Lightweight Eats: Live Below the Line

Showing posts with label Live Below the Line. Show all posts

Our biggest recurring expense at the moment is groceries. Sure, we’re vegan, but it’s also really easy to get carried away spending lots of money on vegan food. Beans and rice are cheap, but chipotles in adobo sauce and organic miso paste and buckets of vegetables get expensive. And I really do eat quite a lot of food.

Fortunately, there’s an Aldi here in town. Aldi is the kind of grocery store where you have to put a quarter deposit down for your cart so they don’t have to pay somebody to retrieve them from the parking lot.

It’s bare bones, sure, but they skimp on looks more than quality, which is nice. And while we can’t find all of our weird vegan food there, it’s a great place to buy the bulk of our food, especially when we’re not looking to buy organics. (They do have organics, but the selection is somewhat limited.)

Our most recent trip included:

That $69 included most of our needs for the next 9 days of food, plus some extras (spinach, edamame, corn, pumpkin, paper goods, and more). We’ll also be using some pantry items, and last week’s leftovers.

We have left to buy: tofu, bread, scallions, soba noodles, tahini, brown lentils, Tofurky, frozen green beans, pitas, more roasting veggies, black peppercorns, notch, brussels sprouts, sticky rice

Still, even with those additions and two extra days, I expect we’ll stay below our $120/week food and toiletries budget. Sure that’s a far cry from our $1.50/day challenge in Oakland, but we’re also eating a lot of fresh (and frozen) produce, which we couldn’t afford on that kind of budget.

I’m still proud of being able to feed us healthy, wholesome, home-cooked, tasty meals for about $6/person a day (really, that’s about $7 for me and $5 for Dan). That’s less than some people spend on their morning coffee.

Sure, maybe it’s not the $50/week that some families of two aim for. But I can’t see that kind of budget bringing us the kind of joy an extra $50 or so per week can bring. $3.50/day just means too many onions and plain beans for my liking. If that was what it came down to, it would be time to reconsider my choices in life.

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Many of the families whose accounts I read chose to simply purchase less food to meet the budget requirements of the challenge. This was in no way realistic, either for my current needs or for the needs of those who actually live in poverty. Consistently falling below your caloric intake is not a sustainable practice, and for me currently would severely impact my training.

Instead, we opted to focus on calories per dollar, and were dismayed at how much that narrowed our selection. My caloric needs, at 3500 calories per day, definitely made the challenge quite challenging, putting even the cheapest peanut butter out of our grasp. In fact, the only items that really made the list were rice, oats, oil and pasta. Even dried beans were too expensive on their own: we could only afford them by buying things that were below budget and using the extra money for beans.

Fortunately, by mixing beans and grains, and supplementing our calories with free and foraged foods, we were able to pull together a pretty decent week of food.

The hardest parts:
No snacks! Our budget didn't allow for much variety or any pre-prepared foods. Snacks were the uneaten portions of meals. I eat pretty constantly during the day, so it was tough to limit my intake to three types of food.

Bland food. We got better over the course of the week, but I wouldn't wish plain oatmeal on anybody.

No fruit. Fruit was definitely not a part of our budget. We harvested loquats from a few local trees, which are a phenomenal fruit, but by the end of the week I was hankering a banana, some plums, a nectarine, anything more satisfying than the tiniest of tiny loquats.

Shopping with a strict budget. Although I'm usually fairly conscious of prices when grocery shopping, it was a lot more work to figure out the cost per calorie of everything that went into the cart. Having a third person really expanded our options, but the first few days were still pretty dicey. Uncertainty about the ability to feed yourself is really uncomfortable.

The best parts:
Some awesome new, cheap recipes. Many of the dishes we made this week, we would happily make again—and they are really, really inexpensive meals. Our cabbage-bean-fried/herbed rice wraps were a definite hit, and our homemade rice milk is going to become a regular addition to our fridge.

Price comparisons. I don't expect to eat for $1.50 a day for the rest of my life, but if we can bulk out our calories with foods we ate this week, we'll have more money to spend on other things. And now, we know where to get the cheapest oats, rice, beans and more!

