Bananas $1.92 Carrots $1.99 Cauliflower $1.00 Broccoli $1.00 Butternut squash $2.00 Onions $1.00 Whole wheat flour $3.59 Applesauce $2.79 Raisins $1.00 Gum $4.19 Dry roasted edamame $3.73 Popcorn $5.09 Tea $2.94 Sunflower seeds $1.24 Peanut butter $11.98 Coconut peanut butter $3.98 Dried basil $0.33 Dried oregano $0.42 Vanilla $3.00 Olive oil $3.00 Ginger garlic seasoning blend $1.00 Onion flakes $2.27 Restaurants $36.81 Budget $85.00 Total Spent $96.27 Remaining -$11.27
What I ate this week: Pantry experiments
Whole wheat anadama bread from Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads. This bread has a lot of cornmeal in it, which gives it an interesting texture. It’s really light and fluffy for a whole grain bread — perfect for sandwiches and toast. The recipe is available here online. I used Earth Balance in place of the butter and agave instead of molasses (leaving out the molasses probably means I shouldn’t call it anadama bread anymore, but I didn’t have any). My dough got a little out of control and I ended up with some huge, wonky shaped loaves.
Moong dal. Just about everything in my spice collection got dumped into this, including that crazy old jar of beans (5-6 years old at least?). Finally! Goodbye! Actually, this turned out pretty tasty, which is good because it made about 10 servings. The neverending dal.
I’m on a mission to finish off a ridiculous supply of millet flour. Millet flat bread seemed like a good way to kill a lot of it at once, so I decided to try this recipe. I followed the directions exactly, rolling out balls of dough, and I ended up with a dry mess of broken millet shards. I gave up on that method and dumped the remaining dough into a bowl and added more water, baking powder, a little bit of agave, and olive oil to make a thin batter. I cooked it like pancakes, and it yielded much better results. They actually turned to have the texture and (sort of) flavor of thick corn tortillas. Not bad. The thing I don’t like about millet flour is the weird, dry mouth feel it leaves (that’s a Food Network term I hate and have never used, but I don’t know how else to describe it!). Or is that just me? No matter what I do with it, I always feel like I’ve just eaten chalk.
4:00am chocolate muffins. I had a really old pint of chocolate soy ice cream in the freezer, and it wasn’t any good to eat anymore (it had gone way past the point of freezer burn), so I decided to melt it down, mix it with applesauce, and use it in baked oatmeal. Disaster. The mixture was too liquidy and sweet, and the resulting oatmeal was just really inedible. I put it in the fridge and saved it. A couple days later, I woke up in the middle of the night and decided it was muffin time. I threw a bunch of whole wheat flour and cocoa powder into the oatmeal mixture (and half a cup of peanut butter for the fat), put it in the oven, and hoped for the best. The result was great! These turned out fudgy and moist, and not too sweet at all. I could not recreate them if I tried, though.
I didn’t buy any groceries for the second week in a row, which forced me to really dive into the pantry. That’s a good thing, although most of my meals weren’t exactly balanced. My mom showed up mid-week with frozen fruit, spinach, carrots, and broccoli from Costco, so I did actually eat some produce. I used the broccoli in a cheesy quinoa broccoli casserole. I used up an old block of frozen Galaxy “cheddar” rice cheese (“best by” November 2012!), which tasted okay but refused to melt. In any case, this was a really good meal and yielded 8 servings, which I portioned out for the freezer.
I’m house-sitting all of next week, so I’m not sure if I’ll have to buy any food.
What I ate this week
Baked oatmeal with butternut squash and raisins. This was really good! I roasted and pureed a squash, and then mixed it with quick oats, walnut milk, brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon, cardamom, and allspice, and then baked it in ramekins. Basically pumpkin pie oatmeal.
Chickpeas sauteed with onions and garlic. And roasted butternut squash. I had two squashes and no other vegetables, so I really squashed it up this week.
PB&J assembly line! This is not exciting, but it is representative of what I ate this week. Lots and lots of PB&J.
