Oprah Has A Saying...

She says that when you make a commitment to do something the universe will put obstacles in your way to test that commitment.  Well, the universe proved Oprah right.  I dutifully made a meal plan and shopped last Saturday.  I even actually made it to the farmers market!  I was all set to spend time on Sunday cooking up a storm as I knew I had a busy week ahead of me and I don't particularly care for weeknight cooking even under the best of circumstances.  Then, on Sunday afternoon I opened my fridge to find a thermostat that read 70 degrees.  Now, it wasn't actually 70 degrees, but it was warming rapidly.  Although it started working again about an hour later, I was loathe to cook up a bunch of pricey ingredients when I wasn't sure I was going to have anyplace to store them.  Of course, the repairman couldn't come until the next day.  Now, the good news is that my fridge is now fixed (after a missing half a day of work and shelling out $325 to replace the motherboard - who even knew refrigerators had motherboards??).  But the bad news is that I've been working late all week, so finding time to cook just ain't gonna happen.  So, this week is a loss.  But I won't let one bad week deter me.  I'll be back on track come Saturday.  And that's a commitment.  >:o)

Eating Out the Pantry

If you're anything like me, your kitchen cupboards look a little something like this:

Well, mine isn't quite this tidy, but you get the drift.  It's pretty full.  You know, with the 3/4 of a bag of quinoa from that time I bought quinoa for that recipe and then never used it again.  Or the cans of soup I bought last year when I was sick, but then never ate.  Or the bag of panko bread crumbs that's never even been opened because I never got around to making those crab cakes I bought them for.

My freezer is just as bad.  Full of bags and containers full of things that I dutifully made and portioned out with the intention of having lots of easy meals on hand that could be ready to eat after only a few minutes of nuking.  But somehow, my freezer is like the black hole of forgetfulness (that's not a feature they advertise at the appliance store!).  Items that go inside - aside from ice cream and frozen pizzas, oddly enough - immediately leave my memory, not to be thought of again until the freezer's so full I can't get anything else in it and I start trying to sort things out and I pull out containers and ask myself what the heck is this and once I finally remember what it is, when, exactly did I last make sweet potato soup?  I've gotten better at labeling things over the last year.  Now, unfortunately, I know that the sweet potato soup is 10 months old.

The point is that if my grocery bills seem a bit low in these initial weeks, it's because I'm making a concerted effort to clear out some of the items that have been languishing in my cabinet and freezer for far too long.  I waste a lot of food (Don't judge me, you probably do, too!  Studies have shown that a full 25% of the food Americans buy gets tossed out!) and I feel guilty about it, so I need to get better at figuring out ways to use the things I actually buy.  After all, a key part of being thrifty and saving money is to not spend money on things you don't actually use or that you don't get your money's worth out of.  Buying food but not actually eating it is bad for my bank account and for the planet because it's either food that someone else could have made use of or stuff that's cluttering up the landfill.  

So, going forward I will make a point of disclosing items that I've used that I already had in order to lend context to the amount spent on groceries.  For example, last week, in addition to what I bought, I used the following items that I already had on hand: a can of coconut milk, havarti cheese, Mary's Gone Crackers, rice noodles, and assorted condiments.   The primary dish I made was a Thai green curry, which I ended up eating for a number of meals (four and counting) - which is the price of being single.  Stay tuned for this week's info.

Week One - Progress, But a Ways to Go

I did cook this week and I did a great job of eating dinner at home.  Not so great with breakfast and lunch.  The problem had nothing to do with not having enough food and everything to do timing and not planning the right types of food.  With regard to timing, I had plenty of things I could eat for breakfast, but I've never been much of a morning person and getting up with sufficient time to eat before leaving for work just wasn't happening; so I resorted to my usual bagel and coffee.  If I could get up even fifteen minutes earlier, it could work.  But I think I'm going to give some serious thought to packing things I can take with me and eat when I get to work.  

Lunch was a bit different.  The plan was always to bring leftover dinner for lunch.  But I made a tasty but rather sloppy green curry with chicken thighs from one of Jamie Oliver's cook books and it was great for dinner but felt like it would be too much drama to have for lunch.  So I'm going to have to keep that in mind as I plan in subsequent weeks.

