New "30 Day Challenge": October Unprocessed

A few months ago I set out on a thirty day challenge.  It went like this: for 30 days spend absolutely no money on food other than the regular grocery shopping trips I make.  Easy to state, difficult to do, but so incredibly worth it.  We succeeded, we learned a lot, and it did leave some lasting impact in our day to day life.  (No, we didn't give up going out to eat, but we do it a lot less and we are more selective about the food we do choose to spend money on.)

That focused on one part of my quest: to find affordable food to eat.

But there are two other parts to this journey I am on.  As you can see by the little blog description above, I am on a quest to find delicious, nutritious, and affordable food for my little family of two.  This whole blog is dedicated to this task, but I am going to focus on the nutritious part this time.  Hence, a new "Thirty Day Challenge" -- which will actually be 31 days being the month of October.  Are you ready for it?

I am joining a group of people who have pledged to have an unprocessed October.

What is this, exactly?  Well, according to the mastermind behind it, Andrew Wilder, it is a push to get people to stop and think about what they putting in their bodies.  For the month of October, over 1,800 of us (yes, you read that correctly) have decided to put away packaged goods and go for it. 

Of course, each person might consider something processed that another does not, so here is the working definition for unprocessed food that we are using for this challenge (taken from Andrew's blog, Eating Rules!).

Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available, whole-food ingredients.

If you have been following my blog at all, I am sure you know that I am someone who tends to lean in this direction... for dinner at least.  But I haven't always been that way.  Actually, for anyone who has known me for longer than two years your jaws are probably dropping as you read this.  Let's roll back the film of my life just a tad and look at my college years:  Junk food galore.  I kid you not.  I am was the queen of Ramen and Mac-n-Cheese.  My veggies consisted of tomatoes found in my burritos from Taco Bell.  Pop Tarts for breakfast, sandwich for lunch, Pasta-Roni with tuna for dinner.  This was how I ate. 

Today my life looks a lot different.  I have grown up, married a man who was raised on fresh food, and have found that between Jamie Oliver and my Advanced Health Education for Teachers class drilling into my head, I am finally starting to the value of eating healthy food.  I have made incredible growth in this area and I hope to continue to do so.  Which is why I decided to do this.  Like my no-going-out-to-eat challenge, I expect that this will be difficult, that I will have to be a little more creative, but ultimately, that I will realize so much about what I can do -- and then start to do it. 

This doesn't commence until tomorrow, but the preparations have already begun.  This week as I was grocery shopping I picked up this or that, carefully reading through the ingredients list.  Tsk, tsk, I would think, putting that item back on the shelf.  I am not putting that into my body.

Yes, I am becoming one of those people.

Oh, well.  I am OK with that.  I have a great (and easy) bread recipe from my mother-in-law so Paulo can live without his bagels, Trader Joe's has some excellent preservative-free pastas and what not, and I am going to learn to make chicken stock from scratch.  But am going to miss Skippy peanut butter this month! 

(Yes, that is peanut butter in my purse.  No, I did not set it up that way for the picture.  It is actually how I walked out the door this morning on my way to work.  What can I say?  That's how I roll.)


For more information on Andrew Wilder and his crazy/awesome idea, please visit http://www.eatingrules.com/
And of course, feel free to join in!  The more the merrier :)

Meet "Couve" -- better known as "Kale"

This is the leaf of couve.

Couve, or as we call in America -- collard greens and kale -- is my husband's favorite vegetable.  For the longest time we didn't know the translation in English and so he lived without it.  But about three months ago I found out what is was online, hopped in the car to go shopping, and brought him home some.  You should have seen his smile.  BIG.  He, in response, immediately hopped onto Skype, called down to Brazil to talk to his mamae, and got her recipe for it.

Once again, three simple ingredients:

One great side dish:

There's nothing to it, really.  Just chop the leaves into small strips and cut the garlic up, as well.  Saute the garlic over medium-low heat, add the couve and a dash of salt, and cook for about a minute or two.  That's it!  How simple, huh?  And quite tasty, to be sure.

