Mid morning snack

I was playing with "StumbleUpon" this morning and ran into this article on WomansDay Magazine:

What You Should Be Eating for Breakfast

Include these foods in your morning routine to help curb hunger

By Olivia Putnal Posted June 26, 2009 from WomansDay.com

It seems like every morning around 11 our stomachs start rumbling, even though we just ate breakfast three hours earlier. To avoid getting hungry well before lunchtime, there are nutritious foods you can eat for breakfast that will increase your morning productivity and help curb your appetite. For maximum results, combine two or three of the foods listed below to achieve a nice balance of carbohydrates, fiber, protein and good fats for a hearty meal that stays with you through the entire morning.

Now, apart from the fact that I would bet that I can find another article published in the same magazine that recommends eating something midmorning, it made me wonder what is so bad about eating a snack between breakfast and lunch? As long as it's planned into the day and not something you grabbed out of a vending machine with no nutritional value and costing a relatively large amount of money, I see nothing wrong with it.

In fact, during the week, I have a midmorning snack every day. Usually, it's two slices of multigrain toast but it could also include fruit, tea, nuts, etc. I make every effort to eat a breakfast that is well rounded and satisfying but I have just never ever been able to eat enough for breakfast to prevent being hungry before lunch. So it doesn't make sense for me to stuff myself so I can barely walk in the hopes of surviving to lunch just to risk stuffing myself again because I'm so hungry.

The article made me mad enough to leave a comment.

Today's breakfast:

1/2 cup rhubarb with sugar and cinnamon and 1/2 cup water in microwave until rhubarb is soft (in a small single serving casserole dish)

remove form microwave and sprinkle 1/2 cup of oatmeal on top. Add water until just visible around the oatmeal. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Because I didn't add milk to the oatmeal and I'm back to drinking coffee for a bit, I made a strong coffee and added a lot of milk to it.

Food experiments and Parental influences on food

As you may recall from yesterday, I was looking for recipes using carrots and I had located one for a sweet carrot relish. I had already made up some cabbage and tomato and since those are both ingredients in the relish, I thought "Oh, I'll just add some carrot." This worked very well. I added two medium carrots and some more vinegar and some sugar. The result was lovely but a bit too much like a relish. I was hoping that I had not added too much of the vinegar and sugar. So,the flavor is just a bit too strong for eating with rice or just as a side dish (although, it would be fantastic on a hot dog!).

I'm eating it as part of my lunch today with brown rice because I needed an extra something and didn't have time this morning to fix something else. But it made me think about how much I will be willing to experiment if I know that I'm not willing or able to stretch my food budget to cover failures. In this case, I know I have enough food at home so that I can put this dish aside and use it in a different way. But, it could have gone terribly wrong and been completely inedible too. Then where would I be?

I can see how easy it is to slip into the same routine because it's safe and predictable and there is a much smaller chance of wasting food because it's been rendered inedible.

This is really the mind set of many people who lived through the Depression or WWII. They were taught not to waste and not to take or try food they might not like in case they hated it. My housemate's father is extremely cautious.

I can understand it for people who lived through really trying times. But I've also found that parents easily pass those attitudes on to their children. My housemate grew up with a very limited diet and is unwilling to try anything new. Even when I lived alone, I had to fight the urge to save the "good stuff" for company

Although a recent study suggests hat Parents influence in their children's eating habits is small, I have a hard time believing it. I need to read the full article to see what I think . I can see where parental control over teenagers might be limited. But I wonder what happens when the child grows older. I know that when I was at the end of my teens and into my twenties, I didn't eat anything like a well balanced diet so the correlation between how I was raised and how I was eating would have been really small. But, as I got older and started realizing how diet affected my body and health, my habits became much more like my parents.

Now, I eat a much wider variety of food than they do. But ultimately, they came me a taste for well balanced and interesting foods. I'd like to see the above study go further to see the parental influences into adult life.

Excitement in the back yard

My neighbor is finally chopping down the ailanthus tree (aka, weed tree or ghetto palm). Chopping at is is a better term, though. For some dumb reason, he refuses to take it down even though it qualifies as a weed and is a finable offense.

This is exciting not just because it mean less crap falling into my yard and, hopefully, fewer seedlings to be yanked up every year. But it's really exciting because it means that my tomato plants may have a shot at getting enough sunlight to produce fruit. I'm not supervising the process because it's too stressful for me and experience shows that my neighbor doesn't care much about protecting my plants. the last time he cut the tree was just before Hurricane Isabel hit and he just let the branches fall where ever, including on top of my fig tree.

I told him this morning that if any of my plants got hurt he would be replacing them and if any of the food producing plants got hurt or destroyed, there would be more than money to pay.

We will see what happens.

My search for carrot recipes (which has been successful and means that he hasn't cut the phone/DSL line yet) turned up a bazillion carrot raisin salads which are not that interesting to me but also this recipe form allrecipe.com for Grandma's sweet carrot relish. I'm thinking that i can modify it a bit for the ingredients I have on hand and it also means that I might be able to use the breadmaker for which I no longer have a paddle which is also supposed to do jams. this could be interesting!

