Martial Arts Muffins
Makes 24 muffins
Each muffin: 136 cal $0.25
Whole recipe: 3262 calories $6.17 worth of ingredients
Mix:
2 cups cooked rice
2 cups cooked lentils
2 cups cooked whole green peas
2 cups cooked couscous
1 cup tomato sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp chili paste
Mix:
1/2 cup chickpea flour
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1 tbsp chia seeds
2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
1. Soak six cups of green peas overnight. Boil them for 90 minutes in a big pot with eight quarts water. Set aside all but two cups of green peas and put the rest in the freezer for future muffins.
2. Into a pot throw 4 cups water and bring it to a boil. Add 1 cup white rice and 1 cup green lentils. Simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat.
3. Boil up 1 1/4 cups water. Remove from heat add 1 cup couscous. Let sit ten minutes.
4. Mix the chickpea flour, sunflower seeds, chia seeds, garlic powder, cumin and salt.
5. Mix the rice, lentils, whole peas, couscous, tomato sauce, chili paste, and olive oil.
6. Mix everything together really well. Grease muffin tins or put them into the muffin cups just until you hit the top. Bake 375 degrees for 25 minutes. Let sit ten minutes then pop them out to cool.
Dipping Sauce for Martial Arts Muffins
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp Bragg liquid aminos
In my metabolism's defense, the summer is coming so it's better to plump up for all the coming summer fun. Even if there isn't any fun to be had this summer there will no doubt be a lot of heat on its way to cook us alive. In which case food will become a low priority and all the extra weight will pay off as the single minded goal becomes to survive the constant threat of heat exhaustion. It might be so hot we might bake in the time it takes to walk from the car to the store. We might not be able to walk at all because our legs will be tenderized. Our brains could be half melted. Navigation might fail with all those melting neurons. Better to eat now and be on the safe side.
What's the harm in a few thousand extra calories per week? Women especially should always eat when they're hungry just in case they're pregnant. Just think how guilty a woman would feel giving birth to an under weight baby. Whoever invented the pregnancy test ruined that excuse for women everywhere. Thanks a lot. Short of pregnancy there's always the argument that I'm trying to create my other half. What better place to create that other half than right here, right now. If it's only another half I guess that means I'd only have to gain another ninety pounds and then I'd be good for life. How beautiful to be growing that other half in my tummy. It's almost as beautiful as having a baby. I can still stroke my distended abdomen with loving care. Soon I'll be fit for a leg replacement.
I wonder why it is that nobody ever pulled me aside when I gained weight and said "Good job! I always knew there was a fat girl in you waiting to come out!" It only ever seems appropriate to admire people when they lose weight. It takes a lot of courage for a woman to carry extra weight these days and still pin the acceptable ribbon on her own shirt. It takes even more courage for a woman carrying extra pounds to feel attractive. The minute anything is flopping around we feel like a flop. Skinny girls dream of having extra curves and fat girls dream of looking rail thin. Why is it that the skinny ones carry that mystique of "unattainable" "above the others." Seems to me a big girl would have a lot more of herself to hold over people if she wanted to. There would definitely be more of her to love as people say.
There's a lot of things that burn up calories unexpectedly, like trying really hard to get to sleep. I for one have been working very hard to sleep so much. It's really frustrating not to be able to sleep at night as per required by my job so now it's like double duty for my body as it stays up all night and much of the day. I try to idle it during the day but I suppose I have to account for this new variable. My metabolism is now in charge of a longer period of conscious activity and so it's fully in its right to declare that my food consumption should increase substantially.
This month's average consumption was only overtaken by the festive month of December. December took the cake, or rather the cheese, at a three thousand calorie average per day. This month is trailing at almost twenty eight thousand as a daily average. The majority of those calories came from junk food, bread and pasta. The minority came from vegetables and fruit but at least they were part of the show. While I'm not looking forward to going shopping for a larger pant size it could be that this adjustment period from day shift to night shift requires a ten pound buffer to be successful. I'm not one to argue with my body, I merely make suggestions and my suggestions are either accepted or rejected. It was hard being so rejected this month. "Hey stop eating" says I. "No. Screw off and mind your own business" says body. "But you are my business," says I. "No you're not the boss. Sorry. Leave me alone with these Popsicles and go be healthy somewhere else," announces body. "Okay your wish is my command. Pass me another Popsicle" says I. "I'll be sure to know who to thank when I start to look like a walking lard ball." "Chill out," says body "I'll still love you even if you become a walking lard bucket." "Oh thank you, you're too kind you little shit" says I.
On the bright side I now get to test my metal as a cook and whip up all the non perishable food in the cupboards into daily edible items like energy bars, loaves, and other delights. I will use my might in the kitchen to put my grocery bill in its place. If this works I will be able to brag about being able to eat for $240 a month. If this doesn't work I will only get to stand back as usual and watch as my "wiggle room" beyond eight dollars runs out and my tab gets picked up by the bank. The thing is there is no wiggle room. There is only one thing stopping me from hitting up a credit card with the excess and that is four buttons which I know very well. If I keep spending a hundred dollars over every month I will be sure to thank my lucky stars that I have no children to pass my debts on to.
If I'm going to go overboard why not eat caviar? Why does it matter anyway? The point is spending time cooking at home produces superior meals and safe guards the feeling of good health. All I know is that this month it seems like a very precarious endeavor to safeguard my health and well being. There is a very very thin line between feeling good and making a hostile, hopeless donkey look like a better choice for a peer. Most people wouldn't know what it's like to safeguard their health because they don't know what it feels like to be healthy. There's fewer and fewer people on this planet who are making the connection between choosing an organic food supply and feeling like their lives are worth living. Even as I write that I know it's not true. The organic section keeps getting bigger in the stores and that's not because people don't want to buy it. People want to take care of themselves now more than ever. I think that's great. The more we all try to look after ourselves the more the world will cater to the lifestyle of self care and the easier it will get to make healthy choices.
Take cheese soup for example. Cheese soup is awesome but not many people know that they can eat cheese soup and not feel like they've been run over by a dairy truck because they've never spent the time to make good quality soup at home. I think our planet would be much easier to live on if there were more people walking around with happy tummies and less people walking around who were recently struck by the food truck. You wouldn't think it would matter what you were taking a bite of as long as it wasn't decaying but the truth is the majority of food on the planet is contaminated, or processed in a way that delivers nothing but an empty promise of fulfillment. There's nothing wrong with going down the junk food path as long as it's the good quality junk food. There's nothing wrong with junk food as long as you accept that it's a tasty addition to the good quality home made cookies that are also waiting to be eaten. Not to mention that good quality chocolate cake that's still sitting in the freezer.
I love you all, whoever you are. All thirteen readers. I really love you guys. Take care and don't forget to be mindful of putting good food in your body so it stays happy. Happy! Soooooo happy! Happy as a bowl of ice cream at the end of a beautiful rainbow! It's so beautiful! Wow!
