Monday, March 16, 2009

Eating Cheap Day One: What We Bought & What We Ate

Today we shopped for our cheap eats. Here's the break down of what we got...

A TON of fruits and vegetables for $16.90. Seriously look at all of this! Brussels, mustard greens, kale, mushrooms, broccoli, cauliflower, grapefruits, butternut squash, a potato, carrot and onions. I ♥ Iovine Brothers Produce:


A chicken for $6.48, a whole trout for $5.24 and 6 sardines for $1.52 (seriously!):


And a few things from the grocery store - milk, eggs, split peas, giant white beans, barley, chipotles (splurge!), oats, and celery that we forgot to get at the terminal for $12.55:


Total for shopping today $42.69:


In additional to this stuff I bought 3 bananas, 3 apples and a cabbage for $1.70 on Saturday and I'll be eating them this week so that bring the total up to $44.39 (that cabbage was $.09/lb - $.22 for a whole cabbage thanks to a St Patty's day sale). We also have a case of diet coke in the fridge, I know, I know, it's a weakness! I bought it on sale last week for $2.50, that's $.30 a can, Ron drank one so now we're at $44.69. That leaves us just over $5 for anything that we forgot and the use of things in our cabinets. This might be harder than I thought...

This is what we ate today:

Breakfast - I had a banana, oatmeal and coffee (Ron's mom brought us a bag of coffee a couple weeks ago so I'm not including it in our costs - nothing wrong with accepting gifts right?).  Ron skipped breakfast.

Lunch - Split pea soup:

A couple of diced onions, carrots, celery stalks, a potato and a bag of split peas were covered in homemade chicken stock (I had a quart in the freezer that I used but I replaced it with a quart that we made tonight).   I added salt, pepper and let it simmer for about 30-40 minutes until everything was soft.  I'll be eating this all week! 

Dinner - Roast chicken and turnip greens:

We ate one whole leg and both wings, that leaves two breasts and another leg for meals later in the week.  The turnip greens were sauteed with some onion, salt, pepper and a splash of red wine vinegar.  

In addition to what we ate today we also cooked the dried white beans and made stock from the roasted chicken carcass for use later in the week. Did I mention that I'm working from home for the next couple of weeks? There is no doubt that this will make this project easier - I can work while stock is simmering away on the stove or while I'm braising vegetables in the oven. Eating this way is going to require a fair amount of our time planning, prepping and cooking. Luckily Ron and I really enjoy being in the kitchen so cooking is never a chore for us.

One day down, six to go!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is gonna be a brezze...
Except that we forgot chocolate!

AdicaRoy said...

Sara, this blog idea is brilliant! I know you can eat for $25-$35/week because I have often done it, but it usually involves peanut butter sandwiches and cereal for dinner. Your recipes are going straight to my grocery list. I read a blog awhile back of people who ate for $1/day, but that's too much of a stunt to be practical. You could seriously turn this series into a book or a magazine article or something.

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