Farmer's market Haul 6/28/09

I was incredibly excited to go to the market today because I knew that I am pretty much set for my staples form my shopping last week which meant that I could be a little more free in my spending on produce this week.

This was a good week to be able to buy what I wanted because the market has exploded with all the summer stuff. For me and my friends, the market is as much social event as shopping so we always take a walk around to see who has what and for what price and to get all our chit chat for the week done. After we’ve seen everything, we start our shopping.

My haul for the week:

item	Cost/size	Cost/serving	servings
Milk	1.75/half gallon	.11/half cup	16
Eggs	1.75.dozen	.30/2	6
Rhubarb	3.50/lb	.70	5
Tomatoes	4.00/11 pieces	.28	14
Potatoes	3.00/ 20 small	.60	5
Peas	3.00/ lb	.60	5
carrots	2.00/ 4 large	.28	7
Zucchini	2.00/ 4 medium	.40	5
Cucumbers	1.00/3 med-lg	.16	6
garlic	.50/head
	22.50

The tomatoes were an amazing deal, I bought the seconds basket for $4 and got 11 tomatoes ranging from mid size to large. I decided against things like broccoli or cauliflower because I still have kale and cabbage left over from last week and because they weren’t actually that great of a deal. Both were about $1.50 a head but the heads were kind of small and would only have been maybe 2.5 servings. Next time I go, I’ll probably buy some and use it in stir fries and soups. Generally, the goal is to make sure that I have 35 servings (strive for 5) of vegetables. So I wanted to be sure that I was getting enough helpings. From the chart above, I ended up with 47 helpings, some of which are freezable.

After I’d finished my shopping and could barely carry my bags, I remembered that I’m going to be away Thursday-Monday . I know I can’t eat everything before Wednesday, even with some dedicated eating. But, this also means that I won’t be going to the market next week which is a bigger problem. I have a local market near work where I can get vegetables but I never really know if they have been grown locally or not.

My plan is to freeze half of the rhubarb, peas, and a bunch of the tomatoes. I’m figuring that the zucchini, carrots and potatoes will still be good. I’ll probably just try to eat all of the cucumbers before then or make a salad with vinegar which will make them keep a bit longer.

So, now I’m off to look at carrot recipes. The ones I bought are huge so I’m not just going to peel and eat them with salt. I’ll let you know what I find.

Vitamin E(lusive)

I routinely keep track of my daily diet using Fitday.com which gives all sorts of information about calorie intake, carbs, fats, protein, and vitamins and minerals. (my only complaint is that it gives you the average for the week for most reports so to find out the numbers for a single day, you just have to have that be the only day for which you enter data for that week)
For the most part, I'm pleased with the nutritional content of my diet. I think I've done a good job of combining carbohydrates, fats, and protein and I still feel like I'm eating enough food. But, I have been curious to know about the vitamin and mineral breakdown as well. I know that the amount of kale I eat is giving me enough in the way of Vitamin A and C and I am outside enough not to have to worry about D. But I'm never really sure where I stand with some of the others.

What I keep finding is that I'm lacking Vitamin E. For the most part, I seem to hover around 39% of the daily recommended amount. In truth, I have to say that I sometimes wonder if it really natters. I mean, if I'm lacking it with my healthy diet now, I must not have been getting any before!

When the USDA devised it's Thrifty Food Plan basket, one of the constraints it noted was that it was impossible to create a thrifty plan that included enough Vitamin E. In fact, they relaxed the standard for the basket so that they were meeting about 63% of the RDA.

The Ohio State University Extensionhas a nice fact sheet on Vitamin E which tells us that:

"Vitamin E, a fat-soluble vitamin, is an antioxidant vitamin involved in the metabolism of all cells. It protects vitamin A and essential fatty acids from oxidation in the body cells and prevents breakdown of body tissues."

I guess it's a good thing I get a lot of A since I have no E to protect it.

According to eMedicine from WebMD:

Vitamin E, one of the most important lipid-soluble antioxidant nutrients, is found in nut oils, sunflower seeds, whole grains, wheat germ, and spinach. Severe deficiency, as may occur in persons with abetalipoproteinemia or fat malabsorption, profoundly affects the central nervous system and can cause ataxia and a peripheral neuropathy resembling Friedreich ataxia.

Patients receiving large doses of vitamin E may experience a halt in the progression of the disease.

This vitamin is thought to have a role in preventing atherosclerosis by inhibiting the oxidation of low-density lipoprotein (LDL). Several epidemiologic studies have indicated that high dietary intake of vitamin E is associated with high serum concentrations of alpha tocopherol, as well as with lower rates of ischemic heart disease. However, although the Cambridge Heart Antioxidant Study supported this hypothesis, a subsequent report, the prospective Heart Outcomes Prevention Evaluation Study, did not.

In general, when studies contradict each other, I'm of the opinion that following the one that suggests that I can lower my chances for a diseases is the better idea.

For and adult woman, the recommendation is 15mg per day. So I decided that I needed to find out where I'm going to get that much and how I'm going to fit it into my diet.

