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.