COST: $1.40                   COST PER SERVING (4): $0.35 

Brown Sugar + Carrots = Yum

I have never been a fan of carrots.  They were always either too crisp (and hard to bite) or too mushy (and tasted like cardboard).  So for a good part of my life I avoided them.  That is, until my grandma made me carrots one night.  Oh man, suddenly carrots had a place in my life... until I forgot about that recipe and moved on.  But a year or two ago I stumbled across the same recipe in my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.  I whipped that little dish up and it was a hit.  Paulo loved it, I was reminded of how good carrots can be, and this vegetable I once avoided was given a prominent place in our lives. 

As you can see, there are three simple ingredients.  Rather unusual ingredients for a vegetable dish, to be sure, but the right ones.

Here is how it goes --

Chop 3-4 carrots.
Boil for 5-6 minutes (long enough to soften, short enough to not make it too mushy).  Drain.
In the bottom of the pot, over medium-low heat, add 1T of butter and 1T of brown sugar.  Stir until melted together.  Add carrots and a dash of salt, another dash of pepper. 
Cook for 1-2 minutes. 
Enjoy!  (Trust me, you will!)

PS - I like carrots raw now, too.  But I still always have the fear of breaking my teeth when I bite into them.  (Can that actually happen?)

COST: $0.90            COST PER SERVING (4): less than a quarter

Rollin' in the Dough (The Green Kind)

I don't know about you, but I kinda like money.  Wait, never mind, I do know about you -- you like it, too.  Now, before you get me wrong, I am not saying I am in love with it or need it for my happiness, but we must admit that the world we live in does run off it.  And being a member of the human race, particularly of the American species, I need money to survive.  I work so dang hard for it -- as do you -- and I just don't like the idea of throwing it away. 

When I talk to people about how much I try to spend on groceries each month a lot of people are blown away.  "Can you actually do that?" someone asked me this summer.  Another person, at another time, said, "But you don't get anything good, do you?"  Yes, and yes!  Yes, I can do that, and yes, it is good stuff.  Tasty stuff.  Fun stuff.  Just smart stuff.  This week I was asked by someone to share "my secret".  Well, I don't really have a secret; I am still learning and improving.  And if there was a secret, there wouldn't be just one of them.  I put some thought into it this week about what I do, and I came up with five ways I am able to spend a little but still  get a lot.  So, without further ado, here they are -- Tiffany's Tips to Saving Your Dough:

I know a lot of people don't/won't like this one.  Some are adamant that making a list makes you spend more because I guess... well... I don't know.  For me I find the exact opposite.  I make my list, plan it around things I already have on hand, and then buy ONLY WHAT IS ON MY LIST .  Yes, you read that correctly.  No impulse buys.  But that's OK, because I make sure to have things like Joe-Joe's (think Oreo's) on the list.  Or ice cream.  However, it is on the list.  As for the meals I plan each week, they go along with what is in my kitchen.  Have a half used jar of pasta sauce?  Better get some pasta.  Have some celery sitting in the bottom of fridge next to carrots?  Vegetable soup with dumplings it is.  The list, then, isn't too long, but just the things I am lacking.

What do I mean by shopping smart?  For me it is mostly Trader Joe's.  Lots of people look at it and think it is pricey, but I have been a price-tag-checker for quite some time, and for most things, a trip to TJ's will save you cash.  But it doesn't have to look like that -- it could be stocking up on commonly used items while they are on sale OR (and this is a big one) not buying things just because they are on sale.  (Seriously, just because that stuff that you never needed before is $1 off, you still don't need it.  I promise.)  Price check, guys.  Realize you have options, and go for them. 