In case it's not apparent I have let my precision run away with me this time. I suppose it's an attempt to compensate for the last month of being so totally and completely whimsical in my diet. In fact whimsical is not the right word at all. I was deliberately opening the door to foods that are known to make it easier to safeguard my health. Now that my health is that much safer the bank will be standing there with their hand out waiting for me to get rich. They might be waiting a long time. I suppose since my health is so flawless then I've increased my chances of living a long life which provides me with more chances to strike it rich. Maybe the bank will take a pie as a pay out. The food appearing in the picture is a week worth of food that has been precisely calculated to fuel me each day with a maintenance amount of two thousand three hundred calories. My motive for cooking so much is that I had a lot of food laying around and I wanted to put more effort into sticking to my food budget which had already been spent on the third day of April.
To kick off my cooking festival I made a version of energy bars that I pulled out of the air and somewhat regret the improvisation. I didn't realize that milk curdled in the presence of certain sugars at boiling point and that's exactly what it did. I guess there's a reason they use condensed milk when it's being boiled with sugar for recipes. I was trying to bring sugar and two syrups to boiling point together and ended up with a giant sugary ball of milk curd which I strained out. The ball of sweet milk curd was kind of like a nice big donut and it made a really tasty interlude before I got back to the energy bar recipe. I mixed up oats, nuts, hemp seeds, chia seeds, crumbled up some rice cakes and then poured the sugar mix over it. As I suspected the improvised portion became the glitch in the recipe and it didn't really harden. It tastes awesome but it's pretty crumbly. Next time I will try to just boil sugar and water to get the sugar to the point where it will harden at room temperature. I will boil the honey and molasses separately and pour them over the mix after I have poured the sugar into it.
The energy bars contained about fifty percent organic ingredients. An hour later I made granola (50% organic) followed by biscuits (100% organic), cheese soup (95% organic), and a couple other dishes. Once I was done I was curious about the calories in each recipe so I added up each one and figured out how much I'd need per day. Here's the resulting menu:
2 cups coffee with 2 tbsp maple syrup and 2 tbsp cream (120 calories $.70)
1 cup granola (447 calories $1.42)
4 energy bars (900 calories $2.40)
2 cookies (350 calories $1.14)
1 cup cheese soup (233 calories $1.85)
10 biscuits (300 calories $0.50)
Total calories: 2230
Total cost: $8.01
Seventy percent of the ingredients were organic.
The question is the same question as usual, how swiftly will my body reject this way of eating? Will it go over well or will this just be a detour on the way to credit card land? It's always worth a shot. Project Munch will report next week on any mutations that occurred to this diet and the real life viability of eating this way. These food items will under go the munch test.
I sure had fun making my first pear pie. I had a bag of organic pears on hand which never passed the squeeze test for ripeness. They were going to go bad before they got ripe so it seemed necessary to find a good recipe for baked pears. I settled on the simple idea of baking the pears at 350 degrees for twenty five minutes sprinkled with cinnamon and maple syrup. I got all ready to tackle the baked pears and discovered that even though they didn't pass the squeeze test they were actually ready to eat. I wasn't about to rain on my own culinary efforts so I took a rain check on the baked pears and decided what they really needed was to go straight into a pie.
One of the recipes I was able to make for my Dad's last visit was apple pie and I was happy to make the crust from a recipe that was actually meant to be used as pot pie crackers. I've had a lot of satisfied guests who have eaten pies with this potpie crust and those same guests were delighted to bringing a slice with them for the road.
Potpie Crackers
Taken from the More With Less cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre
Combine in a large bowl:
3 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
cut in:
1/2 cup shortening or margarine
Add:
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
Stir lightly with fork and form into a ball. Divide dough into two parts. The original recipe called for the dough to be rolled out thinner than a pie crust but I roll it out and place half on the bottom of a pie plate. Sometimes it breaks up in transit from the counter to the pie plate but it's easy as pie to pat it back together once it's all loosely assembled in the pie plate.
Lately I've been fearless when it comes to being confronted with crumbly pastry dough. In the past I was stuck thinking that any dough I worked with had to be mashed together into an indivisible mass for it to be considered dough. Not so. It's possible to sprinkle the mixture out on the counter and then start rolling to create a more cohesive pastry crust. Being put off by a crumbling crust just isn't worth it because it tastes good even if you had to pat the top crust down onto the fruit to make a crust.
This pear pie that I made could easily be the best pie I ever had. In fact it would be a crime not to share it at least once. I cut up all six pears into the crust and then made a sweet sauce.
In a sauce pan melt together:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp salt
Pour over the raw pears. Put on the top crust. Bake 425 degrees for fifteen minutes and then turn the oven down to 350 degrees and bake for twenty five minutes.
Everyone is always after the ripe bananas at the grocery store. Green bananas never seem to ripen quite right and then what is a woman to do? It would be nice to be able to just whip up a banana cream pie but who has the time to invest in something like that when it's probably just going to end up as a glorified banana milk shake? That is precisely the problem I had in the past and what could be worse than getting all ready for something sensational and then having something come out of the oven that is barely even edible. That is the problem I decided to tackle with these stubborn bananas as the fuel for the adventure. My first thought was to make the potpie crackers for a crust but I could somehow anticipate that becoming a sloppy mess. My goal this time was a great desert so I tried to figure out what else I could put instead of graham crackers. I had a bunch of cookies left in the fridge so I crumbled them up to make the bottom layer. There wasn't quite enough cookies to cover the bottom but I also had a bunch of dry chocolate cake that had been banished to the freezer. It was time to give that cake a chance to moisten up. It was the perfect use for dried out cake, dried out cookies and some half ripe bananas that were going to be yellow by 2018.
For a more thorough look at The Great Kitty Cat go to http://calibocat.blogspot.ca
The kitty cat really excels at supervising all my activities including all the cooking that takes place.The pivotal point of the recipe was the cream portion. I especially like it because there is no need for corn starch. This amount of cream was meant for a nine inch pie so I'd probably double it if you're undertaking a bigger recipe like the one I was doing with a full six bananas and a 9x13" pan.
Cream
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk
2 tbsp butter
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
In a saucepan mix 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/4 cup all purpose flour. Mix it up then stir in one cup milk. Separate the yolks out of three eggs and then add the three yolks. Put the egg whites in a large bowl for later. Add another cup of milk and two tablespoons of butter.
Bring it to boil whether over medium heat or medium high. As soon as it boils turn it down to low and whisk constantly for a minute or two until it's as thick as you want it. Remove from heat and stir in a teaspoon of vanilla. Pour over the bananas.
Get out your electric beaters and whip the egg whites until they are stiff. If you want the meringue sweet add 1/4 cup sugar. Pour across the top. Make sure you completely cover the bananas with the egg whites. Bake the whole thing for fifteen minutes at 350 degrees.
5/5 If it was any better I'd find a way to get paid to make it every day
5/5 This will be my go-to recipe when I want a banana desert.
In regards to budget, I'm very rarely on target except when I really put my mind to it. It's easy to capture a week of cost effective eating but much harder to go to a grocery store and shop with a whole month in mind. That is a level I have yet to achieve but it would fill me with a sense of pride and discipline if I could do it. I would never do anything so cruel as to doom myself to five recipes for a whole year, so at this point everything is open to improvisation and experimentation. The important thing is that I tried for the second consecutive week to achieve my food goals and though distracted by the wonders of pears and bananas I am a little more confident that my goals are getting closer not further away.
