groceries, week 3

oof, it's been awhile. life has been busy! these are the groceries from two sundays ago - didn't do a formal grocery shopping trip last sunday since i was in a frenzy at the prospect for cooking for 7.

as it turns out, i'm impossible at holding onto receipts for longer than a week, but i do remember that the bill for everything above came out to about $33. most of the last week was just making burritos and enchiladas in various forms, since i challenged myself to finish an entire package before they slowly withered into submission in my fridge crisper drawer. you know what i'm talking about.

but the short list (sans individual prices). bought more items from trader joe's than normal, so it stretched my dollar a bit more than usual.

• whole wheat flour
• tortillas
• red cabbage
• yellow popcorn
• green onions
• italian parsley
• avocado
• portabella mushrooms
• crimini mushrooms
• yellow sweet onions
• mexican blend cheese
• coconut milk
• artichoke hearts
• soy sauce
• tomato and roasted pepper soup
• cauliflower
• basil

the last week and a half have yielded a lot of mediocre food and initial lukewarm results from new recipes. you can't win 'em all, eh? lots of deadlines and readings and makings have also led to a lot of dinners consisting of random vegetables and popcorn. having company for the weekend also threw off the clear delineation between weekly budgeting, but business should be resuming to normal soon!

there was a single notable success with a pepper curry recipe, which i will have to post later (and cross my fingers that i remembered to take pictures of it. all of these meals lately have been blending together!)

groceries, week 2

whew! one week over, with success! just barely eeked in under $40, having had to run to grab some chocolate sorbet and more Earth Balance, which put me at $38.12. not bad, considering that included in this week's menu was a couple of group meals - one for 8, one for 3. i'm realizing now that i didn't document either of these meals for the sake of hospitality - which is something that guests in the future will just need to get over.

this week's recipes of note:
banana bread
spinach quiche
cajun mac n' yease
mushroom and barley pie
breakfast salad
curried quinoa

a few of these are still works in-progress (or I didn't photograph them!), so the actual recipes should be making a reappearance here sooner or later.

this week's groceries:

Madison Market:
fuji apples - $1.24
kidney beans - $0.99
yellow onions - $2.46
crimini mushrooms - $2.69
roma tomatoes - $3.16
tofu - $2.29
earth balance - $3.49

Trader Joe's:
sumatra coffee - $4.99
arugula - $2.29
artchoke hearts - $1.99
pizza sauce - $2.29
pizza dough - $1.29
mozarella - $4.29

Total: $33.46


Off to do some more Sunday baking. Hint: chocolate and tofu is involved. Get stoked.

housekeeping

I should probably make a disclaimer before I go any further in this blog. As a person, I have very few adamant convictions. I was raised with very few prepackaged tenets: my parents never stressed any sort of religion, my father always emphasized the value of considering an issue from all possible viewpoints, the meals that ended up on our dining room table was an eclectic mix of seafood, meat, and vegetables.

There are many things that I can say - positive and otherwise - about my college experiences that are about to come to a much-prolonged close. One of the most valuable lessons that I received was on the first day of freshman year, when the professor of my globalization class opened the first lecture he ever gave with these words: Whatever you believe, don't believe it too strongly.

From a personal standpoint, this summed up, and also influenced any convictions that I had, and have. I've never been attracted to extremes. My lifestyle has never been too wild or sedate, my friend groups were never centralized, my activities are not too homogeneous, my tastes too singular. The advice jived nicely with the most valuable points that I took away from my subsequent psychology classes - not only in the constructed nature of subjective experience and the value of interpretation, but also in thinking about the interaction of various internal and external factors that result in human experience. It influenced my decision to add a BFA in photography to my BA in psychology, and it had a place in my last-minute impulse to add a minor in education.

So what does this have to do with this blog?

Simply put, my feelings about food are complicated. I have wholehearted respect for my friends (and my roommate) that manage to have completely vegetarian and vegan diets. Pescetarian? Locavore? Organicophile? Fair trade fanatic? More power to all of you. I think that there are good lessons to take away from all of these lifestyle choices.

But for me, it doesn't work. Much akin to my compulsion to consider a variety of factors in life, and in art, I'm not convinced that any one of these ways of life can provide the final solution. Part of it is hedonistic - I like eating meat. I don't like eating a lot of it. On the contrary, meat is reserved for those rare occasions when I go out to eat, and even then, gyros are one of the few foods that make me weak-kneed enough to warrant this. Part of it is skepticism - anything that is nationally USDA certified as organic, or free-range, or x, y, or z is bound to vary. Part of it is less obvious - while there are indisputable benefits to buying all local goods, how does this impact other foreign communities that may subsist entirely on exporting a certain commodity?

So in terms of food, I believe in eating ethically, eating well, eating mostly vegetarian. I believe in trying to mitigate the decision to eat animals and animal byproducts by buying food that is sustainable and ethical. I believe in making meals in a way that nothing needs to be thrown away or wasted. (Big caveat: I know that sometimes, all of these things won't always be possible.) I believe that I can make all of my meals for less than $40/week, and that one shouldn't have to compromise between cost, nutrition, and morals.

I have quite a bit already stocked in my kitchen. For personal house-keeping purposes (and for those of you following that want to be sure that I'm not cheating on this $40/week thing!), I decided to inventory the things I already have. I'll also be keeping track of my weekly groceries, so this documentation should make sense in conjunction with the recipes that I subsequently make that use common ingredients.

STAPLES (in bulk)
rice (basmati, rice blend, brown), potatoes (russet, red), quinoa, whole wheat penne

FREEZER:
vegetarian breakfast sausage (Morning Glory), vegetarian meatballs, salmon, shrimp, edamame, Boca burgers

FRUITS/VEGETABLES
oranges, apples, asparagus, carrots, onions (sweet, red), vine tomatoes, cheese (feta, provolone), spinach, garlic, bananas

CONDIMENTS
lemon juice, sundried tomatoes, soy sauce, nutritional yeast, curry paste, jam (peach, strawberry, raspberry), olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sea salt, unground pepper, earth balance, butter

SPICES
basil, rosemary, curry, tumeric, honey, cloves, bay leaves, thyme, cinnamon, chili powder, oregano, coriander, parsley, nutmeg, garlic powder

PANTRY
chicken soup , artichoke hearts, bread crumbs, garbanzo beans, no-bake lasagna noodles

BAKING NEEDS
baking soda, baking powder, dark molasses, dark cocoa powder, sugar (powdered, brown, white), whole wheat flour, pecans

MISC
rice milk, amber rum, vodka, bourbon, coffee beans (dark Sumatra), vanilla wafers


Today's groceries (all organic, bought at Madison Market):

• frozen puff pastry (20 oz) - $7.59
• lacinato kale - $3.49
• local crimini mushrooms (0.63 lbs) - $3.14
• barley (2 lbs) - $2.64
• cayenne pepper (0.05 lb) - $0.67
• dozen brown eggs (cage free, local) - $4.69
• nutritional yeast (1 lb) - $7.84

Altogether, it came to $30.06, after tax. Big splurges were obviously the puff pastry and the yeast, though I have a recipe planned for said pastry that should be more than worth it. Paid a little more for eggs that were laid by free-roaming chickens, from a local farm in Yelm WA. The nutritional yeast and barley were bought in bulk, and should last for awhile.

Whew. Done. So now, all of you know my kitchen as well as I do.

I've got a couple of things up my sleeve from a big, timely day of baking here, so stay tuned!