For my own edification

[conuly]

I already know where I can cut our grocery budget and we still eat healthy foods. Cook less, eat more leftovers, make sure nothing goes to waste. Less meat, more eggs, lots more beans and lentils. Less red peppers, more green. Less green apples (sorry, Eva), more red. Easy.

But all the same, I want to encourage myself by writing down what I spend on dinner. Until I hit up the store, prices are estimates.

Fried okra

Okra: $2.40
Lemon: 40¢
Cumin and cardamom seeds: ~35¢
Onion: 40¢
Pinch of salt: ~5¢
2 TB oil: 22¢

Sautéed cauliflower

1/2 cauliflower: $1.50
1/4 bunch cilantro: 50¢
1/2 bunch scallions: 50¢
Pinch of salt, turmeric, ground pepper: ~10¢
1/8 ginger root: 44¢? Not sure
1/2 chili pepper: 15¢
2 TB oil: 22¢
Head garlic: 40¢

Total cost: $7.43 for three servings. Apples for dessert if still hungry, or I can make some eggs. I haven't gone to the store yet.

I was going to make lentils, but the girls didn't want that, so I will make lentils tomorrow. I usually like my dinners to have a bit more protein, and to be honest, a little more food. But this is enough for tonight. Nobody was feeling very hungry if the complete silence and lack of "I'm staaaaaarving" was any indication. One lean night before I go to the store in the morning won't kill us.

Tomorrow for breakfast: pear ginger muffins! The only way I can convince the girls to eat pears, not that I blame them. Three muffins per person and we are all stuffed.

Comments

[dandelion.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if you're interested in drastically changing your food habits, but the prices you're paying look similar (if possibly a bit higher) than what I tended to pay per portion for meals that did include more protein. For example, I used to make a chili con carne that made enough for four meals using £1.25 of beef mince (440g), one can of tomatoes at 30p (400g, two if I felt like it), two onions (30p), one can of kidney beans (25p), rice (300g for four portions, so 30p), no oil (the mince didn't need it), and frozen sweetcorn if I felt like it (approx 100g, or 10p). I also used to make lots of meals involving the cheapest bird I could find - so turkey when it was cheapest instead of chicken, etc. I bought roasting joints on special offer and frozen fish. I'm less aware of cheap sources of vegetarian protein, unfortunately, because at the time I was eating cheaply ($17/week for all meals) my medication stopped me from eating tofu, cheese and soy, but I bet tofu and soy in particular would be available more cheaply in Asian shops.

edit: oh yeah, spices, it's a chili! I had a massive stock of spices, and the cheapest way I found to buy them was as refills from health food shops, rather than at supermarkets. Cheaper brands always tasted comparable to me.

(Also, I am always amazed by how much oil seems to cost in US recipes. I pay £1.45, which is about $2.50, for a litre of rapeseed oil and that's really shot up in the last year or so...)

[conuly]

I don't think I do need to drastically change my habits other than eating less meat (more beans and eggs! In practice, this is going to mean stretching the meat further using beans and such and buying meat more in bulk for the cheaper per-unit price) and reducin wastage. I already go to the store twice a week. What I'm going to try doing is making sure I use up all of trip A's produce before heading to the store, instead of possibly letting it go bad.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

Have you heard of the blog A Girl Called Jack? She's a young woman, single mother, who was living in the absolute depths of poverty and started blogging about it. She posts a lot of recipes (http://agirlcalledjack.com/category/recipes-food-etc/) which sound very tasty but are very, very cheap. Of course not all ingredient prices are going to map neatly - there'll be things which are cheap for us that cost more for you, but there'll also be the opposite. Might give you a few ideas for variety at least.

Thinking of eggs - how about authentic carbonara? I've never made it ('cos I don't like it) but it was a staple growing up so I think I remember how to make it:
Cook some pasta (spaghetti traditionally, but whatever works for you).
Fry a little bacon (a little goes a long way since it's strongly flavoured, and cut it up super small so you still get some in most mouthfuls) to render its fat.
Beat the egg (some recipes call for mixing in some of the pasta water, but I'm sure my parents didn't do this).
Add parmesan (or similar cheese) to the egg mixture and plenty of black pepper. (I'm sure the pre-grated 'cheese dust' would suffice here as I assume that's much cheaper.)
Toss the cooked pasta into the pan with the bacon & fat, take it off the heat and quickly mix in the egg. The egg should cook from the heat of the pasta.

Serve and enjoy. You could add whatever veg you wanted to make it go further and be healthier.

[conuly]

I make that already, but with butter instead of egg (because the girls think raw egg is gross) and usually broccoli and peas and red pepper.

[eofs.livejournal.com]

On honeymoon I ordered Khachapuri - a Georgian cheese bread - as a starter. It's something I've had bookmarked for years to make, basically a load of cheese smushed inside a pizza crust. I'm not a great cheese lover, but it appealed even to me. So when I saw it on the menu in Russia I knew I had to have it.

The meal was already going weirdly when the first thing I was served was my main. I reminded them that I, too, had ordered a starter (Guido had just been delivered his borscht for his starter). They pointed out, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, that I would receive my starter second because it takes longer to cook.

You can't deny their logic.

Lo and behold it turned up eventually, after I'd eaten a tasty but unremarkable bowl of plov. I was confronted with a mammoth boat of bread and cheese with... a raw egg cracked into a hollow on the top.

Eww.

(For what it's worth, I'm sure when I was younger the egg was cooked through fully when we had carbonara. Later on I remember the sloppy, slimy version where the egg's partially cooked. But when I was younger it was definitely more like fully cooked scrambled eggs.)