The Daily Menu
2 cups coffee each with 1 tbsp maple syrup and 1 tbsp cream (120 calories $0.95)
1 cup granola (477 calories $1.42)
3/4 cup organic milk (100 calories $0.37)
piece fruit cake (234 calories $0.74)
random piece of pastry (200 calories $0.55)
120 grams organic rotini (437 calories $0.52)
1 cup organic cheese sauce (280 calories $1.85)
two pieces rice meat skillet (451 calories $1.60)
Total calories: 2299
Total cost: $8.00
For nasty ideas on what to pick for your random pastry go to the site listed below.
http://www.chef-in-training.com/yum
Granola
1 cup organic flour
1 1/2 cup dry milk powder
1 cup sunflower seeds
6 cups oats
1 cup hemp hearts
1/2 cup chia seeds
In a sauce pan melt together:
1 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup honey
2 tbsp organic unsulphured molasses
Stir all the ingredients together. Cook at 300 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour, until browned. Stir every fifteen minutes, and then every ten minutes towards the end. To cook this much I threw it in a giant aluminum roasting pan I had left over from Christmas.
Original recipe "Everything Cereal" discovered in the More with Less cookbook by Doris Janzen Longacre
Total calories of recipe: 5368
produces twelve cups of cereal each worth 447 calories and $1.42 per cup.
Gina's Organic Cheese Sauce
4 cups organic milk
1 package cheese powder from an organic mac n cheese box (not necessary but yummy)
5 tbsp organic flour
3 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
4 tbsp powdered milk
1 tbsp chili paste
1 tbsp pesto sauce
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
100 grams grated organic sharp cheddar
In a medium size saucepan add 2 cups of milk to start with. Without the heat on yet whisk in the cheese powder, flour, garlic powder, and milk powder. Turn the heat to medium and continue whisking in salt, chili paste, pesto sauce, cumin and cayenne. Add the other two cups of milk. Don't mix in the shredded cheese until last. Whisk continuously and turn up to medium high. It might take five minutes for the mixture to start bubbling. Once it boils turn it down immediately to low and keep whisking it another two minutes. Take off heat and stir in the shredded cheese. Enjoy alone as soup or pour it over pasta for a wonderful cheesy experience.
Calories for whole recipe: 1396
Cost of whole recipe: $6.21
(I priced the cheese mix packet at fifty cents)
Produces five cups of sauce each valued at 280 calories and $1.25
Gina's Rice N Meat Skillet
4 cups cooked rice
1 onion
1/4 tsp caraway seeds
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp butter
12 slices uncooked turkey bacon cut into pieces
1/2 organic uncooked beef burger cut into pieces
2 free run eggs
1 cup organic salsa
1/4 tsp basil
1 tbsp chili paste
2 tbsp pesto sauce
Cook 2 cups of dry rice in 4 1/4 cups water for fifteen minutes only. In a frying pan fry the chopped onion in a tbsp of butter on medium low. Add caraway seed and salt. Chop up the bacon and beef.
Mix everything together put it in a 9 x 13" casserole dish. Cook at 350 degrees for 50 minutes covered in foil and ten minutes with foil removed.
Calories of whole casserole: 2258
cost of whole casserole: $8
Cut into five pieces and you get a piece worth 451 calories and $1.60.
Comments: This is awesome stuff. It was really hard not to dig into it past the taste test.
Everyday Fruitcake
Taken from the More with Less cookbook by Evelyn Liechty
This recipe has had no shortage of enjoyment in the five years that I have been making it! I can do no wrong if I make this recipe when my sister is visiting and anyone who has tried it has given it a good rating. There is no need to cook it to a crisp, wrap it in foil or douse it with alcohol until the fateful day someone is ready to light a match and run for their lives. To some this might seem disappointing but if you want a hassle free way to share fruitcake this is your recipe.
Combine in bowl:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
Mix 1/4 of the flour mixture with:
2 cups dried fruit (raisins, dates, figs, apricots, apples or pears)
3/4 cup walnuts
Set aside.
Stir together:
3 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup honey
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 Tbsp frozen orange juice concentrate
Add dry ingredients. Mix well. Fold in fruit and nuts. Spoon mixture into two 3x6" loaf pans, well greased and bottoms lined with wax paper. Bake one hour or until well browned. Cool on rack for ten minutes then turn loaves and remove wax paper. Cook at 325 degrees.
Whole recipe: 1874 calories $5.88
Each loaf: 937 calories and $2.94
One loaf cut into four pieces yields four pieces each valued at 234 calories and $0.74
www.food.com/recipe/fresh-orange-pie-178319
I made a lot of substitutions because I only had two tablespoons of sugar left. Because the recipe called for coconut on the top I decided it would make sense to use coconut spread in the orange cream portion. The crystallized ginger went in to add some zing as I had no marmalade jam. I decided to knock the corn starch out of the recipe and experiment with one tablespoon of flour and two tablespoons of flax. Why not? People put flax in their orange juice. If only I'd remembered to mix in the flour before I heated up the orange juice. Ooops. This is quite possibly the weirdest tasting pie I have ever had but after the initial oddness wore off I discovered it was really good.
I tried the dreaded pastry crust as I ran out of eggs. My eyes just about bulged out of my head when I saw that the crust called for a cup of butter. It seems like lately every day is my what-the-hell-day. Even so I just couldn't fathom putting a whole block of butter into a crust so I put half a cup butter and half a cup coconut oil. I melted half of it and let the other half sit in the melted portion so as to retain some of its cohesive properties while softening it a little. I'm glad that I skipped the part about chilling it in the fridge for an hour because I noticed with a smaller piece of dough that made it almost rock hard. It might be many more years before I can say if I was doing anything close to what it takes to make the dough effective. To me any dough is effective whether or not it stays together. That's why I was born with two hands so I could mash broken pieces of dough back together. As it turns out the crust was the best part. It's not surprising with all that butter in there.
http://www.marthastewart.com/326897/basic-pastry-dough
Here is shown the squeezed oranges sitting with sugar and crystallized ginger. It was too pretty not to take a picture.
Total calories in my mutated orange pie: 3707
Total cost: $11.44 (four organic ingredients)
Cut pie into eight: one piece 463 calories $1.43
Here I am, your local food geek leaping at the opportunity to tell you that things are not always as they seem. If I tally up a grocery list for someone who has none of the ingredients needed in the previous recipes then they are stuck with a grocery bill of almost $323. For them it doesn't add up to that marvelous $8 per day of eating, it's more like $10.75. That means for someone who is brand new to cooking they would be hit the hardest with the initial grocery bills. A tentative rule could be to take whatever cost I am raving about and boost it by 30% if your cupboards are empty.
