can have lunch together.)

At some point, I will go to Foster’s Market for a Greek Grilled Cheese or a Ham Bagel.

I might go to Elmo’s Diner for biscuits and gravy and home fries, or blueberry pancakes, or french toast.

If I were in Princeton, I’d go to Hoagie Haven for a #1 with everything, and I’d take it over to the Woodrow Wilson school and sit in front of the fountain and have a picnic with my friend Leslie.

If I were in New York City, I’d get a knish from a street vendor.

If I were in Washington, D.C., (and if the building had’t burned down —I don’t know if you can still get food there) I’d go to Eastern Market for breakfast and get a sausage, egg, and cheese sandwich with a side of home fries. And a glass of milk if I were feeling virtuous, or a coke if I wasn’t.

While I was in DC, I’d also go to Teaism at Dupont Circle and have ginger scones and a cup of chai and a bowl of granola with milk, and I’d sit upstairs in their beautiful little room that feels like someone’s secret attic.

And then I’d go to Firehook Bakery and get a chocolate espresso chew cookie.

And I’d see if I could talk anyone into going to Thaiphoon with me for some crispy duck.

If I were in Arlington, Virginia I’d go to the Quarterdeck and get a crab cake sandwich. (And I would hope that someone I was with got the all-you-can-eat crabs, so I could have one … or two.)

If I were in Seattle, I’d go to the Ballard Locks and watch the boats go through, then stop on the way home and sit outside and eat fish and chips at Ivar’s.

If I were at my Aunt’s on Lopez Island, I’d go to the bakery in town and have a cinammon roll, then hope there were crabs in her crab pots. And I’d hope my mom was with us because she likes to to pick all the crab first, so she can eat it all at once, and she’s so nice she picks all the crab for everyone, so everyone gets to eat it all at once.

If I were in Orchard Park, New York, I’d have my parents cook a beautiful, thick T-bone steak (what my sister-in-law refers to as the “Fred Flintsone steak”) and twice-baked potatoes and Caesar salad and a vegetable (fresh, sweet corn-on-the-cob in the summer, or stuffed zucchini or squash in the fall or winter, or asparagus in the spring). And it would be twice as good as anything you’d get in a restaurant, for half the price.

And the next day, I’d see if my mom would make us breakfast—eggs and biscuits and fried apples and potatoes and bacon and sausage, with honey and butter and homemade jam for the biscuits—and it would be the best breakfast you’d ever had. For the rest of your life, if you were given the choice of going out for breakfast or having my mom cook, you’d want my mom to cook. (And this is why she can never get out of the kitchen—she visits people for the weekend and they have her cook. It’s a curse.)

But enough with the travelling, here’s what I’m looking forward to having in my own kitchen.

• homemade pizza with mozarella cheese and pepperoni (and maybe sausage, and mushrooms, and onions…)
• a giant bowl of popcorn, popped in a pan on the stove with oil, salted, with a little bit of sugar and enough powdered ginger to give it a nice kick
• my neighbor Breadman Ron’s brick-oven bread with butter or cheese, and olives from the Whole Foods olive bar
• Buffalo wings with blue cheese dip, and carrots and celery on the side (but I’ll wait until Jeff and Kelly get back from Germany so Jeff can have some)
• Marion Cunningham’s Perfect California Hamburger with Didi Emmons’ steakless steak fries and Better Homes and Gardens’s coleslaw
• a ham and cheese and mushroom omelet, with cheese grits on the side
• roast chicken with mashed potatoes made with olive oil, and chicken gravy, and kale, sauteed in olive oil with garlic and red wine vinegar
• banana-pecan pancakes, made with a little bit of whole wheat flour and a lot of chopped pecans
• my friend Katie’s chocolate chip scones
• a sesame bagel with cream cheese and nova lox trimmings, and a granny smith apple, and a glass of milk
• yogurt with honey and grape nuts and a banana (or walnuts … or both)
• a bagel with bacon, egg, and cheese
• a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato
• toast with peanut butter and wheat germ, and a soft-boiled egg, and a grapefruit
• a Special sandwich with salt and vinegar potato chips and a root beer (this meal will get its own post … you need to see it to believe it)

And believe it or not, all of those are things I eat on a regular basis on my $3 a day budget. Which I am very excited to get back to.

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Day Twenty-Eight

What I Bought on Day Twenty-Eight

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I’m so close to the end that I temporarily stopped planning and thinking about what I was doing. Not such a good idea.

Had bran muffins and a tangerine for Meal One, and spent the afternoon sitting in a chair working without moving much, and when I was done and stood up realized that a high-sugar, low-fat, meal was probably not going to work at this point in my life.

I think how I felt this afternoon is probably how some people imagine I’ve been feeling the whole time—weak and lightheaded and hungry. But I really hadn’t felt like that at all before this afternoon.

At first I figured it was temporary and I’d get through it but then decided eating sooner rather than later was probably in my best interest, so had the rest of the fabulous yakisoba, then some of the remaining black beans, then cooked an egg and ate that. Felt better after a little protein.

Then headed over to the Whole Foods and got enough steel-cut oats and sunflower seeds to carry me through to Wednesday, along with a very exciting purchase … yogurt!

So had a second round of meals—steel-cut oats with toasted sunflower seeds and yogurt—after getting back from the store. And I think I’m recovered.

A number of people have commented on the lack of dairy in my eating plan (and I use the term “eating plan” loosely—remember, I’ve only got a dollar to work with), and I generally do eat some dairy, but it’s relatively expensive and it’s not all that filling, so it wasn’t high on my priority list for these 30 days.

