This is part of a six-week series – an attempt to eat healthy and at least 50% local on a budget of $4/day. Read the first post in this series HERE.
The first week went really well, though we missed having coffee, spices, and snacks in our lives, and we were certainly more hungry than usual. That will change in week two. For week one, we had to focus on getting a few staples in the house – things we would need for most meals throughout the next few weeks. That meant no money for little extras.
You can see what we bought, where we bought it, and how much each item cost in our last post HERE.
The day before we started I had a prep day. I made apple sauce (without sugar, lemon or nutmeg because that didn’t fit the budget), soaked and cooked the dried chickpeas and placed them in a container with water in the fridge so they were ready to use when I needed them, and made squash soup (recipe below). Apple sauce recipe is HERE.
As you will see, most meals this week were from (or adapted from) the Good and Cheap Cookbook. You can download a free copy of it here: http://www.leannebrown.com/cookbooks
Day 1
Breakfast: Oatmeal with apples and cinnamon (as in the Good and Cheap cookbook but with water instead of apple juice)
Lunch: Open-faced cucumber sandwich (toasted bread, sour cream, sliced cukes, sea salt)
Dinner: Veggie melts (chopped zucchini, onion, bell pepper, and corn cooked in a frying pan with a little oil. Place topping on bread, top with grated cheese, bake a few minutes until cheese melts)
Snacks:
We didn’t intend to have snacks this week but forgot that we had friends coming over. We made potato latkes topped with sour cream which were made up of grated potato, grated onion, and an egg then fried in a pan and sprinkled with salt. They were incredibly good.
Day 2
Breakfast: Oatmeal with apples and cinnamon (As in the Good and Cheap cookbook but with water instead of apple juice)
Lunch: Open faced cucumber sandwich (toast bread, sour cream, sliced cukes, sea salt)
Dinner: Veggie melts – leftovers from night 1
Day 3
Breakfast: Oatmeal with apples and cinnamon (As in the Good and Cheap cookbook but with water instead of apple juice)
Lunch: Squash Soup inspired by Good and Cheap, but we didn’t have spice, coconut milk, or broth available so we made it as follows…
1. Rub oil and salt on the inside of half a cored squash and bake it at 400 degrees for 45 minutes.
2. While it is roasting, chop an onion and salt and cook it in a little oil on medium heat until translucent, then add in two peeled and chopped potatoes. Cook for 5 – 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add a chopped clove of garlic, half cup of apple sauce, and the squash (inside should be soft so just mash it and put it in sans-peel). Cover with water.
4. Boil. Turn heat down to medium-low heat. Cook until potatoes are soft. Puree. Add more salt if needed.
Dinner: Vegetable Quiche, Hold The Crust (as in Good and Cheap but without milk or pepper)
Day 4
Breakfast: Oatmeal with apples and cinnamon (As in the Good and Cheap cookbook but with water instead of apple juice)
Lunch: Open faced cucumber sandwich (toast bread, sour cream, sliced cukes, sea salt)
Dinner: Chickpeas and Grits (made the same way as the shrimp and grits recipe from Good and Cheap but replacing chickpeas for shrimp. I also didn’t have celery or shallots or stock. I used water instead of stock, half a can of canned tomatoes instead of a tomato and only half my jalapeno)
Day 5
Breakfast: Oatmeal with apples and cinnamon (As in the Good and Cheap cookbook but with water instead of apple juice)
Lunch: Open faced cucumber sandwich (toast bread, sour cream, sliced cukes, sea salt)
Dinner: Corn Soup (As in Good and Cheap, minus the celery, and using just half a jalapeno and water instead of broth. I also then pureed it because we took the whole pot to a potluck for eight people)
Day 6
Breakfast: Oatmeal with apples and cinnamon (As in the Good and Cheap cookbook but with water instead of apple juice)
Lunch: Open faced cucumber sandwich (toast bread, sour cream, sliced cukes, sea salt)
Supper: Squash Soup (see above) with Potato latkes and sour cream (see above)
Day 7
Breakfast: Oatmeal with apples and cinnamon (As in the Good and Cheap cookbook but with water instead of apple juice)
Lunch: Open faced cucumber sandwich (toast bread, sour cream, sliced cukes, sea salt)
Supper: Polenta with tomato sauce, leftover veggies, and cheese*
Other snacks throughout the week:
There weren’t many snacks, but when there were snacks it was the fried peels from the potatoes we were using and apples.
