Day 32: Making Home

Just a quick note to say Mike and I had a nice Bed Bath and Beyond trip to get sheets, window dressings, and some small furniture for the apartment in anticipation of doing some subletting.

We're excited to start subletting his place because we just love hanging here so much that it'll be nice to share.  Every time our friends come over, someone says "This place has such a good vibe".  And the fact of the matter is, it does! We're psyched about putting in the new window dressings, and glad that the $$$ we spent on making this place even better is going to come back to us!

We'll be packing up for my apartment (Lenny and all) for our first weary travelers, who are arriving on Wednesday and seem really cool.  Yay!

On a CheaplyGreen note... I need to go shopping in a BIG way - I've managed to scrape the remnants and eat just fine, but last night I buckled and bought a $7 sandwich.  Not good to be busy and broke, 'cause busy tends to win out when it comes to food.  I'll be in Baltimore until late Saturday night on a gig, and babysitting all Sunday, but Monday is about to be a CRAZY shopping day.

Day 31: Oceans

Money Spent: $22

Total in food eaten: $6

Breakfast: English muffin with peanut butter and jam ($0)

Lunch: Pizza burrito ($0)

Dinner: Tilapia w/ couscous and asparagus ($6)

I've definitely reached a point now where I'm starting to need to buy some groceries.  I've been eating a lot of these cheese burritos in varying form for lunch and I'm getting a little sick of them.  I went almost 2 full weeks on one $36 grocery trip, but a lot of that was because we've had free lunch at work.

What is a pizza burrito, you ask?  Burrito wrap on stove. Sprinkle with garlic powder.  Cover middle with pizza sauce (or tomato sauce), cover sauce with grated cheese.  Put hot sauce on cheese.  Cook for 4 or so minutes.  Wrap.  Eat.  

Anyway, after a day of running around at work, my friend Rachael and I met up and went to see Oceans.  It was pretty amazing and much less Disney than I expected (though the credit song is full-on Disnastic: teenagers - presumably with too-nice hair - creating loose metaphors between nature and inspirational motivation: "make a waaaaave".  Ahem.  Back to food...)

When Rachael and I lived together in Queens in 2007, we were both living a little cheaply green.  This was around the first time I started hearing about freeganism and the whole "low impact" movement, so we used to eat this amazing little meal like... 4 times a week.  It was just a filet of tilapia (which is usually around $3-4), couscous (back then it was from a box - $1.29) (, and asparagus ($2.50/bunch).  We used a lot of lemon and garlic and salt and pepper .

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as per usual, my photos suck... I'm working on it.

Rachael and I went to Whole Foods and spent a collective $14 on dinner (plus a bottle of olive oil, which I didn't count).  We got 2 cups bulk Middle Eastern couscous, 4 fillets of tilapia, a lemon, a clove of garlic, and a bunch of asparagus. This made dinner for both of us (could've fed 1-2 more) and left a cup of couscous.  

Rachael took the couscous prior to boiling it and sort of fried it up a little in some olive oil.  It gave it this really nice browned look and it tasted almost buttery.  Really good plan.

I'll post the recipe soon.  Working on some confusing html stuff... 

Day 30: A Month of Cheaply Green!

Hey everyone!

It's been a month today of living on less than $5 a day and eating organic (or at least extremely wholesome) foods.

I've spent a total of $114.31 on groceries this month (see my shopping lists)

This comes out to $3.81/day.  AND I still have groceries leftover!

I've been a little MIA thanks to an extremely busy weekend - I was in Allentown/Bethlehem on Saturday with Mike doing a kid's festival, then back in NYC working a bar mitzvah.  Sunday was spent working media for the Wagner Society of New York, and I worked my regular job and a babysitting gig (for the bar mitzvah people) on Monday.

Needless to say, I've been making a little extra dough and sleeping REALLY well.

Just a few highlights:

• David (who I did the Wagner thing with) handed me $35 in gift cards to Applebees and Coldstone at the end of the day.  While neither are exactly healthy, free food is free food.
• Today I received a nice free sample of Kashi Go Lean Crunch! (I went to their website and signed up for it about 3 weeks ago)
• Last night I used a bunch of random freezer food and pasta to come up with a lovely little garlic and olive oil pasta dish.  I cooked frozen broccoli with garlic and olive oil, then added a little chopped organic chicken thigh until it was just undercooked.  Then I added some fusilli noodles to the saucepan and cooked the whole thing for a few minutes.  YUM.  and CHEAP!
• Mike and I have had a few responses about subletting his apartment for weekends!
• I've made approximately $450 in EXTRA work this month, which has been fun and challenging, and doesn't feel like too much extra time.  I'm feeling better about myself and my abilities in general.
• Shannon, my cousin, gave me a big bag of really cute clothes that she is getting rid of (since she'd moving in with me and downsizing)
• I was able to pay my step-dad my monthly student loan repayment in cash from my extra work this month!