Some foods with good Vitamin E content include:

Food	Milligrams (mg) per serving	Percent DV*
Wheat germ oil, 1 tablespoon	20.3	100
Almonds, dry roasted, 1 ounce	7.4	40
Sunflower seeds, dry roasted, 1 ounce	6.0	30
Sunflower oil, 1 tablespoon	5.6	28
Safflower oil, 1 tablespoon	4.6	25
Hazelnuts, dry roasted, 1 ounce	4.3	22
Peanut butter, 2 tablespoons	2.9	15
Peanuts, dry roasted, 1 ounce	2.2	11
Corn oil, 1 tablespoon	1.9	10
Spinach, boiled, ½ cup	1.9	10
Broccoli, chopped, boiled, ½ cup	1.2	6
Soybean oil, 1 tablespoon	1.1	6
Kiwi, 1 medium	1.1	6
Mango, sliced, ½ cup	0.9	5
Spinach, raw, 1 cup	0.6	4

Table from the Office of Dietary Supplements Vitamin E fact sheet

Actually, this is pretty good news for me. I love almonds but they aren't cheap so I probably won't be having them all that often. But, I see that I can easily switch out some of the olive oil I generally use for safflower or sunflower oil and add sunflowers to salads and other dishes. Those are quite inexpensive ways to get a lot more E in my diet.

Ha, for once, the cheaper choice (safflower oil) is going to give me more of something I need than the more expensive olive oil.

Now, I realize that Olive oil has a bazilion other benefits so I'm not going to leave it out completely but I think this shows that it's worth it to switch my oils around sometimes. I can also make sure that I use a good quality margarine that will also provide some Vitamin E.

Happily, it turns out that it isn't as Elusive as I thought!

Ahh kale

I don't think I ever had kale when I was growing up. In fact, if I had to guess, I'd say I probably never had it before two years ago. For sure, I never cooked it before then. But, a year or two ago I was at a retreat center that inlcuded a "plain" food section in its buffet every day. One day, the regular fare (all vegetarian) didn't look all that appealing to me so I was looking around for something to add to my plate. That's when I found kale. At the time, I followed the example of the Buddhist nuns with whom I was sharing a table and I added Gomasio (sesame salt) and a dash of umeboshi plum vinegar (I learned fast that a small dash of this is enough!).

Now, I'm not sure that I would say that I think kale is the most delicious food ever but I enjoy the flavor and eating it always makes me feel like I'm doing something good for my body. Just look at the ratings: (table courtesy of The World's Healthiest Foods

Kale, boiled 1.00 cup 130.00 grams 36.40 calories
Nutrient	Amount	DV (%)	Nutrient Density	World's Healthiest Foods Rating
vitamin K	1062.10 mcg	1327.6	656.5	excellent
vitamin A	9620.00 IU	192.4	95.1	excellent
vitamin C	53.30 mg	88.8	43.9	excellent
manganese	0.54 mg	27.0	13.4	excellent
dietary fiber	2.60 g	10.4	5.1	very good
copper	0.20 mg	10.0	4.9	very good
tryptophan	0.03 g	9.4	4.6	very good
calcium	93.60 mg	9.4	4.6	very good
vitamin B6 (pyridoxine)	0.18 mg	9.0	4.5	very good
potassium	296.40 mg	8.5	4.2	very good
iron	1.17 mg	6.5	3.2	good
magnesium	23.40 mg	5.8	2.9	good
vitamin E	1.11 mg	5.6	2.7	good
omega 3 fatty acids	0.13 g	5.4	2.7	good
vitamin B2 (riboflavin)	0.09 mg	5.3	2.6	good
protein	2.47 g	4.9	2.4	good
vitamin B1 (thiamin)	0.07 mg	4.7	2.3	good
folate	17.29 mcg	4.3	2.1	good
phosphorus	36.40 mg	3.6	1.8	good
vitamin B3 (niacin)	0.65 mg	3.3	1.6	good

World's Healthiest Foods Rating	Rule
excellent	DV>=75%	OR	Density>=7.6	AND	DV>=10%
very good	DV>=50%	OR	Density>=3.4	AND	DV>=5%
good	DV>=25%	OR	Density>=1.5	AND	DV>=2.5%

Of course, the other fantastic thing about Kale is how incredibly cheap it is. I can buy a pound for a dollar and that will last me at least 4 meals. It's such a hardy plant, too, that I can get it fresh and local from the farmer's market for most of the year.


For preparation, I still tend to eat it just as I did that first time with a bit of Gomasio or plum vinegar. I make my own sesame salt which end sup being really cheap and useful to have around the house (I just toast the seeds with regular table salt in the toaster oven). If I have them, I may also add other Japanese seasonings.

Based on a general search for kale recipes, it seems to go well with lots of other ingredients, form noodles to beans to other vegetables.

For a nice selection of Kale recipes, try Culinate.com or Epicurious

Given what's hanging around my house at the moment, the two recipes I'm most interested in trying are:

Tuscan Kale Chips and Rice with Kale and Tomatoes

There are a couple of other recipes I'm eying up for next week too!

