New Format!

I realized recently that with all the extra jobs I've been taking on, I've had much less time to be dedicating to blogging.  For this reason, I'm going to try a new format.  Instead of blogging everyday, I'm going to reduce the number of blogs I post and make each one a little more concentrated and focused on the essence of Cheaply Green NYC - the best tips, ideas, recipes, shopping suggestions, coupons, etc that I can muster.

So, I'll still be posting about specific days and how much I spend, but I will also add a mix of just simple ideas and thoughts.

I'll also try my best to recap each week's finances and meal breakdowns.

More soon!!!

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 .

a

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!

Day 25: America's Got Talent. Well, sort of.

Money spent: $20

Amount in food eaten: $.15

Breakfast: English muffin with peanut butter ($0 - free from work)

Lunch: Cheese wrap ($0 - free from work)

Dinner: Tuna on crackers ($.15)

After work, I met up with Mike and my friend Julie to go to a taping of America's Got Talent.  I described the experience after we left (5 acts in) as "grape gum".  It was fun and artificial and sugary sweet, but ultimately it lost it's flavor and I realized it was probably going to someday cause some sort of cancer...  It was awesome to see Julie, and the tickets were free!

After the taping, we ate some of Mike's famous tuna and headed across the street to our friend Lindsey's birthday party.  I was proud of myself for all the money saving I've been doing, so I had a few beers and racked up a tab of $20.  It was worth it.  I had a great time.  I talked about my freegan dive with a bunch of people - not sure if they thought I was insane or not, but everyone was really interested.

Day 24: Final Cut Pro

Money Spent: $0

Amount in food eaten: $0

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

Lunch: nada

Dinner: Egg sandwich on English muffin and rice pudding ($0)

Work was a little nutso today.  I started it off well, though, by making a really nice breakfast when I arrived (it only took about 5 minutes to prepare and kept me going until 6:00).  I even brewed some coffee that I found in the cupboard from months ago.  It was still totally good, but would have otherwise just been chucked.  

It's crazy how much food I've wasted, thinking back... 

Anyway, my day at work was incredibly busy for various reasons, so by the time 4:30 rolled around and I had to get going, I realized I hadn't eaten lunch (and was still fine)...

I went to Queens to work for David again.  When I arrived, I made a nice organic egg sandwich with cheese on a whole wheat English muffin (which was free to me, of course :) ).  I did some data entry stuff for David, and then he finally pulled out the big guns.  He decided now is the time for teaching me Final Cut Pro (finally).  David and I have worked together on a slew of movies and film jobs through his production company, Match Productions.  We've always said that I should be learning to edit through FCP, and now's the time.

I had a tutorial and then sat for about 45 minutes and went through some very funny footage from a cooking show they have been filming.  I'm psyched about finally learning this - definitely something I can use in future jobs.  I walked away with a hunk of cash and a dark chocolate Easter bunny.  Not exactly organic, but totally FREE.

When I left, I found an e-mail from a college student in Florida asking to interview me about my Freegan Dive.  How cool!  We had a phone interview and I'm looking forward to reading her paper :)

Mike and I are about to tuck into The Devil and Daniel Johnson which just got Netflix'd to us. 

Day 23: First Freegan Dinner

Money spent: $0

Amount in food eaten: $.20

Breakfast: Bagel ($0)

Lunch: Cheese burrito ($0)

Dinner: Quinoa w/ white beans, roasted parsnips, and roasted kale ($.20)

That's right, folks.  The only thing I ate today that came out of my pocket was the quinoa, which was fluffy, delicious, and only $.20.  

My morning bagel, scavenged from last night's freegan dive was only a tiny bit less than perfect - just a day-old bagel.  I put a little jam from Mike's fridge on it and was good to go.

For lunch, I used the work groceries to make a yummy cheese wrap - I put a burrito wrap on the skillet and covered it in some shredded cheese, and added half an organic tomato, chopped.  I topped it with a little hot sauce and cooked it up for a few minutes.  Sorry I didn't take a picture - it was great, though!

After work, I headed to Queens to work for a few hours for my friends David and Michael.  I hadn't seen either in a while, so it was great to catch up.  Michael joined me when I left and hung for the rest of the night.

We were hungry, so we munched on freegan grapes (I had SO many).  Mike had the brilliant idea to cover them in water and put a few drops of citrus essential oils on them.  The oils made their flavor pop like no grapes I've ever eaten.  Whoa.

For dinner, I made Mike, Michael, and myself a whole meal from my freegan dive!  I'd NEVER made parsnips before (I had to look them up by searching "white carrot" to even know they WERE parsnips).  I chopped them into fry shapes and arranged them with the kale on a baking pan (yep, I confirmed it to be kale... this is the problem with shopping out of a dumpster.  If you're not educated on your greens, you could wind up with a mouthful of dandelion leaves...). 

I drizzled them with olive oil and garlic Season-All, and then put a little ume plum vinegar on the kale.  I baked them for about 15 minutes while I cooked quinoa and beans on the stove (the beans were something I scavenged from my apartment's "not gonna eat this" section).

Parsnip fries, kale, and beans on quinoa

The kale was tasty, but I don't think I cooked it quite right - the tips were delicious and crunchy, but the middle was kind of tough.  I'll have to look it up.  Anyone have any good recipes?

The parsnips were SO good - definitely something to pursue.

We had a great night hanging, and Mike's friends Bradley and Matt stopped by later.  We all took a nice stroll around Times Square and laughed our asses off pretty much the entire time.  It was so great to reconnect with Michael (it's been a long time since we've hung out).  

Great, great, great day.