I didn’t buy groceries this week, but I did eat out a couple of times. It’s hard for me to balance being social with not spending money.
Restaurant meal: Andy Nguyen’s $5.00 (tip only) Restaurant meal: Baagan $10.81 Total $15.81 Remaining $9.73
What I ate this week
Breakfast: rice pudding made with silken tofu.
More breakfast: baked banana oatmeal.
Work lunch: Navy bean dip with carrots. This ended up super thick and cheesy because I dumped in a bunch of nutritional yeast. I liked it!
Roasted cauliflower
Garlicky noodles with broccoli
Whole wheat bread with flax and sunflower seeds. Finally used up the last of a gigantic bag of ground flax seeds I’ve had in my freezer for about a hundred years!
The budget:
Sunflower seeds $1.24 Dried oregano $0.42 Dried basil $0.33 Tea $2.94 Popcorn $5.09 Dry roasted edamame $3.73 Onion flakes $2.27 Ginger garlic seasoning blend $1.00 Onions $1.00 Gum $1.20 Raisins $1.00 Butternut squash $2.00 Cauliflower $1.00 Broccoli $1.00 Olive oil $3.00 Vanilla $3.00 Coconut peanut butter $3.98 Total $34.20 Remaining $25.54
I feel like I spent a lot of money this week and didn’t end up with a lot of food. I hit the WinCo bulk bins for spices, which to be honest I didn’t really need (but bulk spices are fun!), and I went a little overboard on the snacks while I was there (popcorn and dry roasted edamame). The bulk bins are a great deal, but I always get scoop-happy and buy more than I originally intended.
Then I wandered over to Big Lots and found cheap olive oil (which I also didn’t need!) and vanilla. Then I found Earth Balance coconut peanut butter for $1.99 at Grocery Outlet! I already had a ton of peanut butter, but not coconut peanut butter. It seemed mandatory that I buy at least two jars. And, before I’d even bought anything for actual meals, I’d spent a good chunk of my monthly budget.
Next week is looking like a whole lot of oatmeal and PB&J because I’ve got almost no produce and very little money left for the rest of March. Plus, I have to save a few dollars for a trip to San Francisco at the end of the month because I know I’ll be eating out. The moral of the story is that impulse buys are big trouble!
Food budget aside, this is the first month in a long time where I’m actually going to have a negative income, and that’s a little scary. I planned for this and knew I’d be going at least a month without a paycheck during my job transition, but I don’t like this feeling at all. I’m fortunate enough to have plenty of savings to cover my expenses until the money starts rolling in again, but I’m really glad right now to have set such a strict food budget. Every little bit of my savings I don’t have to spend certainly puts me ahead in the long run.
What I ate this week
Well, this was a terribly monotonous week of food. 
Breakfast: gluten-free chocolate bread pudding. This was the result of a super weird gluten-free bread baking experiment a couple of months ago. I didn’t like the bread (made primarily of rice flour, tapioca starch, and millet flour), so I turned it into bread pudding. It turned out edible, but weird. I froze it all (tons of it!) and ignored it for a couple of months. In the interest of eating what I have and not being wasteful, I’ve been working my way through it over the past week. A big glob of peanut butter makes it more palatable and satiating, but it’s still a bowl full of refined starch and sugar, which is not really an ideal breakfast.
Baked spaghetti with tomato sauce and tofu ricotta. This was dinner every night of the week, along with raspberry smoothies.
Lunches were peanut butter sandwiches on last week’s fig bread.
I went shopping yesterday and bought a few things for next week.
Peanut butter $11.98 Bananas $1.92 Carrots $1.99 Applesauce $2.79 Whole wheat flour $3.59 Gum $2.99 Total $25.26 Remaining $59.74
Big jars of natural peanut butter were on sale at Grocery Outlet, so I bought four. I’m trying to avoid stuffing the pantry with more food right now, but the price was too good to pass up, and I do eat a lot of peanut butter.
I’m not proud of my gum habit. Working on it. Sort of. Maybe.