I was poking around on the web, looking for dieas for thrifty eating and I ran into Disney's Family.com site. Listed on this site were "15 cheap dinner recipes" which average under $1.50 per serving. The recipes include "amost lasagne", chicken lo mein, cheeseburger pie, easy calzones, chicken lettuce wraps, fried rice, chicken ravioli soup, etc. While some of the recipes weren't too bad nutritionally, others, such as the "lasagne" clocked in at 587 calories per serving with 27 gm of fat.

As bad as that was (I think it's bad, anyway), what I thought was worse were the serving tips for the various dishes. For the lasagne they recommend opening a "bagged salad" to make a quick and easy meal, for one of the burgers, they recommend "Buy family-sized bags of frozen fries to serve as an inexpensive side dish." For the pasta and cheese they recommend cutting costs by using a cheaper American cheese

I don't know, I just felt like I was getting mixed messages about the whole thing.

Menu planning

I'm planning out my menu for the week (and wishing now that I maybe hadn't bought so much rice). I realized that I do tend to think of most of my food in terms of portions. I've been a little fanatical about portion control for a while now because most people know that it's the best way to a healthy weight and it's also the best way to a healthy budget.

When I say that I care about portion control, I mean that I do things like count out 22 almonds (1 oz) into a container or bowl, I measure out my grains with a measuring cup, I portion out things like green as soon as I bring them home so I know how many meals they will be. I never, ever just grab a handful of pasta or pour it out of the box into the water.

There is still always the surprise of finding out that you had more or less than you thought but I like to keep that to a minimum if I can.

I was thinking that I'm almost out of caffeinated tea but I actually have 5 bags left so that will get me through the week without a problem. I've decided not to buy any this week because I also have some coffee still in the freezer so I'll drink that over the weekend. My housemate bought a large block of cheese for about $5 so my plan is to buy half of that from him to round out my dairy consumption some.

My early menu planning is going something like this:

breakfast- oatmeal with milk and dried fruits

toast in the mid morning

Lunch will be veggies and rice (yeah all week, kind of dull but I can use different spice combinations to perk it up)

Dinner will include a frittata one night, tacos for probably two nights, beans and rice for a night or two, probably some kind of sandwich and some kind of pizza other nights.

I didn't get lettuce this week because I was so tired of it after having so much the last couple of weeks but I'm already looking forward to getting some next week!

Weekly Shopping

I’ve been neglectful while I’m still in my hybrid budget eating mode. Happily, last week I did not spend really anything extra on food and so I’m feeling very enthusiastic about the project. It helped that I had a large credit card bill and electric bill to pay off so that was good incentive to keep the food bill low.

For me, this project is much easier when I have tangible goals for it. On one hand, there are a set of abstract goals of wanting to reduce waste which is better for the environment and of wanting to know where my money is going. I believe that if I have good control over my food budget, it will help me gain control over other parts of my budget. These are all good as a start but it’s easier on a day to day basis if there is something I can point to at the end of the week or month as having been accomplished that is direct and personal.

Last week, the goal was to put a big payment on the credit card and the utility bill which I had slipped behind on during the winter. This meant not having really any disposable income for the week. Now, I still have a lot of food around so this wasn’t so difficult as far as developing meals for the week. At the end of the week, I could look at my bank account and be sad that there isn’t much in there but I can also look at my two major debts and be glad that a chunk is gone from both of them (I paid off the utility bill but still have a balance on the credit card).

In the next couple of weeks, I have a trip planned out to my sister’s and this will mean renting a car, buying gas, and various other expenses. Having the car means that the dog can go with us, which saves on boarding and staying with my sister means little money spent on food and board. But I still anticipate spending about $500 for the 4 days with all the other expenses.

These small goals are useful and I also have an ultimate goal of a trip to India to tour and do some volunteer work. I think that my plan for that goal will be to set up a separate savings account into which I have money deposited directly.

Because I go to the Farmer’s market on Sunday- I consider that the beginning of my shopping week. My housemate will do my shopping at the supermarket so, using the store’s website, I developed this list (it might look familiar from one of my earlier posts). I am beginning to get desperate for grains because I haven’t really had any for the past couple of weeks. So, I kind of loaded up on the rice this week. I had to laugh when I figured out the total number of servings and it came to 116! In truth, my housemate will eat some of the bread and maybe some of the rice. According to most nutrition guides, I should be eating about 7 servings of grains a day so I have purchased more than twice as much this week as I need. Oh well, I’m not willing to give up the smell of basmati rice!

edit: ha! I realizd the error in my math and can subtract out the beans from the total grains. That's what i get for lumping by shopping site and not food group. Still, it's 79 servings at least it's not twice what I need.