The more seasoned shopper will automatically stock up on things with a decent shelf life when they are on for a good price like rice, flour, dried fruit, nuts, sugar, oil, oats, pasta, and spices. Once a person is stocked up naturally they can defer costs for a longer period of time and remain happily deluded that they are eating for almost nothing. Whatever extra you pay to stock up during one month is technically offset the next month or two. Another factor is that we live in a country where having extra food on hand is only an excuse to bring home even more in an attempt to outdo ourselves and to give ourselves as many alternatives as possible to eating boring food. There seems to be an unspoken junk food law that when you go shopping you have to make it worth your while and buy junk food. It's entirely possible that to attempt not to buy junk food during a shopping trip would create hostility and stress and just result in secret eating.
If I had to shop to continue another month of these recipes it would only cost me $226 because I make a point of keeping non perishable food on hand. Here is the official grocery list to continue these recipes for thirty days of food. This is the list for the people with empty cupboards. In regards to the daily menu I dropped the quantity of pasta down by 50 grams, added more turkey bacon, and less beef. 170 grams of pasta is a lot to eat in one day as I have noticed. I'd say that the rice and meat skillet actually pulled ahead of the cheese soup in terms of enjoyment but the cheese soup is still too good to get rid of it.
The Empty Cupboard List
Note: I could put down 12 liters of milk on the list for the cheese soup and for the amount of milk that is added to the granola every day. It won't keep if you buy too much so I only put down what won't go bad for one week. It's best to set aside $25 in an envelope as a monthly dairy fund so you can keep going out for fresh milk and cream. It's slightly hazardous to have three blocks of organic sharp cheddar sitting around. Every time you open the fridge you'll feel that cheddar bug bite and it will take all your will power not to start nibbling like a hopeless little mouse. If it becomes a problem grate up each block and put it in the freezer right away. I've tried freezing cheese before and it doesn't wreck it. I realize as well that it's possible to buy more than 564 grams of beef for $10 but my concern is to build sturdy and long lasting proteins in my body. What good is a ton of cheap meat if it's going to result in health problems. This is about safe guarding the health with organic food as often as possible. It might not seems like safeguarding the health when it comes to the pie but at least it's home made. It's a big step up from Kraft diner and donuts.
4 L organic milk $8
3- organic cheese 200 grams $15
6- Annie's grass fed Mac N Cheese $12
1 kg milk powder $12
3 packages turkey bacon $12
1- 564 gram package organic grass fed beef burgers $10
2- 190 grams pesto sauce 2 bottles $9.20
3-salsa $12
6- 454 gram boxes organic rotini $12
2 dozen free ranged eggs $10
1- 681 gram bag organic brown sugar $8.50
2.5 kg all purpose organic flour $7.38
2 organic fair trade coffee 340 grams each $9
1 L maple syrup $13
1 organic coffee cream 500 ml $3
6 onions $4
2 kg raisins $12
1 kg dates $5
2- 1 kg bags organic oats $8
1800 grams organic cane sugar $10
caraway seeds 70 grams $6
3 kg white rice $12
baking powder $2
coconut oil 860 ml $15organic molases $11
1 kg sunflower seeds $9
1 kg honey $8
1 pure vanilla $12
1 frozen orange juice $2
1- 460 ml chili paste $4
hemp hearts 800 grams $14.89
chia seeds 907 grams $10.98
Total grocery bill without tax: $298.86
backup dairy fund: $25
Total: $323
Early in the morning a clap of thunder outside rattled my brain awake. I realized I was ready for another dose of reality. I got out my notebook and began to add up the extra household expenses I had been keeping track of. I never considered it worthwhile before to keep track of expenses that didn't involve eating, but I am getting closer to adult hood and there's a lot of young people in the family who are interested in keeping a budget balanced. I will put my experience to the test and fine tune my budget with another layer of expenses.
It's really tempting when drawing up a budget to shrug off things like soap. It's just some dumb thing you squirt in the water that makes bubbles. How expensive could bubbles be? Certainly not expensive enough for anyone to waste time thinking about it. Things have changed a lot since the days when a single bar of Ivory soap sat in the shower right next to that value priced bottle of green goo that mom used to pour on my head.
As a post pubescent person who has come to appreciate their sensitivities it's going to take something a little more sophisticated than a little bar of Ivory soap to cut the dirt. Ivory soap leaves a scum on the skin. If I wanted to get out of the shower feeling all scummy I wouldn't have gotten in the shower in the first place. If I'm going to go through the trouble of getting in the shower I should at least expect to come out feeling like I accomplished something other than fill up my pours with some pasty chemical goop. If I'm going to brush my teeth I'd like my gums to feel good after, not like they're closer to rotting than they were before I brushed.
When I do laundry I'd like to be able to stay in the room and not have to give the washing machine a two mile clearance because some company decided that they should put enough perfume in their soap that everyone within ten miles feels like someone just squirted perfume right into their mouth. I can't tolerate products that other people can tolerate so I'm left paying a little more when it comes hygiene and household items. I figured out a yearly expense of $1599.60 for health maintenance products, soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, laundry detergent, body wash, shampoo, conditioner, hand lotion, cat food, cat litter, and one oil change which is the best case scenario. I didn't include money for the chiropractor and I know for sure if I didn't go see one I would be so much worse off it's not even funny. I'd be in pain, I'd be in a bad mood, I'd get sick more often, and I'd be using a ton of extra energy to force myself to carry on a basic fun filled day without strangling someone with my bare hands.
I never really wanted to see on paper that my cat was eating in a month an expense that I eat in a few days, well, soon to be what I eat in a week. I'd prefer to go along with the delusion that $20 is enough to keep a twenty pound animal going for a year. I really love my cat and I didn't really want to think of making a sacrifice so he could stay fed. I was really fond of sweeping all his expenses under the carpet especially the month he cost me $800. Some people I know pick bottles to feed their dogs because they are so poor. I'm not about to pick bottles but I guess you'd say I'm going to be picking my brain for ways to eat cheaper so I can still afford to keep my cat.
I didn't include money for the dentist and just because I want to think this is the year I won't need a dentist doesn't mean that will be true. I didn't include money for vehicle repairs because I'd like to think last year was the last year I would need to make an $800 repair to my vehicle but that's not necessarily true just because I want it to be. How much should a person plan for? Sickness, homelessness, unemployment, vehicle breakdown, marriage breakdown, job loss, natural disaster, and war? The best way to plan for all that is to have a million dollars saved up. Who has a million dollars saved up? Realistically they say your emergency fund should be equal to a year's worth of income. Who in the hell ever got a chance to save up an emergency fund? Most people I know got into a power struggle with their parents once they were mature enough to work and ended up leaving home that is if their parents didn't chase them out with a shotgun or beat them to a pulp when they were thirteen years old.
What are families going to do? Just stop everything and live on the street so they can build up that magical emergency fund? There's an old expression "home is where the heart is." I think after a while we all take for granted that having a roof over our heads is improving our quality of life, our concept of ourselves, and our ease of living. Having a place to call home is invaluable and many people will defend it all the way to bankruptcy. Being homeless carries with it a very deep sense of hopelessness. You feel like an outcast from society. You start to think it wasn't you who cast yourself out but society that cast you out and you start to think of reasons why you were cast out. A person's worth starts to degrade and they start to feel like anything they do for themselves is a wasted action. It's a heavy weight to throw off, one that requires a lot of strength and determination.