If I was less of a masochist and had structured the project so I could use things from my pantry and charge myself the unit cost, I would definitely have used nonfat dry milk. It doesn’t taste good to drink (or at least I personally don’t think it does, other people might like it) but it’s great for cooking, and I consider it an essential pantry item. It keeps indefinitely and it allows you to make all kinds of things—macaroni and cheese, pancakes, muffins, casseroles with a white sauce—without having to go to the store for milk. I buy a big box that lasts me for a year (or more) for around $8.

I looked in preparation for this project, but the cheapest box I could get was $3, and it’s not available in the Whole Foods bulk bins. (The Durham Food Co-op used to have it bulk, which was great. But no more Durham Food Co-op, so no go on that.)

So I haven’t had any dairy, but at this point, I have enough “meals” to get me through the next two days, so I can spend my dollar on extras. And today I went with yogurt.

For those of you with nonfat dry milk in your pantry, I’m going to share one of my favorite recipes. I’ve seen this called by a bunch of different names in a bunch of different places (including Martha Stewart Living magazine).

This version is from Economical Recipes for Small Families, and I eat this often as a snack or for dessert, especially in the summer when I’m biking a lot. It’s like my own personal version of an energy bar.

Nutritious Uncooked Candy

It’s even more (delicious) with chocolate chips, so if I have those around, I put some in.

Receipt Day Twenty-Eight

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My Favorite Link…

…so far, at least.

From the Washington City Paper daily food roundup blog:

“[lessisenough] got all pissed off after reading one couple’s struggle to do the same thing and decided to prove that the vegans were just amateur ascetics (and lousy cooks).”

Yes, please leave the asceticism to the professionals.

And a marginally related aside, which I’ve been trying to figure out how to work in, since I love this quote so much, but haven’t been able to do it so I’m just going to put it here.

I once read a quote from a Greek soldier (I have no idea where I read it, and haven’t been able to find it again) who said that after eating Spartan food, he could understand why Spartans weren’t afraid to die.

So that’s what I always think of whenver anything is described as being Spartan.

Day Twenty-Seven

What I Bought on Day Twenty-Seven

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Into the home stretch. (And sorry if I’ve been whiny lately about the project. I didn’t get enough sleep on Tuesday and the rest of the week was a bit of a struggle.)

My plan for the next few days is to try to work with what I’ve got so as to finish up everything and end on Wednesday with nothing left (except maybe salt—I’m not going to make any special effort to try to use that up).

A commenter asked about that strategy when I mentioned it earlier, saying they thought it would be cool to eat for a dollar and have leftovers. But as far as I’m concerned, anything I’m left with in the end represents money I could have spent on something that I could have eaten.

And this week since I don’t have to build for the future, I might actually be able to eat some things that aren’t a great value long-term, because you only get one or two servings, but that work as a one-shot deal. Not sure what lessons come out of that, but I am looking forward to being able to get things because I want to eat it that day, instead of trying to figure out how I can fit it into a grand plan.

But sticking with the grand plan for now, today I decided to get Jiffy mix, so I could have some breakfast bread today and over the next three days.

What I Cooked on Day Twenty-Seven

There are several flavors of Jiffy mix, and with only a few days left I’m less concerned about squeezing every penny, and decided not to worry about the cost difference.

The options were blueberry, bran, or banana, all priced at $0.59 each — $0.14 more than the cornmeal muffins at SuperTarget and $0.09 more than the biscuit mix, and they also require an egg. So the biscuits are definitely the best value, $0.50, just add water. Next best value is the cornbread, but that requires a trip to Target, which is much less convenient for me. And I wanted to mix things up a little.

I like banana bread and banana muffins when I make them with actual bananas, but I don’t always like banana-flavored things. I love blueberry muffins, and have a great recipe that I don’t make nearly as much as I’d like, but because of that I was afraid the Jiffy version would be disappointing. So I got the bran muffins, which I never make on my own and thus had no preconceived notions about.

They’re pretty good. They’re actually quite a lot less sweet than the cornbread and they felt like they had some fiber, but don’t taste much like health food.

I give them a thumbs up.

I had those with a tangerine and a soft-boiled egg for Meal Two and about half of the remaining yakisoba for Meal One. The yakisoba is really great. I will definitely be making that again when the project is over.

I used one egg in the muffins, and ate one, and have one left. I also have beans and cabbage, and chicken stock and a little chicken, and also some chicken fat. And a little bit of pasta. So I’m thinking I should be able to get two meals of chicken soup, and hopefully I’ll be able to use the chicken fat to stir fry the cabbage. I think that’s the best way to cook it—it brings out the sweetness, but the cabbage is still crunchy, and using chicken fat you get a nice flavor. I’ll probably fill in the rest from the bulk bins at Whole Foods, where I can get just enough for a meal or two.

Receipt Day Twenty-Seven

Next Project?

Before starting this project, my friend Rowan suggested a follow-up—she said I should eat for $30 a week and report on what I bought, what I made, and whatever else I feel like writing about.

Her thought was that $30 is more than I usually spend, but still less than most people spend, so I’d be able to eat really well, and other people would be able to actually get useful information out of it (as opposed to this project, which is really too extreme to have much in the way of take-home lessons).

So I’m thinking about that. I know I can’t post every day because it’s been too disruptive, but I think I could do it with two or three posts a week. And with $30 a week, I think I could have some pretty good food.

Finally

Two different friends sent this link earlier in the week.

I feel like I can stop writing now. (And actually when I read this, I wondered if Jane Brody has been reading my blog—much of the recommended food sounds familiar…)

Eating Well on a Downsized Budget in the New York Times on Monday, March 2, 2009.