Eating Well on $50 a Week

Three writers. Three cities. One culinary experiment.

Posts Tagged budget analysis

Emily’s Spending: $20 Does the Trick

Nov 10

Posted by emily in budget analysis

It’s a funny thing, getting by. For a while, I thought I would “get by” on $50 a week—a big change from the $450 or more I was spending on food each month. And I did, while still eating quite well. A challenge, sure, but a totally doable one.

So what happens when you have only $20 to spend on food in a week? Well, you make it work. It turns out that broccoli stalks, when boiled for a minute or two, are a great addition to a bowl of pasta tossed with olive oil, sea salt, and crushed red pepper and that when your mom knows you’re broke, she will totally take you out for barbeque.

It also turns out that when you’ve become accustomed to “getting by,” when your mom offers to take you grocery shopping because you have only $11 for the rest of the week and it’s only Wednesday, you’re totally comfortable telling her ‘thanks, but no thanks, I’ll be fine.” Because you will be.



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Cari’s spending: Getting close to admitting we need to up the budget (and a bonus garden post/grumble)

Oct 30

Posted by cari in budget analysis, update

My first attempt at fried green tomatoes. We ate them with plum chutney. So good!

My first attempt at fried green tomatoes. We ate them with plum chutney. So good!

We’re either on budget or over this week, depending on whether or not I decide to finally go ahead and tack on that Fetal Food Allowance that so many of you have generously insisted we qualify for. It does make sense: I’m eating more and craving/needing more expensive foods (obscene quantities of fruit, more moderate amounts of orange juice, and the more-than-occasional bar of dark chocolate with blueberries) because I’m pregnant. And that certainly won’t let up once the baby arrives. As I recall it from Kiddo #1’s babyhood, during those first six months of exclusive breastfeeding I was even hungrier than during his pregnancy. I ate more in those early nursing months than during the pregnancy (and lost all the baby weight while eating that much. Exclusive breastfeeding, mamas. It’s good on about 50 different levels).

But I’m stubborn, and highly competitive, and I’m still hoping to find a way to stick to the original $125 a week budget now that our family is growing. It’s possible. I know it is. If there hadn’t been a pumpkin-milkshake-and-harvest-burger Burgerville incident over the weekend, we would have come very close to the budget this week. That means it’s totally possible. I’ve only been baking about half the bread we eat in the past few weeks, so if I can get back to baking all our bread, and ration the chocolate bars to one every week and a half…

Yeah. Maybe.

So…the numbers:

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Introducing the Fifty Bucks a Week Challenge!

Sep 21

Posted by emily in contest, introduction, letters from all over

sarah_mccoll

Pink of Perfection's Sarah McColl

Eating well on fifty bucks a week. It sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. Or maybe it is right. To find out, we’ve decided to challenge a few of our foodie friends to see if they can do what we’ve been doing (or at least trying to do) since June 1.

Our first “contestant” in the Fifty Bucks a Week Challenge is the Brooklyn-based Sarah McColl from the lovely little blog Pink of Perfection.

I “met” Sarah after my sister emailed me a link to her website and wrote, “You need to be best friends with this girl.” That was a couple years ago, and though we haven’t actually met in person, we’ve exchanged more than a few gushy emails and (if we’re being honest here) I’ve developed somewhat of a girl crush on her.

Maybe that’s because while Sarah certainly has her fair share of ups and downs (and blogs about them openly and honestly) she has managed to create a seemingly charmed life for herself—a life filled with double chocolate cookies, homemade yogurt made to look easy, dinner parties, strawberry jam she jarred herself, a pink bathroom (jealous!) and what seems like an endless supply fresh flowers, all for surprisingly little money.

Sarah was a recessionista before the word (or the recession) ever existed. And because she’s used to living on a budget, I don’t imagine she’ll have a hard time sticking to the fifty dollar limit, but she admits she does have a few concerns.

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Emily’s Spending: Starting Over

Sep 9

Posted by emily in budget analysis

So, because we just got back from “hiatus” yesterday and my fiscal week begins on Wendesday, I’m giving myself a clean slate. Except for the 20-something I spent at the grocery store today, which I will report on, in detail, at the end of this fiscal week (week 13?).