Having a vehicle has its pros and its cons. When everything is running smoothly it's freedom to be able to get in the car and drive anywhere you want to go. My vehicle has saved me thousands of dollars in hotel fees all the times I was between places yet it also cost thousands in repair costs. I think it's safe to say the pros and the cons canceled each other out. I'm considering the option of getting around using a bicycle instead of a gas guzzling van. It would help to soften the blow by stocking up on some food first because traveling by bus with groceries means higher exposure to colds and flus. Of course even one cab ride a month with groceries isn't much compared to a $200 vehicle bill.
It would be a stretch at any given moment for a person to say that they have it all covered. It's always the year when money is coming in the slowest that things go wrong the fastest. The cat will have three near death experiences. It won't just be one rotten tooth it will be two of them. It won't just be the breaks that go, it will be the breaks, the steering rack, and the battery. It won't just be a sprained ankle it will be a persistent flu, a busted vertebrae, a depression that drags you down into hell, or better yet a persistent feeling that you need to run for your life because they are going to get you. What are you going to do? Skip eating because the car is more important? Sell the car? Let the teeth rot until you get blood poisoning? Work twenty five hours a day until your immune system is so overloaded that you can barely walk in the door at work without puking? You can see what I'm getting at. The balancing act is so precarious that eventually the only way to live well is to say "screw it, just live like everything is fine." Most of the time the best adults can do is just take a deep breath, accept that something very expensive just happened and take out that credit card. The show must go on.
I find it amusing that some children are frustrated with their parents because they spend too much money. If only parents were better at controlling their spending. If we could reign in our expenses until everything balanced perfectly it may or may not result in a life that is worth living.There's more to life than money. We are human beings with souls and that predates money by a long shot. I know some people who spend up their credit cards as an act of defiance but I'd rather spend them up as slowly as I can to stall the damage. Isn't that what a lot of life is about? Damage control? Life is ever changing and dynamic. You can't just pour yourself into concrete and say, there now everything is fixed and perfect. There's always something new coming up that presents a new challenge but most of the time the challenges are very small like how am I going to spend the next ten minutes. Am I going to spend the next ten minutes online ordering some fancy jewelry or am I going to spend the next ten minutes figuring out the best way to spend my next ten dollars? My parents grew up with a strong ability to live frugal lives and to this day I don't feel like I'm living quite right until I'm struggling. There is some strange force inside of me that thrives off a good tug of war, even more so a hopeless tug of war with a giant elephant. I know the elephant is always going to win but never the less I keep trying.
Basic Additional Yearly Expenses
Pet
Cat food and cat litter $42/ month
(If 13 pounds of cat food $70 will last them two months and if 22 pounds of cat litter $14 will last them two months. A high quality cat food is supposed to offset health problems thus saving money in the long run.)
allowance for one vet visit per year $33/ month
(The average bill for veterinary work on a cat is $400. )
Health & Hygiene & Household
Two recurrent promotional interest rate charges with bank $50 (twice a year hit with a $300 fee to renew the zero percent interest rate.)
Post office box $20/month (billed at $240 per year)
SierraSil $10/month
Controls joint pain and inflammation
(If 90 capsules $40 lasts for 4 months. Probably not.)
Empowerplus $10/month
(To maintain good mental health so when they are after me I can function well enough to come up with a plan of action while I run. No seriously this stuff is awesome to ward off the abcs of mental illness not to mention it's great for stress. If 120 capsules $60 lasts six months then it will cost me $10/month. I will probably go through it faster than that. Seventeen years ago I went through $120 worth of it per month.)
https://www.avemariahealth.com/products/EMP
Nature's Aid $6.20/month
To relieve eczema and psoriasis
(If 500 ml $37 lasts for six months)
Kalaya $3.40/month
To relieve soreness
(If 120 grams $20.49 lasts six months.)
Advil $2.25/month
(If 80 capsules $9 lasts for four months.)
toilet paper $3/ month
( If 12 rolls $8 will last you two months. That's one and a half rolls a week.)
dish liquid $1.50/ month
( If 638 ml $3 can last you two months.)
laundry detergent $1/ month
(If 2.5 L $8 can last you 8 months.
sanitary napkins $6/month (you know it guys)
(If 14 natural cotton pads $6 can last you one month.)
shampoo and conditioner $3/month
(If the shampoo $9 and conditioner $9 can last you six months.)
body wash $1/month
(If 532ml $4 can last four months.)
toothpaste $1.60/month
(If 85 ml $6.40 can last four months. Probably not.)
Dental floss $0.50 (If two rolls can last a year.)
Hair elastics, hair brush $0.83/month (If $5 worth of elastics and a $5 hair brush can last for one year.)
Lip balm $1.25/month
New pair of boots $1.90/month (because a $160 pair of Swatt boots lasts for seven years despite excessive wear. Most comfortable boot I ever put on my foot. Comfort for working and hiking.)
Glasses $2.97/month (Two pairs at $250 each has lasted seven years. In all likelihood they will last seven more but there is always the risk of random destruction of glasses. Vision is vital.)
orthopedic inserts require replacement (usually they are $400 but covered completely. Failure to replace them when they wear out could mean a person can't get around without extreme difficulty.)
http://www.originalswat.com/ca_en/products/mens.html
https://www.safetyeyeglass.com/store/eyewear/safety-frames/
I ordered two pairs of safety glasses online from Adam Kaminski five years ago. I only had my prescription but someone at work measured my pupilary distance with a vernier kaliper so I had everything I needed. I had never been so pleased with glasses in my life and they were half priced compared to a retail outlet. One pair was too big and for a year I kept fighting with it to try and adjust them to fit right. Two years later I took a chance and asked Adam if I could send the pair back and could he send me a pair with a frame that fit perfect? Can you believe this guy actually accepted the return and only charged me for the new frame. To say I was happy is an under statement.
www.zennioptical.com
Vehicle
save back $11.60/ month for oil changes.
minimal maintenance two oil changes per year $140
$1.25/ month must be set aside to renew driver's license which happens every five years.
(adds $15 to year)
$5.80/month to cover yearly renewal of Auto Association Membership.
(adds $70 to year)
$2/ month windshield washer fluid
(adds $24 to year)
Total Basic Yearly Expenses: $2,665.00/year
$222.00 /month
I must include a spot for $222 in my monthly budget or by the end of the year I will be guaranteed to have added $2,665.00 to my debt load. I don't have that spot in my monthly budget but there is a lot of potential income available over the course of one year.
When I draw up my monthly budget I always go by an income based on four pay checks because most months have four Fridays. If each month only had four paydays I would be screwed and I would have to stop driving to be able to afford to take a shower. However there are four months of the year that have five Fridays meaning there are four extra pay checks hiding in the year. Also there are eleven statutory holidays which result in extra pay and there are four GST and Climate Change checks from the government which adds money. This extra money adds up to exactly cover the extra yearly expenses not accounted for in the regular monthly budget. The only catch is that life isn't perfect and every year has its own set of problems.
