Day 2 - Chicken Broth

Today - I basically ate what I had yesterday.  So more food from the cupboard.  Also, My husband had a sandwich and some breakfast cereal.  If you haven't gathered already we are trying to go as long as possible without a major shopping trip.

I also thought I would try making my own chicken stock with leftovers from yesterday's jerk chicken.

So first I googled: "chicken stock in a crock pot" because I love cooking things in a crock pot (IT'S SO EASY).  Actually I should have probably googled "chicken stock in a slow cooker" because a little known fact is that "crock pot" is a brand name.  Regardless, I found this.  A great and pretty easy recipe, which no suprise here: I did not follow exactly.

Here's what I did: I cut up carrots and threw some onion salt into the slow cooker

This is what it looked like in the slow cooker:

Then I just threw in some bones and about 4 cups of water.  I then turned the crock pot low for about 20 hours.  I took it out this afternoon, strained it first, and it looked like this:

And it tasted better than any Chicken Broth that I have had from one of those cubes.  Even when I am no longer doing this challenge, I think I will make Chicken Stock from scratch.  So much tastier, and really easy when using the slow cooker.  Is there anything else that you find is better than the "more expensive" equivalent?  I think I will be using this stock it in a future "Lasagna Soup"  recipe I found.  I love Lasagna, so it is hard to imagine this soup being bad.

Tonight is a our "freebie meal for the week."  We will be celebrating a birthday for our friend B.  See you tomorrow.

Day 1 - Jerk Chicken

So here is some of the things I ate today:

Free Coffee (from work), Free "Thank you" Cake at work,  All of these were in the cupboard or freezer: Fiber ONE bar, Lean Cuisine and a Girl Scout Cookie

Then for Dinner we had a guest over and she brought a box of wine.  

This was mmm, mmm good

We also made dinner for her.  I picked up a 2 whole chickens at Costco for .89/pound. So $2.61 for the (1) whole chicken  I have never cut up a whole chicken before, but between me and the hubby we made short order of it.  However, we came up with some unusual looking pieces.  I wish I had remembered to take a picture of that... . 

I then used kitchen witchery to create a "jerk chicken" recipe with all of these items that I had on hand PLUS two clementines.  I will say here that the expensive ingredients are the Jerk Sauce we purchase in Jamaica and Famous Dave's BBQ Sauce.  Granted we only used fractional amounts.  If you want to make a jerk sauce from relatively low cost ingredients try this recipe.  I have used something similar before and it turns out great.  

The Final Product

To go with Jerk Chicken it's good to have Corn Bread and Fried Plantains.  We didn't have any plantains, so we tried to fry bananas in olive oil.  In retrospect, this was only an okay idea.  The bananas turned out a tad soggy or sometimes burnt.  I think it would have been improved if we had used Canola Oil and of course plantains.  Also, our frying technique could be a bit troubled

The Corn Bread Mix I had was dated as best to be used by October 2007... wow! almost three years ago!  We decided to try it anyway with an extra teaspoon of baking powder. 

  We had one egg and some milk (1/3 cup) (organic soymilk) on hand.  

Also, I think they turned out OKAY... - however they were pretty crumbly, but aren't they always?

So total spent today was $2.61 - Pretty sure we just ate all stuff we had around.  The game plan will have to change when there is less around.  Let you know how that goes. 

The LAST SUPPER

So... tonight was are last night before beginning the $5/day plan.  The hubby and I decided to enjoy a "last supper" at what will be our last unregulated dinner out for some time.  We went to a place called Senor Wong, which specializes in Latin and Asian cuisine... and interesting mix similar to that of Chino Latino, but not the same price and located in St. Paul, MN  We really enjoyed it.  Take a look (disclaimer: batteries in camera died, so I had to resort to the iPhone):

Chardonnay - Life's small joys

Delicious Spring Rolls - seriously a must order

and hubby had : Corona - wierd glass aye?

Tasty Lettuce Wraps - really unique roughage material although difficult to "wrap" with

Tacos - they had bits of mango mixed in - I would almost call these healthy

So this whole "last big hurrah" felt akin to the idea of binging before the start of a diet.  Or in other words this food at Senor Wong did not cost us $5.  While it was a lot of fun having a "guilt free" evening out - it certainly reminded me that this challenge will really be a challenge for us.  I can't wait though... and well I guess our foodie instinct won't die soon. LOL.  

