Day 11 - Sick Day 2: Bread

Money spent: $31.23

Total in food eaten: $4.08

I woke up feeling awful again, so I took the day off.  We've run out of edible-on-their-own groceries, so I dragged my sick ass to the grocery store (Food Emporium) when I finally stumbled out of bed.  I got a nice amount of organic groceries and saved $4.60 in coupons, but I didn't do nearly as well as last week.   The cashier was a little huffy about the coupons and kind of rude, which I found a little weird (especially in my icky state), and Food Emporium's prices are pretty high for organic foods.  I think I'll avoid them when I can, but I was in a pinch.

Organic Milk* - 3.79

Almond Milk - 3.99

Blueberry yogurt* (3) - 4.27

Cereal* - 3.99

Amy's Mac and Cheese* - 2.99

Chickpeas* - 1.94

Apples (2) - 2.14

Burrito - 3.99

Tomato soup* - 2.69

Chocolate milk - 1.69

Total: $31.23

When I got home, I had some yogurt and passed out for a while.  When I got up, I was feeling like I had a bit of energy, so I mixed up some oatmeal bread dough (Click here for recipe) and let it rise while I napped some more.

 dough after 1 hour of rising

YUM

I also made some easy chickpea snacks.   Just rinse and dry chickpeas and lay out on cookie sheet.  Then heat 1-2 tbsp olive oil, garlic powder, rosemary, fresh garlic (diced), and salt in a small pot and heat until it smells amazing.  Pour the mixture over the chickpeas, coat well, and bake on 400 for 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes or so. ($2.09, though you can make this cheaper if you use cheaper chickpeas... I wasn't happy with the price of mine)

Any spices you like will taste great!  Get creative.

Uncooked chickpeas, covered in seasoning

Crunchy and zesty - such an amazing snack!

I took it easy for a while, and was starting to feel better. I made Amy's mac and cheese for lunch ($2.99) They sent me a bunch of coupons, so it was nice to have a cheaper frozen meal around.  I can definitely make mac and cheese myself for significantly less, but not when I'm feeling icky.

I wanted to get outside for a little while because it's been a BEAUTIFUL day, so I escorted Mike to Fordham, where his friend Katy came to play him piano for his birthday.  I'd arranged the whole thing, so it was nice to be able to go (I didn't think I'd make it in the morning).  When I got there, my friend Derrick wanted to go check out some Freegan dumpster dive sites we'd found online.  While Katy played for Mike, Derrick and I took a walk to find the dumpster's we'll eventually go on freegan dives to.  Nothing was out yet, but we got a good idea of where to look.

When we got back to Fordham, we got wind of a benefit where there would be food.  Donations were optional, but since it was for Haiti we each gave a few bucks.  Though my Hatian dinner wasn't organic, it was free!  

Rice, beans, potatoes, plantains, pasta, cookies, and some Coke

We even got to stay for a few of my friends' performances, which was awesome!

 Owen and Nadia

 

 Mike Fabano's fabulous guitar

 I'm glad to be feeling better, and I feel like I had a pretty good day for my mission.  Even though the grocery shopping wasn't the thriftiest, I do feel like I've learned where NOT to shop.  I also think I got a few things I didn't need because I had coupons - it's all stuff I'll use and enjoy, but I'm not sure it was necessary.  We'll see how long I can stretch it :)  I do still need to get some veggies, so I'll see if there's any good deals at WF tomorrow.

It'll be a busy day at work since I missed today.  Glad I have oatmeal bread to start my day!

Day 6: Smoothies Are My Downfall

Money spent: $4.65
Total amount in food: $5.25

TGIF. 

We ran out of bananas, so for breakfast I had oatmeal bread with peanut butter. (.$15)

I was hungry for lunch pretty early, so I made myself an awesome open-faced sandwich.  I had organic pepperoni in the work fridge from about 3 weeks ago that seems to never go bad (the sell by date is sometime in late fall... which kind of freaks me out but it tasted GREAT).  My co-worker had some tomatoes in the fridge that were a little soft, so she said she didn’t want them.  I cut them into thin slices, put some olive oil and garlic powder on the English muffins I brought, topped them with some cheese from a week or two ago, and sliced pepperoni to put on top.  I then popped it in the microwave (our oven in busted).  MMM it hit the spot. ($.41 – I’m only counting the muffin since I would have thrown everything else out!)

I walked from work to meet Mike in the park on 59th Street, which was great except that I was really hungry by the time I got there.  There’s a Whole Foods in the Columbus Circle mall, so I went in there to see if I could find any free samples.  No such luck. 

I was so hungry that I caved when I saw Jamba Juice, I bought a Peanut Butter Moo’d for $4.65.  I felt pretty guilty, but I kind of justified it because it’s Friday and it was seriously the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted.

Mike is making me some of my dough pockets from the other night (flour, water, and salt for the dough shaped into thin disks and filled with chopped onions, tomatoes, shredded mozzarella, mushrooms, and a little garlic)  You can fill these delicious little suckers with whatever you have in the fridge (my favorite is spinach, feta, and onion).  It’s a lovely little package of flavor and they fill you up nicely. They also freeze well, though you should wrap them individually since the dough gets sticky when frozen.  If you make extra dough, you can throw it in the fridge, too, and fill it with anything new you acquire. ($.04)

It’s Mike’s birthday weekend, so tomorrow we’re going with some friends to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey.  We’re getting in to the museum for free (our friend Caryn has free passes), but we pay to see the movie and for the train ticket.  It will probably be about $17.  I’m going to make it my goal next week to make up for the extra $$$. I also need to find a good birthday present for Mike!!!  Yeep.