If I wanted to go on adversity control that would get pretty expensive in fact if I accounted for all the things that were likely to go wrong in one year there would be nothing left for anything else. Lets take a look at that. If I gave a nod to each of the categories where things tend to go wrong every year it would add up to about $6,147. I am only one person with one pet. The average family in Canada is composed of four people. In terms of a family living in a home where water heaters and washing machines fail I can only imagine their adversity costs would be upwards of $26, 188 per year. The average household income in Canada was $76,000 last year. Paying off the adversity fairy would leave the average family with an income of about $50,000. I could easily see a family of four eating $24,000 worth of food per year.
The average person carries a non mortgage debt load of $21,348 and a mortgage debt load of $154,090. If somehow the family is only paying $700 for their mortgage payment that means $8,400 annually. Now the family's spending money is at $17,600 per year meaning $1,466 per month or $366 per person to go out and have a blast except OOPS! I forgot that their non mortgage debt load is going to cost them about $320 per month which now leaves each person with $95 to go out and have a blast. Everyone could go out and have a hoot unless the parents are saving money for their kids education fund in which case it's "enjoy your carrot and go find something to watch on youtube." Even for double income families I could see they'd be dollars away from being totally screwed every month if anyone had it in their mind to go out and buy designer clothes, video games, sports equipment, or a fancy car.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/transunion-debt-report-1.3587197
http://globalnews.ca/news/1674660/the-biggest-money-mistakes-canadians-make/
Old Faithful Adversity
Average yearly vehicle maintenance cost to date $930
One root canal $350 deductible (best case scenario the person toughs it out until they have benefits)
Unexpected change of residence $800 (two out of three apartment buildings are not liveable unless you are a drug addict. Worst case scenario is two moves back to back.)
Change of phone number $30 (If you moved to another province who is going to hire you if your area code is from another province?)
Urgent Chiropractic Care $1500 (one month of intense treatment $700. Second month only $200. Down to maintenance $50/ month. No benefits at that time. It was pretty important to put my C2 vertebrae back into place.)
Ten sick days due to superbug $750
Four doctor's notes per year $120 (some employers require a doctor's note or your job will be on the line.)
One week off work for rehabilitation $375 (best case scenario you're laid out for a week with a broken hand, torn tendon, or a broken leg.)
Inflation 1.87% average annual price increase $36 (If next year the inflation rate goes up by 0.5%)
Computer and cell phone replacement: $500
Antivirus software: $30
Credit report: $36 (If you have reason to believe your information is vulnerable you have to check it.)
Income tax: $10
Yearly Cost of Faithful Adversity: $5467
Monthly Adversity Fund Needed: $455
INCOME AVAILABLE TO START AN ADVERSITY FUND: $50/ MONTH IF FOOD BUDGET CAN DROP FROM $5/DAY TO $3.30/DAY.
Without a vehicle the yearly adversity cost would be: $4902
monthly cost of insuring oneself against adversity without a vehicle: $408.50
Without a vehicle and with benefits covering half chiropractor expenses:$3377/year $281.40/month
(Once I have benefits going to the chiropractor will only cost me $300/year.)
Without a vehicle, with a stable drug free residence, with benefits $2527/year $210/month
Without a vehicle, without getting sick, without getting hurt, with a stable drug free residence, with benefits $1282/year $106/month
Without a vehicle, without a phone, without a computer, without getting sick, without getting hurt, without slipping a vertebrae, without checking my credit, without any tooth decay, with a stable residence, and with benefits then all of a sudden I can afford to be alive. Yay! For fun I can walk around and look at things!
What is the point of sending the vehicle away when half the time it's the only reliable place I can sleep where I can breath air free of drugs? If I can't sleep I can't work. If I can't work then there is not much I can do. Time after time I move somewhere and then my neighbor decides what they really need in their life more than anything is a better supply of drugs. The more crude the source the better. Worst case scenario someone is smoking crack, crystal meth, or something worse they made at home out of Draino. If someone is smoking marijuana nearby I can tell myself a million times it's not harmful and that it's okay to relax but my blood pressure will rise until my heart is pounding in my ears and my whole body gets all puffy. I'm not sure if it's an allergy, an immunity response, or a preconditioned response that the smell is alarming. Whatever it is I cannot change my blood pressure or the swelling up. I can't sleep like that. Unless I leave the area it doesn't go away.
The Hassle Free Budget Pledge
1. I can't wait to go to the food bank. I hear they hand out a lot of organic food. The more I eat the lighter I feel!
2. Vehicle repairs are all a thing of the past. My van has been saturated with repairs and it's completely satiated. My tires will stop wearing down because I am using my mind to levitate the vehicle as I drive. My break pads will last forever because my tires wobble so much they never have to make contact with anything. Rust is a really attractive feature. The more of it that develops the safer I feel. I'm sure any day now we'll all get subsidized to drive electric cars.
3. My computer is not sucking up wads of cat hair into its circuits. That purring noise coming from the back of it is a sign of good computer health.
4. I will not run over my cell phone, drop it in the toilet, overload it with apps, or accidentally put it in the microwave.
5. The internet is a happy place full of helpful downloads.
6. I will continue to experience perfect harmony and bliss in my residence and everyone will follow the Landlord and Tenant Act as if it was the most important publication ever made. I don't even have to worry about breathing in harmful drugs because all the drug addicts know that they should take themselves to a rehab center right away and so there are no problems in any apartment buildings or dwellings of any kind.
7. Everyone around me is getting more and more sane as days go by. I fully expect that everyone's mental health is only on the upswing. It feels good to live in a world full of so much love and tolerance.
8. Pretty soon we won't even need a policy on harassment in the work place because everyone will be in such a good mood that it won't even cross their mind to say or do anything hurtful at all. Everyone will feel like they are top rate and it will be contagious. Until then if there were no bodily fluids involved it wasn't really abuse anyway so most of us have nothing to worry about. We can all receive name calling, butt slapping, tit tapping, testicle tickling, threats and intimidation with cheer and good humor.
8. Our health care system is so stupendous that I'm sure whatever happens to me it will be fixed in a timely manor with plenty of compensation.
9. I will be so healthy I will not get sick because all that chiropractic work has aligned my spine so perfectly that all my nerves are sending all the right messages at all the perfect times so my body is one hundred percent efficient.
10. My teeth have become omnipotent and they get stronger in the presence of digestive acids and bacteria.
11. I have no need for alcohol whatsoever because I am such a devoted practitioner of yang style and chen style taiji. Taiji has enriched my life so much that I have no need to spend money learning how to do anything else.
12. The planet is supplying such an abundant source of materials that it's like a bottomless supply of money.
13. Any day now a money tree is going to sprout out of the ground and I can just go out and pick ripe twenty dollar bills right off of there.
14. Everyone in my life supports me and wants me to succeed. I am so well loved that it wouldn't even cross my mind that anyone was out to get me. If they were out to get me I bet I could trick them so well that they'd never find me. I bet I could run so far and so fast that they'd never be able to catch up. I bet I could run around the world so fast that I could run right across the ocean and nobody would even see me except all the other people who were running the other way. One day I will be able to run so fast that I'd get paid millions of dollars for running so fast. Then I'd never be poor again.