I am not a vegetarian.  I was for several years, but I like meat too much.  And my husband?  Yeah, he is vegetarian -- from midnight until 6am!  But just because we eat meat doesn't mean we eat it every night.  We have this sort of plan worked out: Fish-ish meal once a week (salmon or tuna, it matters not), chicken or turkey once, red meat once, maybe a dish with sausage or bacon (usually chicken/turkey again), and then the rest are usually centered around other proteins.  Beans and nuts and mushrooms are great sources of protein, plus they taste great and are easy on the wallet.  Meat costs a lot of money.  Cutting back on it a bit saves some of that money. 

This is huge!  Leftovers = easy lunches and weekend meals.  We are a small family of two, but I cook for four.  You know how it goes, most of the time doubling a recipe doesn't cost twice as much, but a fraction of the price.  So I cook like there are four of us, and we automatically have lunch the next day or something to eat on Sunday night when I am too lazy/tired to cook. 

And last, but not least...

Yup, you heard me.  Except for our Joe-Joe's and the occasional carton of ice cream, we don't buy packaged food.  What am I talking about?  Chips, crackers, fruit snacks, etc.  I like 'em, but I don't need 'em.  And I am sure you could say the same.  When I want a salty snack I make toast with garlic salt; when I want something sweet I have a banana with peanut butter.  Not only does it save me money, but it saves me grief at the gym.  It's a win-win if you ask me.

So there you have it.  It may not be a perfect list, but it works for me.  I eat well, and still have money left over at the end of the month to live well, too.  All in all, I like it.

Have anything you would like to add to the list?

Watch out, FoodGawker. Here I come!

There is a whole foodie world out there I am just discovering.  I started this little blog not even knowing the places it would take me to.  Specifically, I did not know all of the other cooks (or like me, wanna-be-cooks) out there that I would "meet" and learn from. 

I also didn't know how much the internet world is set up for people like me: people who cook, take pictures of it, and write about it.  There is a huge supply of places to visit on the web if this is what you do.  HUGE.  The one I was introduced to via another blog is FoodGawker.  FoodGawker, like Taste Spotter, is a place for all the pretty food to live.  You can submit a picture to them and if it is just right they will accept it.  But if there is anything not appealing to the eye -- anything not making it to be a great picture -- they will just say no.  I had seen/heard about it before, but as much as I know I am a pretty good photographer for most things, my food photography is definitely lacking.  I know that and that fact doesn't bother me.  It is what it is.  Hence, I had never submitted something to FoodGawker.

Until now. 

Earlier this week I just tried.  I sent them a picture.  Guess what?  They liked it!  

Shoot, I thought, this is easy.  Yeah, yeah, hold your horses, Tiffany.

See, the thing is, they are picky.  Really picky.  Every time you submit a picture they actually look at it and see if it measures up.  And if it doesn't, SLAM, you're out.

Let's just say that I have experienced FoodGawker's door slamming on my face several times now.  First time's a charm, right?

But I like that.  For one, I know that if I get a picture on FoodGawker, it is a GREAT picture.  And two, they always tell you why it didn't measure up.  "Composition too tight" or "Under exposed".  This is real feedback I can use.  These descriptions of my flaws point out exactly where I am weak and need to improve.  As I mentioned above, I know my food photography is lacking, but it doesn't mean I want to keep it that way.  It is a process, it takes time, and I am willing to do the work to get it to where I want it to be.

So, for now, I am proud that I have one picture on FoodGawker.  It is only one, but it is a beginning.  No, let me rephrase that... it is the beginning, the beginning of better things to come. 

FoodGawker, you better watch out.  Tiffany is coming your way!

Tortellini with Green Beans and Tomatoes

This was our lunch today.  Three main ingredients (but sometimes we add an additional one).  Fresh, healthy, and scrumpteous. 

Wanna know how to make it?  It is really quite easy.

  

COST: $7.00            PER SERVING (4): $1.75

With bread and butter: $2.10
With chicken sausage: add $2.69 (Trader Joe's) = $2.77 per serving

Beach Bonfire (OR --> How we do Fall in California)

Sometimes you need fancy equipment to cook.  Other times you just need a stick and a fire --  caveman style.  There is beauty in simplicity.

Yes, this is how we do Fall in California.