Back on Track

Internet, I feel fat and gross.  And I woke up this morning and decided to do something about it.

I'm not, actually, that fat, although I did gain five or ten pounds last semester when I threw all self-restraint to the wind and fell into full-on emotional eating.  And in the long run, that kind of junk food indulgence only makes me less healthy and less happy.

Unfortunately, food that's healthy AND cheap is hard to come by.  After all, a Totino's party pizza is only a dollar, and a packet of ramen is only fifteen cents, but they don't count as nutritious.  They might not even count as food.

So here's the plan:

Breakfast: Fried egg sandwich

Lunch: Veggies and a whole grain

Dinner: Veggies and something in the beans/legumes category.

I don't really care if the beans come at lunch and the whole grain at dinner or vice versa; it's just a way of trying to make each day balanced.  So, for example, lunch could be a salad and a cup of bean chili, and dinner could be rice pilaf with steamed broccoli and sweet potato fries.  Or lunch could be a quinoa salad and dinner could be chickpea burgers and cole slaw.  Or lunch could be baked beans and lettuce wraps and dinner could be mashed cauliflower and millet.

I was very pleased with this plan.  It does what I need: it's balanced, flexible, and above all SIMPLE.  But I had no idea how much it was going to cost, so it was with some trepidation that I headed out to Central Market.  And it turned out to be fantastic!  I got everything I needed to make almost everything I just mentioned for under thirty bucks.  Granted, I had a few things at home already, but all in all, I think this is really impressive:

Bulk food:

0.18 lb wild rice 2.32

0.50 lb brown rice 0.50

0.54 lb millet 0.64 (it's a grain)

1.12 lb chickpeas 1.56

1.25 lb kidney beans 1.74

1.38 lb great northern beans 2.19

0.29 lb sunflower seeds 0.75

tahini 2.20

Veggies:

bean sprouts 0.32

carrots 0.79

celery 1.79

garlic 0.50

ginger 0.45

vidalia onion 0.92

green onions 0.79

red bell pepper 2.15

baby spinach 2.40

green cabbage 1.29

cauliflower 3.99

Other:

rotel tomatoes 0.92

For a grand total of 28.21.  Hell yeah!

What have we learned?  Brown rice is cheap and wild rice is expensive.  Cabbage is cheap and cauliflower is expensive.  And you can buy a lot of beans for practically nothing.  Oh, and I was going to get frozen peas but I forgot.

I made the mashed-cauliflower and millet thing this afternoon and it actually turned out well (this is my other major fear with all this: I am a lousy cook).  It used half the millet, cauliflower, and onion and made five servings, so I figure that's about $1.10 per serving.  And I have chickpeas and kidney beans soaking to make the chickpea burgers tonight.

And hopefully I will actually eat all these damn vegetables before they go off.