Stay tuned as the "real" fun begins tomorrow.  

The STRATEGY

I'm a STRATEGIC person, that is is one of my strengths.  So I thought I would take time to discuss some of my ideas or the strategy as to how I will make this work.

One - I plan to buy in bulk - While most people tend to do their shopping on a week to week basis... many items can be bought in bulk.  Like this organic soymilk pictured above.  It doesn't need to be stored in the fridge until it's open.


Two - I plan to prepare food in advance for low-prep food convenience food such as these burritos.  One thing both my husband and I do... is cave to our indulgences when we are hungry.  SO HUNGRY - NEED FOOD NOW... TOO LAZY AND IMPATIENT FOR COOKING - ORDER PIZZA.  Even with the Papa John's $10 Large pizza we have just doubled our total budget for the day.   

Three - Cook more stuff from scratch.  The interesting thing here is I really like the idea of cooking from scratch even when it isn't a cost savings.  I just love understanding where my food is coming from, and how things are made.  Above is some parmigiana garlic hummus that my husband recently concocted.  As you can see most of it is gone.

Four - Try new recipes like the ones from this 99 cent chef blog, he comes up with some great stuff... and we are always too L-A-Z-Y to try it.

So I think the hardest part about this will be cutting out the laziness, but much of the rest we will enjoy.

Also, I have been thinking about the fact that my cupboards are literally swelling and if this is going to make the challenge "too easy".  Maybe I should keep two tallies... one is extra dollars spent, the "official" measure,  and one is approximate total cost of all food consumed.  I wouldn't be able to do literal cost on the total food because I don't actually know what I paid for each and every single item, which is part of why was considering making them a wash in the first place... Does anyone have any advice here?

The RULES

When I wrote out The CONCEPT, I gave everyone a vague idea of what was going on.  Well becuase I am one of those technical types... I have decided to outline exactly what will and won't be allowed on the $5/day plan. 

1) The Hubby and I will both eat for this amount.  Or in other words $2.50/day/person. 

2) We will start on April 15th and end on July 15th  (90 days total)

3) Food that is free - is just that

4) Food that is in our cubboards already will not be counted towards the total. 

5) One meal "off plan" each week. This will help us out with friend's birthdays and other hard to avoid other hard to avoid events.  This will also provide my husband with sanity, which will intern provide me the same luxury. 

6) We will not take advantage of anything I would consider unethical.  (i.e. stealing (duh!), shopping where we don't support the establishment, taking advantage of programs that are not created for our income bracket)

7) Everything will get recorded.  (on this blog)

So they are more like exceptions than rules (if you didn't notice)... Do you think are the rules fair? 

The CONCEPT

After reading about j. who is eating for a $1 a day.  I was inspired to pursue a similar challenge:

MY HUSBAND I WILL EAT FOR $5/DAY for 90 DAYS

My husband and I are FOODIES...


WE love to try out good food, and tasty recipes... but more than that we enjoy going out to eat.  In the days when we both had "plush" engineering jobs it was not unheard of for us to go out to eat every night of the week.  Easily spending upwards of $800 for a month of food (maybe more).  So now that I am supported by a wonderful but more conservative salary wise job in education, and my husband is living off a moderate stipend.  Change has been necessary - and we've made changes, but I wanted to make if fun by adding a challenge. 

While two people eating for $5 dollars / day is certainly a watered down version of $1/day there are some differences.  1) Unlike j. we are Omnivores.  2) WE are two people. 

Also, we plan to make it interesting.  We want to maintain healthy eating - in other words - I am not going to go out and buy a 10lb bag of el cheapo hot dogs and ramen in bulk and I don't think we plan to eat this either.  Also, vegetables will continue to be a part of our diet, and we won't do anything we were ethically against before this experiment.  While we will rely somewhat on our stuffed  cupboards at the beginning of this experiment, we will be doing this for 90 days so towards the end - we will no longer have this option.

The possible side benefits of this will be - hopefully kicking our fast food habit, learning to try new foods, and most likely being open to more meatless meals. 

The questions will be: Can it be done?  Is it beneficial (beyond the cash savings)?  What will we learn?