An aside: I just found the source of my fruit fly problem… in the bottom of my fridge. This is what happens when you buy food you don’t use, kids.



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Emily’s Spending, Week 12: Looks Like We Made It

Aug 20

Posted by emily in budget analysis

Finally, back on budget (well, $0.07 over) Here’s the breakdown:

-$25 for my CSA
-3 fancy Greek yogurts I wanted to try in different flavors at $2.69 each
-1 iced skim latte (because I wanted it) at $4
-and last, but certainly not least, the best fucking meal of my entire life at Oklahoma Joe’s in Kansas City Kansas for $8 (if you’re offended by my use of the word “fuck” you clearly have not had a meal at OK Joe’s).
——–
$50.07

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Emily’s Spending, Week 11: A Day Late and a Few Dollars Over Budget

Aug 13

Posted by emily in budget analysis

You know how when you go on a diet and you lose a few pounds you start to think Oh, it’s okay for me to eat this piece of chocolate cake, I’ve been so good? And then you realize you can’t have the chocolate cake without the ice cream. And since you had that, and already screwed the day, what harm is a little burger and fries going to do?

Well, folks, that’s what happened to me last week, except with my spending diet. And I didn’t even get any damn chocolate cake. 

It was my sister’s birthday so we went out. Then a friend was in town and insisted on going to a fancy barbeque place for dinner (I know, fancy barbeque!?). So I can’t even tell you exactly what I spent on food last week.

What I can tell you is that as of this exact moment I am doing a hard reset. I am going to be stricter than strict and if my friends or family want to go to dinner they can go without me (or foot the bill).

So there.

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Adam’s Spending, Week 9: Paradise Revisited, Briefly

Aug 3

Posted by adam in budget analysis, update

cucumber-tomato-chard salad, tahini dressing

cucumber-tomato-chard salad, tahini dressing

Groceries: $26.00
Pizza: $9.00
Dumplings: $6.00
Coffee: $4.00
Brunch: $11.00
Subtotal: $56.00

Six dollars over-budget. Not bad, considering that I worked three meals out into that figure. Well, actually, four.

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Emily’s Spending, Week 9: It’s a Good Thing Sudafed Doesn’t Count as Food…

Jul 29

Posted by emily in budget analysis

…because I was consuming a lot of it! Up until Sunday, I was pretty sick with something resembling The Consumption. And let me tell you: being sick does wonders for a food budget. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cari’s spending, Week 8: Over budget! (don’t blame the berries)

Jul 24

Posted by cari in budget analysis

Overbudget, you say? Impossible!

Overbudget, you say? Impossible!

Well, we went over budget this week. Here’s the breakdown:

  • Groceries: $91.56 (this includes 15 lbs of organic bread flour, by the way)
  • Marionberries: $15.50
  • Burritos bought en route to berry picking: $11.50 (to feed the three of us. Cliff bought his own burrito)
  • Burgerville: $14 ($13 and change, but we lost the receipt, so let’s round up)

Total spent on food this week: $132.56. We went over budget by $7.56

It was the milkshake that did it. Or rather, the craving for one. That’s right. Here I am all garden this and organic that, and our budget this week was undone by fast food. Eaten in the car! Yeah. I hang my hippie head in shame. (And yes, we knew we were going over budget even as we pulled into that Burgerville lot.) Here’s how it happened.

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Emily’s Spending, Week 8: So Close, Yet Still So Far Away

Jul 22

Posted by emily in budget analysis

I’m sick, so I’m minutes away from crawling into bed. But here’s what I spent this “fiscal week”:

$32.26 when I picked up my $25 CSA and also bought a zucchini and a $4 jar of peppercorns that will last me at least a month ($29.26).
+
$29.12 in supplemental shopping at the grocery store, with $4 cinnamon that will last me at least two weeks and four dollar’s worth of dog treats ($23.12).
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$52.38

If you want to count the $4 latte I treated myself to after an hour at the girl doctor’s yesterday, go right ahead. But I’m making you do the math.

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