What I ate this week
This was kind of weird. I made a rice pudding-ish concoction with soft tofu, an old can of pumpkin pie filling (accidentally purchased; I thought it was plain pumpkin! Dumb!), and brown rice. It was very filling and tasted pretty good, but the texture was weird. In the background: mason jar of coffee with walnut milk.
After years of eating breakfast at my desk, I’m able to eat at home again now, since I don’t have to be at the office so early. It’s a small luxury, but it really makes a difference. I feel more like a human in the morning and less like an office drone on autopilot.
Roasted asparagus (given to me by my mom; she bought it at 99 Cents Only!), carrots, onions, and chickpeas. The last picture is my salad assembly line as I prepped work lunches for the week. I made a dressing with balsamic vinegar and nutritional yeast and took it on the side in tiny jars. We don’t have a refrigerator yet at work (the joys of a start-up!), so packing salads involves ice packs and an insulated bag. It’s a little cumbersome, so I’m almost happier just to pack a PB&J.
I have a lot of frozen raspberries that have been lingering for a while, so I’ve been making smoothies. This one included some red leaf lettuce that was starting to look a bit wilted.
Cinnamon fig bread made with the last of my whole wheat flour, some 00 flour that had been kicking around in my pantry for ages, a little bit of millet flour, and some quick oats. I used Peter Reinhart’s recipe for cinnamon raisin bread from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice as a guide (which I’ve made as written and loved), but I totally bastardized it. It didn’t rise much, but it tasted pretty good, especially toasted with peanut butter. And I had fun fishing out pieces of chopped figs from behind my washing machine after I managed to spill some back there (don’t ask). I have most of the loaf left in the freezer for next week.
My next priority is to finish off the rest of that millet flour. I stupidly bought 6lbs of it several months ago (why?!), and it has been a burden ever since. No more crazy flour purchases! I’m buying whole wheat from now on, and that’s it. That’s all I ever really want to bake with and eat.
Total spent this week: $0. Under budget for February by $10.34!
My goal for March: buy only produce. I don’t know if I’ll manage that, but I at least want to buy mostly produce. I need to get serious about clearing out the pantry and eating the things I’ve been avoiding.
February Budget Breakdown
Tofu $11.23 Lentils $1.00 Blue cornmeal $1.99 White cornmeal $1.00 Oats (quick) $2.69 Tea $2.38 Cocoa powder $1.99 Gum $2.50 Chickpeas (dry) $2.00 Navy beans (dry) $1.00 Triscuits $1.00 Dried figs $1.00 Lettuce $8.00 Parsley $0.99 Onions $1.37 Broccoli $2.07 Carrots $5.98 Garlic $1.00 Olive oil $6.99 Peanut butter $1.99 Dijon mustard $1.00 Apricot jam $1.00 Raspberry preserves $1.00 Restaurants $13.49 Budget $85.00 Total Spent $74.66 Remaining $10.34
What I ate this week
First things first: I am DONE WITH MY JOB! BYE BYE, CRAZYTOWN! I start full-time at my new company next week, and I am so over the top excited about it. However, I’m going to have to get serious about packing lunches because I won’t be close enough to come home for lunch anymore. That’s literally the only thing I will miss about my old job.
I might start doing regular posts showing you what my packed lunches (and snacks, and probably breakfasts) look like. Because that’s exciting and fun? Maybe I’ll just do that once a week, because I tend to make a bunch of something over the weekend and then eat the same thing every day. Case in point:
Quinoa salad with shredded carrots, grape tomatoes, garlic, and parsley. Dressed with meyer lemon juice and olive oil. I made a gigantic bowl of this and ate it all week (with lentil hummus leftover from last week). I realize that sort of repetition could drive some people crazy, but I find it sort of comforting to have something prepped ahead of time. I like making one burst of effort and then being done with it for a few days.
The tomatoes were a gift from my mom, and the lemons were picked from my neighbor’s tree. I never realized how much free food I manage to acquire until I started documenting it.
Breakfast was another loaf of whole wheat quick bread made with almond milk yogurt (same as last week). With peanut butter! Plus my usual iced coffee with walnut milk.