I was trying to figure out price per serving but it gets complicated when you start making dishes that include a lot of ingredients. For example, I never eat raw tomatoes so I pretty much always end up using them in large cooked dishes so I’m not sure how to divide those out, the six that I bought this week, are sure to last me at least the whole week so I will divide them out by day to get a general sense of the daily expense. I have no idea how to figure out the onions as a per serving item so I’ll do the same

Weekly Shopping 6/21/2009

Supermarket shopping:

item	Price/amount	Price serving	#servings
Rice white	2.49/32 oz	.12	20
Rice basmati	4.14/32 oz	.20	20
Rice brown	1.25/16 oz	.12	10
lentils	1.35/16 oz	,10	14
Red beans	2.49/16 oz	.20	13
Corn tortillas	1.89/36 small	.19/2	18
bread	1.00/ 3 loaves	.05/2 slices	21
	14.61		116

Farmer’s Market

Kale	2.00/2lb	..25/ quarter lb	8
Eggs	1.75/doz	.30/2	6
Milk	1.75/ half gal	.11/half cup	16
tomato	4.00/6	.58	7
squash	2.00/4	.50/1	4
yam	2.00/4	.50/1	4
onions	2.00/6	.29	7
	15.50

For fruits and vegetables, I need 35 servings, From the Farmer’s market, I only have 23 (and I’m not even sure I should count the yams). Luckily, I have cabbage left from last week

Total over all is 30.11. This leaves me about $5 for anything else that I need. That could go for chicken, maybe peanut butter which would last more than a week easily, or maybe some extra fruit. Unfortunately, unless I start stealing tea from work, that may be where the $5 is going.

Farmer's market Haul

I have finally managed to eat most of the food that has been hanging around the house. I knew that I wouldn't be able to use all of the baking ingredients or sugar so I made no real effort to do that. But I really wanted to clear out the rest of the stuff. I feel much better now that most of the excess food is gone. The organization in the kitchen is much better and I have a better grasp of what there is to have for each meal.

Last week, during he great "eat down", the only food I bought was a half gallon of milk and some potatoes. This week, I decided that I needed to get some good fresh vegetables to fill out what's left in the house which is mostly carbohydrates. So, my haul from the farmer's market today was:

half gallon of milk 3.50
head of cabbage 2.00
pound of kale 1.00
5 large tomatoes 4.00
3 summer squash 2.00

total is 12.50 and I'm hoping not othave to spend much more this week.

I STILL have lettuce left over (it's holding up amazingly well)

While trying to use up stuff, I made a delicious couscous recipe. it's a sweet dish which I eat for breakfast and dessert. I love couscous in the summer because it take no effort at all to cook but is a nice starchy food. the ingredients for my dish were:

couscous
dried coconut
dried apples
dried figs
raisins
cinnamon
ground ginger
honey

I put all the ingredient into one container and then added the recommended mount of water and stirred until the water was all absorbed. That was it- very simple and delicious!

But I don't feel like eating that!

I was preparing my lunch for today and feeling uninspired. "This is crazy," I thought "I wanted all this food when I bought it so there is no reason not to want it now." Eh, but I just didn't.
I dug around some more and took the dog for a walk and while I was out, I came up with a few options for things to make. Once I got thinking about it, my mind was on a roll and I thought of all sorts of ways to combine what I have into something I felt like eating.

I ended up with:

oatmeal with milk and raisins for breakfast
large salad with sunflower seeds and dried cranberries and farfalle pasta with roasted asparagus and spring onions for lunch
Miso soup and almonds for snacks

Now I'm pretty excited about the menu. But I was thinking about the whole "I don't feel like eating that today" habit." How many of us have thought about going somewhere for lunch and someone in the group said "Oh, I had Chinese yesterday." or "I'm having pizza tonight" ? In my group of friends, the former would be greeted with "What do you think the Chinese do every day?"

Really, there is no reason (apart maybe from the high sodium content) not to eat Chinese food two days in a row. Even the smallest hole in the wall place has a wide variety of dishes to suit almost any taste.

The thing is that most of us have gotten into the habit of a lot of variation and eating what we want when we want to. Some of my friends never cook more than they can eat in a single meal because they hate to have leftovers even for one extra meal.

For me, making lunch today was hard because the food has been around in my kitchen and isn't new and exciting. I feel forced into eating it and I'd rather eat something else just because.

It made me think about all the people who never get to choose what they eat: refugees, the poor who rely on soup kitchens and other charities for every meal, prisoners, many children, many of the elderly, people in nursing homes, hospitals, hospice, etc. Most of these people have lost many other freedoms in addition to the freedom to choose food which makes the vast quantity of choice I have here in the US seem like a huge luxury.

Part of eating to live and not living to eat is choosing a diet that meets the daily nutritional requirements. If you are strict about it, your freedom of choice in your food selections will be limited. Yes, you can structure a basic menu for the day but at some point, you are probably going to have to eat something you don't feel like eating. I'm not sure why we are so insistent on this variety. It's easier and more economical to cook one large batch of food and portion it out into several meals and sticking to a diet with less variation makes it much easier to control portions and nutritional intake.

Once I started playing with the options for my menu, I got excited because I started to see all the possibilities. I need to concentrate on that as a luxury and enjoy what I have rather than wishing I had something better.

Eating down goes on and on and on....

The Farmer's market was a challenge this morning. Everywhere I looked I though "Oh, I'll just get that." But, i was good and I really stuck to my plan of buying only milk (half gallon of 2%) and rhubarb.