I realized I’d totally forgotten about the crackers I got, and I was feeling kinda munchy so I checked them out.  It turns out they’re these like airy little breadcrackers (Wasa Crisp 'n Light).  They were the cheapest crackers at Whole Foods, and they’re kinda crazy amazing.  I ate one plain, and then covered one with some preserves from Mike’s fridge.  I then tried one with almond butter and honey.  Our honey is starting to crystallize, so I spread some of that on the almond butter.  Holy shit.  Just get these crackers and take my word for it.  I also feel like I just ate a mini-sandwich, so I’m a lot more full than I expected to be from eating some crackers!!

Day 3: Baking Bread

Money spent: $3.48

  (Olive oil spread - $2.49
  Cucumber - .$99)

Total amount in food eaten: $3.63 ($4.63 including cereal!)

For breakfast, I ate some delicious organic cereal (Mesa Sunrise).  Mike purchases this in the bulk bags rather than boxes and stores it in plastic cereal containers.  He mixes it with raisins and we eat it with banana slices and almond milk.  (>$1, not my $$$!)

Lunch: I brought leftover fajita salad to work today and ate it cold with some fresh tortilla chips.  MMMM it was so good cold – I kinda mixed everything together into a chicken/sour cream/mushroom/onion glop and ate it like dip. ($0)

Mike met me at work and I was feeling pretty hungry.  I’d tried a free sample at WF the day before, which was just butter/olive oil spread on some whole grain bread with cucumbers.  I couldn’t get it out of my head, so we stopped by WF (Mike needed to pick some stuff up anyway) and I got the spread and some cukes for $3. 

I also dropped by my place and picked up some packets of yeast I had along with some other random foods I wouldn’t touch for the last few months – lentils, plain oatmeal packets, some canned white beans, and sugar (he won’t keep any in his place and I’m not thrilled by white sugar, but it’s pretty necessary for baking and I figured if I had it I might as well use it).

I made the following when we landed at Mike’s place:

1)    Cucumber sandwich.  You cannot imagine how good this is!! I just covered one side of an English muffin with the olive oil/butter spread (I don’t usually eat butter but I made an exception since it’s so tasty on this sandwich), sliced about 1/6th of a cucumber into small disks, and put it all together.  Great snack to tie me over since I was cranky. ($.16 + $.40 + $.05) =  $0.61

2)    Quinoa Chicken

It looks a little gruel-y, but it was amazing...

This was dinner.  Last night I chopped some organic chicken into chunks and put them in a ziplock with chopped onions, garlic, and cumin.  I cooked about a cup of quinoa and added a little salt and garlic all-spice to the water (it takes around 20 minutes).  At the 7 minute mark, I threw the chicken into a heated saucepan with some Braggs Liquid Amino Acids (basically soy sauce, but better for you) and cooked it ‘til it was JUUUUST undercooked – about 4 minutes.   I then removed it from the heat For some reason, the quinoa was a little soggier than I’m used to, but when I tasted it, it was SO yummy that I didn’t care – Mike and I actually preferred it.  I love pasta, and it kind of had that doughy semolina-like consistency.  I chopped 3 mushrooms and threw them into the chicken pan with ALL the quinoa, and cooked this mixture for about 2 minutes.  Totally filling and so delicious.  ($2.79 + $.43 + $.20) = $3.42

3)    Oatmeal bread.

Yup.  I made bread.  It’s such an easy recipe and SO cheap.  I used almond milk instead of regular milk (last time I made this I used soy milk and the bread was VERY dense but amazingly delicious).  The only reason people probably don’t do this all the time is because you need to give it about 2 and a half hours of time to rise (one hour in a bowl and another hour and a half in log-form in the bread pan)– but I just prepped the dough (10 minutes and 7 cheap and easy to find ingredients) and let it rise while I went about the rest of my night.

I didn’t have bread pans at Mikes, so we walked to the housewares store on 42nd St and I got 2 aluminum pans for $1 (which was the only thing I had to buy to make this bread!!!).  This bread is also vegan if you sub olive oil/butter spread for straight olive oil!  ($.50 for me, about $2.00 for you!)

Oh my god, it smelled amazing...

I’m noticing, with all the attention I’m paying to how much I eat, that I’m hungry a LOT more than I thought.  I’d been snacking on sunflower seeds I got for free from a gig a few weeks ago to get me through these hunger-spells, but I don’t love them and I found out tonight that each serving is a whopping 64 grams of fat (and 33% of the DV for saturated fat).  Yick.  I’m very sensitive to hunger – when my blood sugar crashes, I tend to get uncontrollably cranky and irrational.  I know when it’s happening and I’m able to tell the people around me that they shouldn’t take me seriously.  It still sucks, though.  I think that’s why I’ve spent so much money on food in the past.  I need to be rational to function, and I need food to be rational, so I just buy whatever is closest to me and sounds good in the moment.  One of the perks and drawbacks to NYC living – you can get ANYTHING on a whim.

Mike’s making me an awesome smoothie right now.  Mmmmm…. Dessert.

Frozen raspberries, almond milk, Young Living power fiber (vanilla flavored), and flax seed oil. Tastes very yogurty and no need to add ice since the raspberries are frozen! (and cost me NOTHING ‘cause Mike bought/had all the ingredients)