15. It's so easy to stay warm on this planet that I don't even need a furnace.
16. Nobody is going to get sick or die unless they want to. There will be no grief, no sadness, and no loss.
17. The government likes it when families visit each other, that is why it's free to fly on an airplane.
18. My cat likes getting run over and chewed up by stray dogs. When he accidentally poisons himself all he has to do is run around a few times and then he's okay. Any day now he's going to learn how to use the toilet and cook for himself and once he's gained confidence in home economics then he'll go on to do works of art. He will learn to play the bathtub, the door, the carpet, and the mirror all at the same time. I will cut a record for him and it will sell dozens of copies.
19. My paycheck is a thing of beauty. My employer knows how to pay people what they are worth. Employees keep getting paid more and more money because they work so hard. Women have come such a long way in proving their equality that they don't even have to ask anymore when it comes to equal respect and equal pay. It's a given that whatever men are getting women will get it, and whatever women are getting men will get it too.
20. All those superbugs are just going to become so powerful that eventually they will become Gods. They will tire of this planet and then they will go away.
21. Credit cards have many hidden benefits. What happens is the bank invests the money and when you die they provide the coffin free of charge.
22. Birthdays are easy to handle. Nobody actually expects gifts on their birthday and if they do expect gifts, the best gift is a big hug. One hug fits all.
23. Children are valuable investments in the future. In the future our children will be such good care givers. They'll be able to find the answer to anything on their smart phone. One day smart phones will even have a tractor beam to make it easier to handle a bed ridden family member.
24. I can't see myself ever needing more than this pair of jeans and this t shirt. I've been wearing the same pair of boots for the last five years and I'm pretty sure all those holes mean they're getting ready to last another five. Just for the record I didn't really cry when I lost that sock in the wash. I bawled.
25. Technology has gotten so good that nobody needs a massage anymore. You can get the same affect from watching a video.
26. The structural integrity of my glasses improves every time I sit on them or step on them.
27. Close relationships are a source of stress relief. So are punching bags.
If you're still not inspired then you need to go to http://shoulderperch.blogspot.ca/2016/07
This blog is a collection of really bizarre statements about life which you might need to use one day to confuse other people when you really need to use confusion to find your way through the difficult times.
For a while there I thought I had been defeated. I tried to rewrite recipes in the middle of the night and I ended up laughing myself to tears because the casserole called for a quarter cup of onions and one bacon bit. I thought it was all going to be for nothing if I quit driving and I couldn't afford to eat anyway, then I realized that once I stop driving I can keep eating at the proposed $3.50/ day. That just means I will only be half protected against the cost of adversity. A fifty percent chance that I can handle adverse situations is better than a zero percent chance that I will be able to handle unexpected expenses.
To drum up some ideas I toured various websites of people who were also trying to eat for $3 a day. Some were trying to eat for less and they could if all they ate was expired donuts and ramen. I'm pretty sure that would make me sick and I'm not about to try that. The website I listed bellow is full of helpful information.
http://efficiencyiseverything.com/
Another website outlined the best groceries to put in your basket if you wanted enough calories but had minimal money. I was surprised to see bananas and yams on the list aside from peanut butter, bread, oreos, and oats. Naturally the first thing that came to my mind was peanut butter sandwiches with sliced banana. Who didn't have those when they were a kid? I puzzled over the recipes for a while then I started getting curious what the banana cream pie would cost if I made the bottom as a giant peanut butter cookie. The original recipe was so expensive because the bottom part was constructed of a very expensive homemade chocolate cake containing cacao icing and maple syrup.
I went through the ingredients in the new recipe one by one noting cost and calories and I was thoroughly pleased with my findings. This time the calories were much higher and the cost was much lower. I had to stifle the impulse to run around screaming "the liberator is here! The name of the liberator is banana cream pie!" Once the whole thing was cut into ten pieces each piece was worth 580 calories and cost $1.05!!! You could eat three pieces a day and get 1740 calories for $3.15! It's far from perfect but it's a step towards a reliable and cheap source of food and it won't leave you feeling like you were run over by the food delivery truck.
Peanut Bar Base
Taken from the More with Less Cookbook
cream together:
1/2 c regular unsalted butter
1 c organic sugar
1 free run egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
mix:
1 1/2 c organic oats
3/4 c organic flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
Mix everything then stir in:
1 c peanuts coarsely chopped
Bake 350 degrees for 30 minutes.
Allow to cool.
Add 6 sliced organic bananas to the peanut square bottom.
Add cream then the meringue.
Cream
1 1/2 cups organic sugar
1/4 cup organic flour
2 cups organic milk
2 tbsp regular butter
3 free run eggs
1 tsp vanilla
In a saucepan mix 1 1/2 cups sugar and 1/4 cup all purpose flour. Mix it up then stir in one cup milk. Separate the yolks out of three eggs and then add the three yolks. Put the egg whites in a large bowl for later when you whip up the meringue. Add another cup of milk and two tablespoons of butter.
Bring it to a boil whether over medium heat or medium high. As soon as it boils turn it down to low and whisk constantly for a minute or two until it's as thick as you want it. Remove from heat and stir in a teaspoon of vanilla. Pour over the bananas.
Get out your electric beaters and whip the egg whites until they are stiff. If you want the meringue sweet add 1/4 cup sugar. Pour across the top. Make sure you completely cover the bananas with the egg whites. Bake the whole thing for fifteen minutes at 350 degrees.
Calories in whole thing: 5797
Cost of whole thing: $10.78
Cut into ten pieces: 1 slice is 580 calories and costs a slim $1.05
55% of the ingredients were organic.
I had another look over that "Empty Cupboard" shopping list and realized that it could be altered to include peanuts, bananas, and yams by replacing the bacon and the brown sugar. Peanuts and yams pay out a better return than bacon and brown sugar. Some small changes could make the difference. Next I will wrestle with the "cheese soup" to see if there's a way I can make it taste as good without the organic cheese. I already tried once and it was disappointing. If anything I'm trying to avoid food that disappoints. If you enjoy it thoroughly you will feel good about it especially if you don't have to peel your stomach off the road after. I also can't wait to make a sweet potato pie. I might even shut my mouth with it.
If you are all set to eat nothing but banana cream pie for one month here is your shopping list so you can make the banana cream pie twelve times in one month. The shopping list assumes that you already have salt, baking powder, and vanilla. Once you have made the banana cream pie twelve times you will have provided yourself with 69,564 calories.
2 dozen free run eggs $10
1.75kg peanuts or 4 containers 454g each $10
2 bags organic oats 1 kg each $10
8 blocks of regular butter 250 g each $32
4 L organic milk $8
2 L organic milk $4
1 bag organic flour 2.5 kg $7.40
6.75 kg organic sugar $25
12 bunches organic bananas $23
Total:$129.40
Daily expense: $4.30
Make the recipe three times a week, enjoy. If you get sick of it there's room to shift to making bread that is if you have yeast. Then you can still make plain oats, eggs, bread and butter, drink a glass of milk and have some peanuts. If you wanted to you could make plain homemade pudding. Of course you don't have to be this extreme. You can keep it as a weekly addition to your already cheap food bill.