Because I still had some rhubarb left from last week that I wanted to use up, I decided to make a variation on a bread pudding. For this, I used:

4 thin stalks of rhubarb
1 apple (I found a decent one in the refrigerator)
splenda
5 eggs
1 cup milk
honey
brown sugar
3 slices cinnamon raisin bread
whole wheat flour
cinnamon

I chopped the rhubarb and apple and put them in a5 qt casserole with some splenda and about 1/2 cup of water and put that into the microwave for 3 minutes
While that was in the microwave, I mixed all the ingredients except the bread and flour together.
Once the fruits mix was done, I sprinkled about 1/3 bup of whole wheat flour on it and ripped up the bread slices and layered them on top.
I poured the liquid mix over the fruit and bread layers and baked in the oven at 350 for about an hour.

It ends up being kind of sweet and custardy.
With my housemate's help, this week, I have managed to finish off the following items from my list of the other day:
lentils
cauliflower
one jar of honey
bananas
chicken thighs
bread (which I notice wasn't even on the list but the rye bread is gone now too)
brown sugar
rhubarb (which has been replaced)
the almost empty tub of margarine


I still have to work on that heap of lettuce but it should be gone in a few days.

Tonight's dinner will be a big salad with something that I haven't decided on yet. I still have tortillas but may save those for lunches this week with the tuna and/or sardines. Maybe one of the prepared Indian packets will work. I've been trying to get my housemate to eat the frozen pizzas but he isn't going for it.

This brings up an interesting point. Most of the budget guidelines suggest that families and couples can eat for less than a single person can. I can see that this would be true if everyone is willing to eat the same thing. In my household, my partner and I have very different diets. mine is primarily vegetarian with meat at a couple dinners a week. His is primarily carnivorous and he never eats vegetables or anything spicy or unusual. Trust me, there have been more than a few occasions when I've freaked out over his food choices. But what this means is that we are each pretty much eating like single people.
He will eat things like the bread pudding above or oatmeal with fruit in it but he won't touch my salad or bean dishes ever. As a result, I get no real benefit from having two people in the house unless I compromise my diet to meet his.

the Youtube Generation

As part of my research into food and money, I was looking for documentaries on the topic. Youtube was a surprisingly interesting source for newsclips, and low tech homemade videos as well as infomercial-like videos and other random things.

I knew that there were cooking "shows" and I was specifically looking for things like that which might concentrate on inexpensive food preparation.

I liked this video by Bethenny Frankel which has a very flexible and easy recipe for a brown rice breakfast dish. Although I generally eat oatmeal, if one is on a fixed budget, there may be times when it isn't possible to buy both oatmeal and rice and most of us are probably not going to want to eat oatmeal as a grain for lunch or dinner. So, for those times when you might have to pick one or the other, having a variety of flexible recipes is really useful.




Another nice easy rice dish is the salad in the video below (please ignore the ads, I am in no way related to the optifast company). They list this as a side dish but it could be a main course as well. The recipe has a lot of ingredients and I haven't worked out how much it would end up costing but it uses only a small amount of any one ingredient and makes several servings. The big flaw? She recommends making it 24-48 hours ahead of serving. Yikes, I'm a bit too much into instant gratification for that!



Since I seem to be in a rice recipe kick, here is a great video from the New York Time. Yet another very flexible recipe. Much to my surprise, The New York Times has a number of videos which are entertaining and are for recipes that end up being quite cheap to make.



Here is a basic fried rice recipe.

On Shopping

Just as I"m puzzling over the vast quantities of food in my kitchen and my shopping habits, I received an email from my local supermarket with coupons to celebrate their "grand re-opening". As far as I can tell, no one knew that the store was ever closed and if it was, it must have been in the middle of the night.
The coupons include two free items (juice and a frozen meal), $5 off a meat item, $1 for a pineapple, discounted frozen entrees, and a discounted cleaning product.

Generally, I would never buy a pineapple because this time of year I get all my produce from the farmer's market but a dollar for a pineapple is a great deal and I do like pineapple...

I'd consider using the meat coupon if there is a cut of meat that ends up being pretty cheap.

But wait, I wasn't planning on going to the store at all until I have used up a lot of what I already have.

This points out to me the problem of habit shopping (which, for me, may be worse than habit eating). Sunday morning, I'll be up and going to the Farmer's market even though I really will only need milk. Chances are that I will buy rhubarb because I love it and the season is so short. Depending on what I have left, I may buy asparagus for the same reason. If strawberries are cheaper than they have been, I'm likely to get some of those to go with the rhubarb. Now, these things are all good for me so I don't feel bad about buying them.

But, I'm a habitual weekly supermarket shopper too and that's where it gets dangerous. I've even said "Oh, I haven't been shopping in a while, I guess I should go." I may need only one thing from the store, yogurt or rice, for example. But, I don't have a car so going to the store isn't really convenient and once I'm there I figure I should get other stuff that I need. That's when I end up with the things like barley and random tea, extra vinegars, instant mix things, etc. None of it is really bad for me but, food that is sitting unused is just as wasted as food that has been thrown out.