So, what was the damage?  Well, I spent $46.65 on groceries at Whole Foods.  I had lunch out Wednesday through Friday but breakfast only the last two of those days.  Unfortunately, a similar lack of planning on my part meant that I went through the McDonald's drive through on Saturday morning as I was starving after the gym and on my way to run a bunch of errands.  So, money spent on eating out added up to $38.34.  Bearing in mind that I'm starting this little project from the 1st and that was Tuesday, 5/7 of my usual weekly food expenditures amounts to $124.25 and in total, I spent $84.99.  This amounts to a savings of $39.26 for the five day period.  I don't know.  For the first week, I think that's definitely progress.  So, I'll take it.  I'll be transferring that amount into my savings account.  

Now, on to week two!

Let's Try This Again. Shall we?

I originally started this blog well over a year ago.  When I signed in today, I was surprised to see that my last post was October 2011 (those have all been deleted now)!  Wow, how time flies.  I was heavy into the foodie thing then and that waned a bit for reasons that don't merit mention here.  But now, I'm interested again and so I'm gonna give this a second try with a bit of a different focus than before.   And that focus is this: documenting whether it's really possible to eat well affordably.  

Why?  Well, there are a number of reasons.  First, I know all the reasons why it's hard to eat well.  Many of them have very little to do with budget and I can attest to all of those.  Busy?  Check.  My average work week is about 50 hours and it can go up from there.  I also travel for work, sometimes a lot.  If I want to try to get to the gym occasionally, surf the net a bit, and socialize with real people from time to time, it feels like that doesn't leave much time for other things.  Especially things that can be time consuming, like cooking.  It's way easier to just go to a drive through or pick up something prepared from the market.  That's not exactly cost effective or particularly good for my health, though.  

Then there's cooking ability.  This one doesn't completely apply to me.  I'm a reasonably good cook, though not an intuitive one.  With a recipe to follow, I do all right.  When I'm improvising, sometimes bad things happen.  I need to get better at this.  But I have some tried and true things that I can do well.  I'm surprised, however, at how many people I know that can't boil water and have no desire to do so.  I think that for society as a whole, this is a big obstacle.  Much easier to nuke something or open a box than to cook from scratch (though rarely tastier, IMHO, and certainly not healthier!).  Along the same lines, for some reason, the concept of meal planning for an entire week is totally baffling to me.  It should be easy, but it's not.  Don't ask me why.

Finally, there's perception.  The overwhelming perception, among just about anyone you ask, is that it costs more to eat healthy than it does to eat junk.  Even the media loves to parrot this one and it makes me crazy!  I just don't believe this.  If you know how to shop and how to cook, I think that eating healthier actually costs less, but those are pretty big ifs.  And for those in the inner city, there is the whole issue of food deserts, which is another topic all together.  

So, the obstacles exist and most are real.  But just because something is difficult to do, doesn't mean it shouldn't be done.  And so, as 2013 starts off, I'm gonna challenge myself to see just what I can do to eat well without breaking the bank.  Here's what we know, going in:

I estimate that on average, I spend about $100 per week on groceries (Whole Foods, I love you!  But don't call it Whole Paycheck!  That's a topic for another day.).  On top of that, I probably spend abut $12 per week day on coffee, bagels, and lunch when I'm working, and then let's add another $10 on the weekend for the odd meal out.  Of course, these are averages, sometimes it's more, sometimes less.  But on average, this adds up to $170 per week that I spend on food.  Much of it's healthy, but too much of it isn't.  Plus, maybe it's the time of the year, but I always start scrutinizing my budget around the new year and I can't help thinking that I could spend a lot less, eat better, and save the difference for a rainy day.  So the plan is to see how much less than $170 I can spend each week while eating healthier, cooking more, and meeting other goals, TBD.  Can I do it?  How long will stick with it?  Will this little challenge go the way of new year's resolutions and be over before January winds down?  Well, we'll see....