Last week's meal plan went swimmingly. It ended up making so many leftovers that we didn't even need to make the baked Mexican omelette, so that'll be on our menu this weekend. Because we only needed therefore to budget for six meals instead of seven this week, I decided to get a "bought" sauce for pad thai. I normally try to make most things from scratch, but I was craving pad thai and buying the makings of it was at least cheaper than driving half an hour to the nearest Thai restaurant and then spending $10 each.
I spent $55.49 on food for this week, which comes out to $7.93 a day for the three of us (although Baby B eats her lunches at daycare, so it would be more if she weren't doing that). I felt pretty pleased about that, but also know that I could have done it for a lot less. We may be on our version of austerity measures, but we're privileged enough not to have to buy things we don't like. I mean, I could buy non-organic milk for far less, but I feel that my daughter has a right not to be pumped full of hormones. I could buy all frozen and canned vegetables, which cost mere pennies and are perfectly nutritious because they're typically preserved at their nutritional peak, but I don't want to. (Frozen vegetables are all right, but canned ones seem too salty for me.)
Which leads me to feel ever more annoyed at the things you read in the media about what the poor "should" do. Jamie Oliver going on about poor people spending their money on gigantic television sets instead of wholesome food, etc. He needs to quit that. Our family, while not genuinely poor, has a gigantic television. My husband bought it the year before we met. He got a great deal on it, and at the time he had a good income, no debt apart from student loans, and no one to look after but himself. Would we buy a gigantic television now? Probably not, but having a television at all takes quite a lot of the edge off not being able to go out much. We cancelled our cable subscription, but we do have a monthly subscription to Netflix. Am I going to cancel that too? Heck, no. Our society wants poor people to be humble and grateful and not have anything that brings them pleasure or even relief from a day of boring drudgery or the soul-sucking process of applying for job after job, but I'm not willing to go without television and I don't see why anyone should be.
Well, rant over. Here's what we're going to eat this week.
Breakfasts: steel cut oats with sliced fruit.
Lunches: leftovers or peanut butter sandwiches (I found a jar of peanut butter in the back of a cupboard)
Snacks: Fruit, celery sticks.
Dinners:
1) Roast chicken (we eat this a LOT), side salad
-> use leftover chicken for casserole
-> boil the carcass along with with week's vegetable peelings for broth
2) 1/2 lb rotini with butternut squash and turkey sausage (I use this recipe but I skip the shallots, spinach, and sage, because Baby B likes it better without), side salad
3) Shrimp and pea risotto
4) Chicken, broccoli and noodle casserole (I use this recipe but I use 1/2 lb rotini, skip the shallots, and make my own breadcrumbs by pulsing a slice of bread in the food processor), side of frozen peas
5) Pad Thai using the recipe on the back of the sauce packet (cheating, I know), skipping the bean sprouts because I keep reading that they cause listeriosis
6) Mexican baked omelette, side salad
7) Leftover chicken, broccoli and noodle casserole (it makes loads), side of peas
The groceries:
Sara Lee whole wheat bread: 2.28
Dairy:
1 gallon Organic Valley milk: 6.68
1 wedge parmesan: 2.08
Sargento reduced-fat shredded Mexican cheese, 4oz: 2.68
Meats:
3/4 lb turkey Italian sausage: 4.48
1 chicken: 6.20
2 packages of shrimp meat: 2.17 and 1.59
Bulk:
1 lb rotini: 0.78
small package bulk peanuts: 0.28
1 lb steel cut oats: 0.63
1.18 lbs arborio rice: 1.98
Misc.:
Taste of Thai pad thai sauce: 2.85
Taste of Thai rice noodles: 3.00
Bottle Tisdale pinot grigio (for risotto): 2.98
Vegetables and fruits:
1 lb frozen peas, supermarket brand: 0.78
1 bunch cilantro: 0.58
1 head broccoli: 0.84
1 head romaine lettuce: 1.68
5 smallish bananas: 0.64
6 nectarines: 1.85
8 smallish apples: 2.98
2 limes: 0.50
6 tomatoes: 1.17
1 3-lb butternut squash: 3.81
Total: $55.49.
Further reflections: $55.49 is not, of course, the total I spend on groceries. I don't include non-food things like toilet paper, soap, etc. Which makes me think how appallingly awful it must be for anyone who is genuinely poor to eat well on small amounts of money, because toilet paper is actually pretty expensive and it's not like you can stop using it.
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