Empathy. There are a lot of people who don't know where their next meal is coming from, who don't have a garden to feed them, and who can't afford to eat well. Somebody took me out for coffee (without knowing about the challenge) and it was an incredible treat—that kind of generosity is something I'd like to extend to others, regardless of what I know about their financial situation.

A different approach to eating. For me, eating is a huge source of pleasure. This week, it was more a source of sustenance. Usually, I have to restrict second helpings at dinner. This week, I had to force myself to eat seconds, just to get enough calories. It helped me reevaluate the reasons I eat—and oftentimes, sleeping, stretching or drinking a glass of water provided enough pleasure to deter the need to eat.

It's tempting to say that we "won" at the challenge, but it was only five days. I can hardly imagine the stress that kind of restriction would cause over the course of months and years. And not that we threw away a lot of food before, but it pains me that much more to throw it away now—money going down the drain.

Last week, we completed the Live Below the Line challenge. The week before, we slowly ate down all of the perishables in the fridge, and started stocking up on cheap eats. Below, see my summary of how we made it through the week, broken down day-by-day, meal-by-meal.

We were fortunate enough to have access to a car to comparison shop at a couple of local stores.

After the initial visit to Walmart, our housemate decided to join us on our challenge. This increased our budget to $22.50, but also added another full-time athlete to the calorie budget. In need of protein and more calories, we stocked up on lentils and split peas, and another round of cheap pasta from Walmart.

We also grabbed a few cans of tomato paste—opting for the concentrated flavor over pre-made sauce.

Sunday night, we roughly sketched our a plan for the first few days of the challenge. Lots of oatmeal breakfasts and repetition from dinner to the next day's lunch.

Monday:

Breakfast was a huge, huge bowl of oatmeal. 3500 calories is a lot when it's rolled into just three meals. This bowl of oats was about 800 calories, including the sugar. It was also really bland. Cheap oats taste cheap and water doesn't help.

Lunch, on the other hand, was a treat. I scavenged rosemary and fennel fronds during my Sunday morning run. We sautéed the rosemary in some oil and then added tomato paste and pasta cooking water to create a nice pasta sauce. I cooked the pasta briefly in the sauce and then tossed in some fennel fronds at the last minute. Half of this was Monday lunch; the other half we broiled to crisp up the top and then ate on Tuesday.

Dinner was rice and beans: a split pea soup made with half of a small onion, peas, water, and a few cabbage leaves pulled from the garden.

We were also fortunate enough to harvest around 20 loquats from a local tree! I think I've also spotted a cherry plum tree in the neighborhood; I'm hoping to snag a few on Friday if they're ripe.

Tuesday:

Breakfast: boring old oats again. I eat most of the oats before practice, and replace 2nd breakfast with the remainder. For lunch, we ate a nice big helping of pasta and a small salad. The lettuce was from the garden, and we topped it with beans and a salad dressing made with foraged lemon and loquat blended with some of our oil. It definitely needed more lemon, but we only had what we had. We also came across a free cookie; it wasn't vegan, but free food is free food.

For dinner: more beans and rice! A dinner I would make again, we pan fried the leftover rice from the previous night with herbs harvested from the garden (including green onions which we previous replanted from store-bought green onions). We also purchased some dried chilies for 10 cents from the local market, and used half of them in this. We wrapped the rice up with red beans in giant steamed cabbage leaves, again from the garden.

I also managed to find two avocados from our local tree; they weren't ripe yet, but I'm hoping they'll be ready by Friday.

Wednesday:

I never thought I would be this sick of oatmeal. Dan discovered that microwaving on half power for longer makes the oats seem a bit creamier when they are made without milk. I've decreased the amount of sugar I've added as well, because it seems so cloyingly sweet without any fat to cut it down.

Another treat this morning: a work conference had coffee (!) and pastries. I said a silent thank you to the animals whose hard work brought me two delicious muffins.