I also ate a couple of PB&J sandwiches with (frozen) bread from last week.
The budget:
Restaurant meal at El Papagayo $6.00 Dijon mustard $1.00 Lettuce $4.00 Carrots $2.00 Onions $1.00 White cornmeal $1.00 Chickpeas (dry) $2.00 Navy beans (dry) $1.00 Triscuits $1.00 Dried figs $1.00 Raspberry preserves $1.00 Apricot jam $1.00 Gum $2.50 Parsley $0.50 Cocoa powder $1.99 Total $26.99 Remaining $10.34
I ate out again on Friday. Since it was my last day of work, I went out for Mexican food with the girl I’ve been training as my replacement. Her friend works at the restaurant (which happens to be one of my favorites because they have a separate vegan menu!), and he kindly comped our meal. Awesome. I failed to photograph my tofu tacos, but I assure you they were beautiful and delicious. The $6 I spent was for the tip.
I didn’t go shopping until yesterday, so all of this should easily last me through the end of the month. I don’t know if I’ll spend that last $10.
Why I love 99 Cents Only stores
Today I went grocery shopping at 99 Cents Only. I spent $16 on the following:
4 packages of lettuce (each contains 4 small heads of various green and red lettuces)
4 lbs carrots
2 lbs onions
5 lbs white cornmeal
2 lbs chickpeas
1 lb navy beans
Triscuits
Dried figs
Dijon mustard
Raspberry preserves
Apricot jam
I get that dollar store food sounds sketchy, but 99 Cents Only is not your typical dollar store. There’s a huge amount of crap to be purchased there, but they also stock a surprisingly large amount of real food. They even have produce. Some of it looks a little wilted and sad, but most of it is just fine. I regularly buy those heads of lettuce, and they will stay fresh for at least two weeks in the fridge.
I think these stores receive a lot of closeouts and overstocks, because the inventory is always changing, and sometimes they get really great stuff. One time I found Earth Balance baking sticks (and promptly bought all 15 boxes), and another time they had quarts of Silk unsweetened almond milk (which I also cleaned out). Oh, and then there was the time they had big bags of Earth Balance popcorn and cheese puffs. I don’t even want to talk about that. I try not to go nuts on the snack foods, but I regularly stock up on baking ingredients, dried beans, pasta, grains, condiments, etc.
If you’re lucky enough to have one of these stores near you, I encourage you to check it out!
What I ate this week: mostly bread
This is an adaptation of my favorite 100% whole wheat sandwich bread — Peter Reinhart’s Broom Bread. The original recipe calls for flax seeds and oat bran, but I’ve found that it takes well to substitutions. This time I used sunflower seeds instead of flax seeds, and millet flour instead of oat bran. Turned out great! I doubled the recipe to make two loaves. I ate one loaf this week (mostly with peanut butter and strawberry jam) and have one left in the freezer.
More bread. I made a whole wheat quick bread to use up some strange almond milk yogurt my mom bought for me. Evidently, Blue Diamond makes yogurt! And it is not good!
Cheerios granola! I mixed up some of my never-ending Cheerios supply with quick oats, a mashed banana, the last of the bag of sunflower seeds, peanut butter, ground flax, and agave. Delicious!
When I wasn’t eating bread-based meals, I had a lot of salads with baked tofu, carrots, and lentil hummus. This one was eaten on top of my cutting mat while I made a purse out of an old pair of khakis. The strap looked like crap, so I ripped it off. No longer functional as a purse, it’s clipped to my fridge and holding random papers. I kind of like it there!
The budget:
Restaurant meal at Pluto’s $7.49 Oats (quick) $2.69 Carrots $1.99 Tea $2.38 Total $14.55 Remaining $37.33
I didn’t buy much this week, but I did eat out once. I was training my replacement at work (one more week until I’m out of there!), and she didn’t seem to know what to do for lunch on her first day. I felt bad ditching her, so we went out for overpriced salads. Damn it! I really didn’t want to do that. Eating out is just not worth it.
thousand dollar vegan 