The good side being the downward slope, of course.
I think I may come to call today's breakfast, "the $3 diet breakfast". Oatmeal (made with milk), a little brown sugar, coffee (with a little sugar).
total $0.44
total $0.86
2 tums $ 0.04
I think I may come to call today's breakfast, "the $3 diet breakfast". Oatmeal (made with milk), a little brown sugar, coffee (with a little sugar).
| oatmeal | $ 0.10 |
| milk | $ 0.19 |
| brown sugar | $ 0.01 |
| sugar | $ 0.01 |
| coffee | $ 0.13 |
I have to say that I am at my stingiest first thing in the morning. I don't want to spend any money.
Lunch was the left over potato pancakes, again with some sauteed onions.
| potato pancakes | $ 0.50 |
| oil | $ 0.05 |
| onion | $ 0.31 |
So what to make for dinner was a toss up. I went to the store specifically to get the ingredients for the kale and sausage soup Kerryn suggested (and there is indeed kale in the fridge), but then one of my students who's reading the blog suggested unstuffed cabbage as a potential cheap meal. Stuffed cabbage, we called them gawumki, was a perennial favorite of mine when I was a kid. My Polish grandmother (yes, I'm Italian and Polish - it's like a bad ethnic joke) used to make these whenever I could cajole her to do so. I have to admit, I never developed a knack for steaming the leaves off, nor the desire to burn my fingers, so I haven't made mastered the art of making them. But I liked the recipe Gloria sent - unstuffed cabbage - cheatin' gawumpki as we were calling them tonight - so I modified it a bit to fit the $3 diet and made that tonight.
The recipe called for two pounds of meat - I cut that in half. Ground beef is expensive - boo. But I doubled the rice - because rice is cheap - yay! (brown rice, too, BTW)
Otherwise it was the same. But we did have the crunchy rice problem, even though I cooked it covered for about an hour. Apparently the rice needs to be really cooked - so if I did this recipe again (which I probably will) - I would probably allow another 20-30 minutes cook time. Or cook the rice ahead of adding it.
This was pretty close in flavor to what I remember eating as a kid. Plain, simple. Maybe a bit wetter. My grandparents were working class poor. They had to make meat stretch. So dishes like gawumpki did that.
Cheatin' Gawumpki cost:
| hamburger 16 oz | $ 2.66 |
| onion 12 oz | $ 0.74 |
| cabbage 24 oz | $ 0.38 |
| tomatoes 28 oz | $ 1.08 |
| tomato soup can | $ 0.64 |
| brown rice 1 C dry | $ 0.07 |
| $ 5.57 |
Pricey dish, but you can see it made a lot. I weighed the whole dish after it was done - 83 oz of food. I had 12 oz for a serving cost of $0.80. With a cup of tea, this was a good dinner.
After the miserable outcome with the banana pudding, I decided to buy some tapioca powder to see if tapioca pudding would work on the diet.
It's a bit high cost - but the basic recipe made five servings at $0.32 each. I still have a sweet tooth, so this is a nice break. I've been pretty good about sweets.
For snacks, mid-morning I had some peanut butter toast, then in the afternoon while I was cooking a bit of bread, then after dinner a banana. And the tapioca, of course.
| bread | $ 0.06 |
| peanut butter | $ 0.05 |
| bread | $ 0.03 |
| tapioca | $ 0.32 |
| banana | $ 0.15 |
total $0.65
Grand total for the day: $2.78
Calories: 1,893
Rounding out the triad:
exercise - hill climbing - 21 minutes - 300 calories; stairmaster - 22 minutes - 300 calories.
sleep - about 7.5 hours. It was a training holiday.
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