In the afternoon, it was time to restock the pantry. We'd nearly finished our oats, and a few more beans seemed in order. I decided to head up to a local store called The Food Mill—what an incredible resource. Although their beans were slightly more expensive than what was available at Walmart and Grocery Outlet, I picked up oats for 99 cents a pound, cheaper than the Great Value brand and considerably tastier. I also managed to get 8 cents worth of cinnamon and a dollar of yellow split peas.

From there, things just kept getting better. We made a lentil soup with our carrot and the other half of our onion; I made rice as well, but Dan brought home some almost stale bread free from work—so we made croutons!! Instead, we used the rice to make rice milk with cinnamon and sugar. Dan also managed to bring home some pastries, leftover hummus, salt, pepper, soy sauce and more sugar.

In the evening, we went out to pick some loquats from a local tree and came home with quite a haul. We also managed to get a $5 free coupon at the CVS, so we used it to get some candy and some jam. I've never been so excited for breakfast!

Thursday:

Oh incredible oatmeal!! This morning's oats were made with rice milk, salted and sweetened with raspberry jam. Yumyumyum.

Training this week has burned a lot of calories—probably more than I anticipated. I was ravenous when I got home from the three hour morning session and quickly gobbled up the rest of my oatmeal, more than my fair share of loquats, candy, a free pastry and a big bowl of rice and beans, seasoned with hummus.

Dinnertime brought a sweet potato and yellow split pea soup—absolutely incredible, although it would have been even better with sea salt and fresh pepper, and maybe a few garlic croutons tossed in at the last moment.

Friday:
We were feeling in-the-clear on our budget, so we splurged on homemade bagels. We'd made a batch the week before and calculated them to be 14 cents apiece, given the price per pound of flour, yeast, salt, molasses, etc. and the amount we used. It was nice to have not just oatmeal for breakfast, although one bagel was not enough food for breakfast.

Lunch was focused on finishing up the leftovers in the fridge. I noshed on oatmeal, split pea soup, lentil soup and rice. Candy and another free pastry also made it into my lunch.

We rounded out the week with re-purposed rice and beans: fried in oil and chili peppers, we could have fed another mouth or two with this delicious crispy, creamy concoction. Satisfying, and a good sendoff for the week. Dan even threw a pinch of cumin into his bowl—a luxury we could afford.

The totals:
We ended up spending just over $20 to feed three people for five days. Two of those people are full-time athletes, mind you. We also had 2-4 portions of leftovers at the end of the week. Overall: a success!

This week, we undertook the Live Below the Line challenge. Our final day is tomorrow and we're still going strong. To get an idea of how we strategized, take a look at a recap of our first shopping trip, below.

For my first round of shopping for the Live Below the Line challenge, I visited our local Walmart to stock up on some staples like rice and beans. The whole experience was very different from my normal food shopping experience.

This time, instead of considering organic normal rice versus fancy conventional rice, I was trying to decide between a small bag of white rice, a small bag of brown rice and a large bag of white rice. They are listed in decreasing cost per pound, and it ultimately came down to whether I could afford the whole large bag for just five days.

I ended up doing some quick math on the back of my shopping list, figuring that I had to come up with 27500 calories for the week, and the big bag was 8000 calories. At $2.98, into the cart it went.

I budgeted 5 cents per 100 calories, so the rice was below budget! Woohoo! That meant I could splurge on some oatmeal. At $2.88 for only 4500 calories, this was pretty expensive, all things considered. Still, oatmeal is an incredibly filling breakfast and will help us get some whole grains in our week.

The pasta was incredibly cheap: just 25 cents for a little under half a pound. At 700-800 calories per package, these fell well below my target of 5 cents per 100 calories. This bodes well for the purchase of fresh vegetables.

I almost bought a little bottle of olive oil for $2, but decided instead to pick this canola oil for $1.28; not only was it much larger, it was also cheaper. The whole bottle has 3840 calories, again bringing me in below budget.