How it Went:
I’m not going to lie, I did feel pretty hungry between meals, though the meals themselves were great. Some of what we had was repetitive (lots of cucumber sandwiches and soups) but even still come Sunday we were both saying how much we were loving both.
The two big surprises this week was guests dropping in Monday and the potluck on Friday, which meant using more of our supplies than we had planned.
For the potluck, a meal we planned to feed us for two dinners became our contribution. Despite having no broth and just salt and cinnamon for added flavour, our corn chowder turned out great. I made the snap decision to purée it at the last minute which was totally the right choice to make. It came out creamy and comforting, though perhaps not a fair trade for the Getaway Farm brisket we got in exchange.
We had lots of great conversation around the dinner table about what we were doing and why. That launched into an excellent exchange of ideas and stories on food security, the practical importance of breaking bread together and the community that can form around community dining and soup kitchens. One of our fellow diners shared her experience of the lovely community that grew around the food a number of years ago when they went through a period of needing a soup kitchen. Another diner shared their strategy to save money on food – only buying more when the cupboards were empty.
We know that this challenge can’t be perfect, and we’re taking things as we go. One thing that IS important to us is not giving up life to live on a budget. Eating on the cheap means saying no to a lot of social engagements, so we want to look at ways to still blend entertainment with food. Potlucks are an excellent way to do that.
The run I mentioned above made us realize we have to up our calories next week. We both got back totally gutted, and spend the rest of the day in a bit of a haze. In week two, we’re going to focus on bulking up our lunches and adding back evening snacks.
I’ll have next week’s shopping list and menus up later this week, but I’m happy to report that it includes pizza, popcorn, (snacks again, YAY!), spice oil (!!!) and many other yummy things. We’ll also let you know what we had left over from this week.
Week two is also bringing with it more spices, which is quite quickly opening up more possible items from the Good and Cheap cookbook. So, while week one wasn’t easy, things are already looking up.
Our biggest observation from week one has been how quickly taste buds change. There was no room for sugar in the budget, and everything we made was pretty well from scratch (save the canned tomatoes). At the beginning of the week, our apples tasted really sour to us, but come Sunday they were the sweetest things we’d ever had.
We also had very little food waste this week (though a little was too much). I tried roasting some of our chickpeas so that we would have a salty, crunchy snack. They were burnt to a crisp when I chose the wrong set of internet instructions to follow. No matter what Google says, 35 minutes at 450 degrees is too long to roast chickpeas.
We made it to week 2!! Click here to read our week two shopping list, and the exciting new things making it back into our cupboards.
Post 2: Preparing to eat on $4/day (and our week 1 shopping list)
Post 3: Week 1 meals and recipes and how it went
Post 4: Week 2 Shopping List and Prep
Post 5: The Nacho Debacle and Meals for Week Two
Post 6: How Week 2 on a $4/Day Budget Went, & Week 3 Shopping List
Post 7: Week Three Recipes and Cooking Disasters
Post 8: $4/Day Food Budget Shopping List (Week 4)
Post 9: $4/Day Food Menu – Week Four
Post 10: $4/Day Shopping List and Meals (Week 5)
Post 11: 10 Lessons Learned Eating on $4/Day
Today’s Question: What are your go-to affordable potluck meals? Share your thoughts with us in the comments, on our facebook page or tweet us at @GillianWesleyNS and @DrewMooreNS.
*This was a make and freeze that we will eat in October. We have dinner with my family every Sunday and visit Drew’s mother a weekend a month. We had a lot of discussion about these meals going into the food challenge and decided that we would keep doing them, but would then extend our challenge from just the month of September to Thanksgiving. A major factor is that we are training for the Valley Harvest Marathon (Drew is doing the full, I’m doing the half, my first race) and Sunday is our long run day. We were glad we did. After 41K for me and 82K for drew this week, our bodies were both screaming for calories.