I can do all the tricks to cut back on impulse buying; eat before I go, take a list, etc. But, when it comes to it, I always think of those trick as being to prevent me from buying chips and cookies. It's just too easy to justify another bottle of vinegar.

I'm not likely to cut out the weekly trip to the farmer's market, it's as much for socializing as for food procurement. But I think I need to force myself to cut out the supermarket trips unless there are at least 4 items that I really need.

No dent in the pile!

Thanks to my housemate, yesterday we managed to finish up the mixed berries, chicken thighs and bananas. three things gone from the huge pile in the kitchen. Unfortunately, two of these were on what I consider the "active" food list. These are foods I buy, eat and replace consistently. The chicken thighs seem like they should have been on that list but they'd been in the freezer a while.

I've been thinking about how I got into this situation of having so much food around the house. I consider myself to be a relatively conservative shopper. I usually tell myself not to buy too much because the more food I have around the house, the more I will eat. Apparently, that is only true for certain kinds of items.

Some of what I have I bought because it was such a good deal. Obviously, it's handy to have a few prepackaged meals around for those days/nights when I don't want to cook but want something substantial. The Indian meals were really cheap at a Diwali festival last year so I stocked up on them. Likewise, I bought a bunch of honey all at once because it was three jars for a set price and there were some really nice exotic flavors.

Some of what I have is sort of seasonal food. For example, I tend to eat a lot of cous cous in the summer because it is so easy to cook without heating up the house and goes well with all sorts of vegetable dishes.

I try to live by an "eat to live" philosophy rather than "live to eat" but I think I've been fooling myself. If I were really just eating what I need to keep myself going, surely I'd have worked my way through this stack of stuff already?

Another dilemna I faced yesterday and today is food at work. We often have leftovers from meetings. Sometimes bagels, muffins, fruit, cheese, lettuce. This happens frequently but not always so I can't go into to work on those days assuming that I will have free breakfast or lunch. Yesterday I ended up substituting fruit for the tiast I was planning for a mid morning snack. Today, I know that there are bagels, muffins and fruit from yesterday.
On one hand, I'm sort of of the "if it's free I should eat that" mindset. I'm pretty sure that most of us feel underpaid and a free meal here and there is a nice perk. On the other hand, if I eat the work food, I risk wasting my own food.
For the fruit it's not a big deal; I used up most of my fruit yesterday anyway so I'm happy to have another source. I'll probably pass up the bagels and muffins because they are higher in calories and lower in nutrition than what I have at home.

But it begs the question "does it make a difference if I waste my food or someone else's?" Is the issue the waste or who spent the money on it? In the long run, it's still food in the trash. I suppose I feel better if I'm not wasting my own money because I could have controlled that to begin with. But in a global sense, it's all going into the same trash heap.

The Great "Eat Down"

Today I begin “eating down” the kitchen. I realized almost immediately that this needs to be done carefully so that I don’t fall into the same old traps. What this means is balancing the desire to get the stuff eaten and out of the house so that I can move on with it and not over consuming just because the stuff is there. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if I start my new food plan next week or the week after or if I have a modified plan for a few weeks as long as the plan is sensible and not wasteful.

Today I planned the following menu:

Breakfast:

Tea

Rhubarb pie oatmeal (rhubarb and frozen berries cooked with a bit of sweetener and then cooked with a layer of oatmeal sweetened with honey over it)

Snack:

Rye toast with butter

Lunch:

Curried lentils

cauliflower

Banana

Salad of lettuce, dried fish (these are small anchovies that are sweet and spicy from a Chinese grocery), sunflower seeds and dried cranberries with a rice wine vinegar and oil dressing.

Snack

Almonds

Dinner:

Cauliflower

Couscous

Chicken thigh

Asparagus

salad

Looks like a good day’s worth of eating and comes in just under 2000 calories but I still had to fight the inclination to add more to it just because the food was there to be eaten. As it is, this menu barely made a dent in the food that is around the house. I used up the mixed berries (but gave half the oatmeal to my housemate) and about half the rhubarb. This day’s diet is also fairly high in fat, even though the fat comes from sources that aren’t too bad (olive oil, almonds).

Grams Calories %-Cals Calories 1,900 Fat 115.8 1,002 53 % Saturated 21.4 187 10 % Polyunsaturated 30.0 257 14 % Monounsaturated 57.3 496 26 % Carbohydrate 173.4 669 35 % Dietary Fiber 40.2 Protein 65.6 231 12 % Alcohol 0.0 0 0 %

Starting Out

This blog is my attempt at regaining control over my finances, food, and life in general. The focus is where food and money meet: my weekly food budget. I"m planning on a budget of about $35 a week (more on where that number came from later). The goal is to re establish my priorities when it comes to my food and spending choices.

In order to prepare for this endeavor, I decided that I needed to get a handle on what food I currently have around the house. I’m frankly ashamed at how much stuff there is. As a result, my goal this week is to spend nothing at all on food and “eat down” the kitchen.