I looked at Walmart's bean offerings, but couldn't decide if they were cheap enough in the time I had available. They also didn't have any dried chickpeas—a more versatile bean option than black or pinto. Overall, this trip yielded 18090 calories for $8.14, or around 110 calories for every 5 cents.

This left me with $6.86 to come up with around 9500 cal, which brought my target to 70 calories per 5 cents—a big improvement.

After looking at the macronutrient distribution from this trip, I purchased 66% carbohydrate, 26% fat and 8% protein. I usually aim for closer to 55-60% carbohydrate, 25-30% fat and 15% protein. My focus for round 2 of shopping would be purchasing protein and vegetables.

The recent press surrounding the Live Below the Line challenge has gotten my attention. Food is near and dear to my heart, and I have a deep appreciation for what I can afford and have access to, as well as for how that nourishment affects my body.

Dan and I make an extraordinary effort to eat well. We focus on whole, organic, locally sourced foods. And, although we eat vegan meals for a number of reasons, much of our original motivation was financial—we sacrificed meats in order to afford fruit and vegetables. And, when moving and additional income allowed us to increase our food budget, we allocated that money to organic produce rather than meats or animal products.

Still, we are fortunate. Nothing has taught me that more than travelling.

Our local grocery store just re-organized its extensive produce section, expanding the organic section and relegating convention produce to the back corner. An area equivalent to most stores' organic section is dedicated to produce sourced from a single farm. When I was travelling, I was lucky to find any organics, let alone three different types of organic kale.

Even more fortunate, we have the resources to start our own garden. The SF Bay Area certainly makes it easy. Our local public library has an open seed library, we have a farm and garden store around the corner, and Oakland boasts the best weather in the nation. Still, nothing cuts a food budget down like growing your own herbs and salad greens.

We definitely put some money into building our raised beds and purchasing some of our trees and plants, but many of our most productive plants cost very little. From the orange tree that came with the yard to the peas that are producing as many pods as we can eat, if money were tight, we could coax a lot of food from our small plot of land.

And so, I'd like to take the challenge. Being the analytical person that I am, I needed to test feasibility of ingesting sufficient calories for training on $1.50/day, and so I did some math.

I eat 3000-3500 calories per day. To be conservative, I'll stick with the upper end of that range. Dan eats 2000 calories per day. That means we have $3 to spend on 5500 calories.

Things we can forage from the local cityscape:
Rosemary bushes are abundant, as are fennel plants. There is also a secret avocado tree near the boathouse that occasionally drops its fatty fruits, and the local loquat trees are bursting with fruits. Perhaps we will get lucky. Nasturtium is also plentiful, and I will keep my eye out for easily pluckable plants.
There's also a chance Dan will get lunch at work one day, and I know of a few places to get free samples in San Francisco that might fill in a few hundred calories.

Things we can use from our yard:
Our spring mix is thriving. A packet of 1000 seeds cost me $3.50. I will very generously assume that enough lettuce for the week was 10% of that packet, or 35 cents. The radishes and peas are in full swing and need harvesting; I'm not sure how much those cost to produce. Perhaps we can leave them for 5 days?

Where that leaves us:
That leaves us $2.93 to spend on 5500 calories. That means every 100 calories has to cost less than 5.32 cents. Obviously, the bulk of this will have to come from high caloric density, inexpensive foods. Beans and rice are probably the most cost effective options.

A pound of dry rice has 1600 calories. That means it has to be less than 85 cents a pound to fit into our budget.
A pound of dry black beans has 835 calories. That means it has to be less than 45 cents a pound.
Dry chickpeas? 1100 calories per pound; they'd need to be less than 58 cents a pound.

Is that reasonable? At 60 cents a pound, this rice is definitely affordable. And every bit of calorie we can add for under 5.3 cents/100 calories eases our budget elsewhere.

Before we embark on this challenge, we'll need to use up the supplies in the fridge. We have very little food wasting away in our cupboards and fridge, so this should take more than a week or two. I will keep you updated. In the meantime, if any of you have taken part in a similar challenge and have any advice, please let me know!