One night last week, before the fast, I had Chinese food delivered for dinner. I had a friend over and we ordered enough that we both had a good sized meal plus some left-overs. The bill was close to $30. It was one of the purchases I mentioned in an earlier post as something I considered to be wasteful spending. Tonight the last of the rice from that meal went into a pan with some bean sprouts, diced green onion, a fried egg, and a little soy sauce.The result was a tasty and filling meal of homemade fried rice, as good or better than anything mama-san makes over at the Golden Dragon.
I've said before that food is my biggest weakness when it comes to indiscriminate spending. I'm blessed with a lean frame and a fast metabolism, plus I keep a pretty active lifestyle. At 35 I'm still within a stone's throw of the weight I graduated high school at. (If you're converting at home, one English stone is 14 standard pounds.) The result is that I get to eat pretty much whatever I want without any noticeable detrimental effects. I'm certain that it won't last forever, but so far I've been fortunate...or have I?
Never having to think about what I'm eating means up until now anything goes, at any time. 2pm breakfast burrito? Sure. 9pm frozen pizza and a plate of home fries? Why not? 10am helping of BBQ potato chips? Don't mind if I do. I've got Homer Simpson's appetite in Napoleon Dynamite's body. That isn't to say I don't make healthier choices at times. Last night for dinner I made a great meal of sauteed shrimp and pea pods next to a seared tuna filet. It was light, delicious, and healthy.
I love to cook, and often experiment in the kitchen. The aforementioned sauteed shrimp was covered in an orange-ginger glaze that I had reduced in a pan of pickled sweet onions. I hadn't tried it before, but it turned out great. I get a lot of inspiration from the chefs on the Food Network. They of the unlimited grocery budget and numerous prep and kitchen staff members. Cooking that way at home can get expensive.
So: bottomless pit for a stomach plus creative expression in the kitchen equals a hefty grocery bill every month.
For a while there it was completely out of control. I was spending hundreds of dollars a month on groceries for one adult male and one toddler. For all my ambition in the kitchen, my busy social calendar was keeping me away from it most nights, so food was going to waste, plus I was spending money on food while I was out and about. Food was getting thrown out of my refrigerator uneaten every week.
Eventually I got smarter about the quantity of food I was purchasing, if not the price. I was still on the Seefood Diet, even at the grocery store. If something looked good I threw it in the cart and didn't think much of it until the sticker shock at the register took full effect. Even then I chalked it up to my "skinny kid's gotta eat" mantra and went home to put groceries away and ignore the electric bill sitting on the counter.
A few months back I started changing my mentality about food shopping. I had begun to recognize that tossing produce out that had gone bad or ripping through two bags of chips in a weekend wasn't doing my wallet any favors. Especially when I was still hitting up drive-thrus on the regular or grabbing lunch twice a week from Qdoba and Smashburger. (Smashburger is off the hook by the way. That IS a tasty burger).
I knew that if I was going to make any headway in my financial situation I needed to get the food habit under control. Then I got to thinking that I could apply my culinary talents for good instead of evil. I started planning meals that would generate plenty of leftovers, then taking the time on a Saturday or Sunday evening to portion everything out. I had varying degrees of success with that strategy, but for the most part it cut into the grocery and fast food bills. This past Sunday was my crowning achievement. With the help of my friend Matt's Costco card and my decision to make this financial fast seriously, I brought home a gallon of pureed tomatoes and a gallon of plain tomato sauce. The result, when combined with a few cloves of garlic and some help from my spice cabinet, was a huge pot of marinara sauce, plus extra tomatoes and sauce separated in the freezer for later use. I boiled a box of spaghetti and cooked some italian sausage (also from Costco) and voila!, an entire weeks worth of hot lunches (and a dinner or two) neatly portioned out in my fridge for under $15.
So there are ways out there to be more efficient and cost effective with food money. Is a week's worth of marinara as exciting as, say, a bacon wrapped filet minon? Not even close, but with a little creativity and the right prep work, it turned out to be pretty damned good and kept me fed all week. An added benefit is that the more home cooked food I eat, the less I crave processed junk food.
I could write endlessly about food, recipes, ideas, delicious bacon, and any number of related topics. Maybe that should be the subject of another blog entirely. I'll close this post by asking for any input you've got on recipes with a high yield of satisfaction and leftovers. Bonus points if it's healthy too...but if not I'll just open another compartment in the hollow leg and keep on shovelin'.
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