Here is a partial list:

Stuff I can keep:

1. 2 bottles of red wine vinegar*
2. 1 bottle rice vinegar
3. 1 bottle plum vinegar
4. 10 packets instant miso soup
5. 2 boxes broccoli soup ( ready to eat, not powdered)
6. 2 cans progresso soup
7. 6 prepared Indian dishes (spinach paneer, spicy potatoes)
8. 2 boxes of farfalle pasta
9. Frozen chicken thighs*
10. Bag of frozen cauliflower
11. 2 frozen pizzas
12. Frozen black beans (fresh from farmer’s market once upon a time)
13. Frozen berries*
14. Flax seeds
15. Wheat berries
16. Dried apples
17. 5 jars of jams/jelly of various flavors and sizes
18. 1 ½ jars of molasses
19. 2 jars of honey
20. Box of artificial sweetener
21. Most of a 5 lb bag of sugar
22. Lots of flour (white, whole wheat, rye, etc.)
23. Dried apples
24. Dried coconut
25. Sunflower seeds
26. Almonds*
27. Dried fish
28. Couscous
29. Sesame seeds
30. Soy sauce
31. Seaweed (for sushi)
32. Tofu
33. Brown sugar
34. Granola*
35. 2 bananas*
36. Dried figs
37. Lentils
38. Olive oil*
39. Vegetable oil*
40. Raisins*
41. Dried cranberries*
42. Large container of oatmeal*
43. 4 Boxes of instant things like risotto and bean dishes
44. 5 cans of tuna fish*
45. 2 cans of sardines
46. 4 boxes of jello and instant pudding
47. Large jar of olives
48. A huge amount of lettuce*
49. Rhubarb*
50. Potatoes*
51. Spring onions*
52. Asparagus*
53. 2 partial loaves of rye bread*
54. One large and two smaller tubs of margarine (one small tub almost empty)*
55. 1 ½ dozen eggs*
56. Jar of thai soup mix
57. Tea*
58. Ground coffee (I don’t drink coffee in the summer, usually)*
59. Mayonnaise*
60. Packets of ketchup from delivery food*

Stuff to be thrown out:

1. Peanut butter that expired in 2007
2. Old dead apples, onions potatoes
3. Something that I think was chili that could now sleep on the bed with the dog
4. A jar of pasta sauce with less than a serving left in it
5. A can of concentrated fruit juice that was purchased years ago
6. Old can of cooking spray
7. Huge jar of pickles
8. Packets of rancid ramen noodles
9. Ancient tube of tomato paste
10. Box of phyllo dough- bought thins for some project and never finished it.

Stuff I’m undecided about:

1. Huge jar of ice tea powder mix that is one solid lump.
2. Huge container of Italian herbs that’s been around for ages
3. Packets of instant oatmeal
4. Very old herbal teas
5. Lots of other old herbs and spices
6. barley

The items that are asterisked are what I would consider “currently active”. These are items I bought recently and eat routinely. The other items have been around a while or are things I eat in the winter and have some left over. Some of them I bought and simply forgot about. That’s 24 out of 60 items. So, not even half of what is hanging around the house is food that I use on a routine basis. I doubt that I’m very unusual in this respect. I’ve seen in some of my friend’s and family’s cabinets. I’ve seen the refrigerator at work.

The stuff that I’m undecided about presents an interesting issue. In some cases, these are things I just over bought. As a single woman who doesn’t cook a lot of Italian food, there was no way I was going to make it through a giant container of Italian herbs. Honestly, I’ve had that thing for maybe 6 years and am only half way through it. I tend to go crazy with buying spices and then I feel guilty throwing them away even when I want to buy more.

Other things like the teas and the barley are often things I bought because they seemed like such a good idea at the time but I ended up not liking them. The same is true for many of the items to be thrown out. I either bought more than I needed or I bought things that are inconvenient (the giant jar of pickles, for example) or that I didn’t really want to eat.. Probably, what should have happened is that I should have offered the things I don’t like to my friends who might have been able to make better use of them. I should have offered to share some of the herbs with people.

On the other hand, I could have made more of a commitment to eat the stuff I had. This brings me to a topic I find fascinating: wasting food.

Once you’ve eaten all you that you want at a meal and there is still food left over, you can choose to save what ever is left, eat it, or throw it away. Many of us are squeamish about just throwing it away but, many of us are concerned about our weight and don’t really need to be eating more than makes us comfortably full. Just as many of us are lazy and can’t be bothered to store the leftovers and then figure out what to do with them later.

Before you start hovering up everything on the plate, though, I think it’s worth evaluating the nutritional impact that might have. For example, as a child, it was always my job to finish the salad after everyone else had had what they wanted. I loved salad and that was a healthy choice for me. On the other hand, my housemate feels an obligation to finish my French fries when I’ve made a conscious (and difficult) choice not to eat half of them. I just don’t see the point in eating something that I am then going to spend an hour trying to exercise away again. Now, I can’t really compost French fries so they will just have to be thrown away. But there is a negative consequence to eating them that, I feel, out weighs the positive of keeping them out of the landfill.

So, for me, waste is more than just throwing away. It’s also eating low nutrition, high calorie food to begin with. In that case, the choice about waste has to be made before the food is even purchased and not just when it’s being prepared or served.