A budget is a method by which you keep track of the money coming in and the money going out over a fixed period of time such as a month or a year. The better job you do, the less fun you have if you choose to live within your income. These days "living within your means" cannot actually support life let alone A LIFE. There is a lot of humor going around that inmates have more variety in their lives than most people out in the real world.
A budget is where you write down things like rent, mortgage payments, property taxes, utility bills, credit card payments, cell phone payments, internet payments, gasoline payments, hydro bill, natural gas bill, vehicle insurance payments, food bill and health costs. Once all these expenses are written down you know how much is left for you to use for yourself. If there is any money left that you have for yourself that probably means you were drawing up a budget with general monthly expenses.
I think most people pay the most attention to the categories with the most severe consequences if you don't pay them. Obviously people make sure to pay the rent or they get evicted. They pay their mortgage or their house goes into foreclosure. Those are pretty severe consequences. Second people pay their hydro or they will get their power turned off. People pay their vehicle insurance because if they get in an accident driving without insurance they will be sued for a million dollars and spend the rest of their life paying that off. Naturally people also pay attention to having enough money for gasoline because what would be the point of throwing all that money into insurance if the car had no gas. I like to pay attention to having money for food because I love to eat and starving is only something I did for fun in the past when I had a lot of money.
Short of the categories with the most severe consequences most people find it convenient to tune out of the categories with minimal consequence. If you don't report your dish soap is anyone going to come to your door with a stack of paper work and throw you into court? I love to take small items and minimize them until they don't even exist. Until this month soap did not exist in my budget. It was only some strange substance dreamed up on another world which was obviously free because as far as my budget was concerned there was no such thing as soap. It's very easy to not concern ones self with costs that do not recur every single month. We love to think things like "oh the money will just be there. It's such a small thing I'll find a way to cover it. It will be on sale, in fact I'm pretty sure it will very nearly be free when I need it. I NEED IT THEREFORE IT WILL LAST FOREVER." I'm fairly sure that many of us grow up thinking that there is a dish soap fairy who sneaks bottles of dish soap into the house every night. It would be hard to dispute the existence of the dish soap fairy because the soap is always there.
The other thing I have been fond of thinking is "even if I can't afford it that is not a factor because I need it." I'm in the position of paying for my own well being, my own sanity, my own health. If I don't fortify my health, then when it falls apart it REALLY falls apart. If there's one thing I cannot afford is to go into a state where I cannot take care of myself. The bills keep coming no matter what condition a person is in. As much as the dish soap fairy wishes she could help, she's got a busy schedule.
A lot of the time it feels really good to believe that having all the major expenses covered means everything is covered. In times when money is scarce it seems like a good idea to combine a monthly budget with a yearly budget. On the other hand sometimes the only hope that people have is to believe that they are doing a good job of covering the basics. To look beyond that is to see the futility of life. Looking into every last expense likely to occur in a year is an exercise of sheer madness that will likely destroy the last molecule of sanity in a person's head. If you stand there and watch your life disappear into a financial abyss it poisons the soul. In fact I'm pretty sure my grandfather was tightening up the family budget the day before he chased my Dad out of the house with a shotgun.
After endeavoring to foresee all the expenses in one year it's pretty easy to come to the conclusion that the only way to afford being alive is to start a refugee camp. In a country where the standard of living is supposed to be relatively high people are going out of their minds beating themselves up because they have failed to starve themselves, deprive themselves, and work themselves around the clock. Even if we could pull off living like refugees in our own homes what would that do to us mentality? How would we grow as human beings and feel like we had anything to contribute to the world if our lives were based on cutting ourselves off from everything except the basic necessities?
There are many cases where I purposefully went blind to certain expenses. This is my lucky year where I get to take all the blinders off. What have I seen so far? The van is convenient until it has problems. At this very moment that van is just begging to cost me more money. Last year the parking brake seized onto the drum and the drum broke. The whole parking brake had to be replaced. You think my next thought after paying $700 to the mechanic was "well I guess I just won't eat for the next two months so I can pay off the credit card company?" No my next thought was "how about another batch of chocolate chip cookies." There was only one particular time I was mad enough at a credit card company that I ate rice and lentils for three months so I could pay off $1,500. The money was being lent to me at 33% and I was so furious that it fueled a fire of determination.
Right at this moment I'm not mad because I've been with the credit card companies so long that most of them have given me 0%. I have owed money for over a decade and at this point I am extremely comfortable with the whole thing. I realize I have become an investment for the bank because even the zero percent rates still have a one time promotional interest rate of 2% so I end up putting money in their pocket anyway. All the times I paid them off I never got rid of them because it was the only security I had that if something went wrong, I had options. I never wanted to declare bankruptcy because I was far too interested in having a good credit rating in the case I ever wanted to become a home owner. It's funny with how many times I've paid off my credit cards my credit rating is still exactly the same as it was in the middle of the recession. I guess it won't actually improve until I have a net worth above zero.
I used my credit cards lightly when I was in school and it was usually if I got laid off from one of my jobs that I went stir crazy and started to spend too much. I never spent a card all the way up because a maxed card tends to have hidden costs that pop up more so than if you leave a $200 space. If I wanted to pay off all my debts it would take me four years of supreme good luck and determination. I could set my mind to putting an amount of money on those cards that is if the adversity fairy didn't get to that money first. The only thing standing between me and paying off those cards is van repairs, vet bills, tooth decay, sickness, stray injuries, wayward vertebrates, computer failure, cell phone failure, travel expenses, drug addicts, Murphy's Law, gravity, dishware, workshops, heating devices, social pressures, my stomach, and the occasional impulse to be very generous to other people. That's all, nothing to it.
When I was setting up my food budget before I thought it was enough to simply set a dollar amount for the month. Now that I am approaching the ability to forecast exact portions of exact foods at exact caloric amounts it will set me up all the better for a successful eating plan. That is the theory anyway. There's always room for improvement but there's also room for failure. All the failures say is that something wasn't quite right but it can be fixed. Sometimes things get worse before they get better. The old cliche has some truth to it. The only way to find out if you're on the right track is to stay on it for a while. Either a tree will fall on your head or you'll get where you need to go.
To summarize to this point the Food Geek has been trying to come up with an appetizing way of eating for $3.50/day. The home budget was recently "enriched" with more enlightening details indicating that some changes would need to be made. At first it seemed like it would be easier to pull a rabbit out of my ball cap but as a wise woman once told me "nothing breeds success like success." The success of the banana cream pie recipe gave me two very important pieces of information to try and replicate with all the other recipes. A caloric amount, and a price. I realized what I needed to do was compare every recipe to the cream pie recipe and see exactly how much the calories had to go up and exactly how much the cost had to go down.
The granola recipe wasn't too difficult. I swapped the coconut oil out for butter because butter has higher calories. I replaced the hemp seeds and chia seeds with peanuts, balanced the honey with half sugar and now it comes out one serving 580 calories for $1.02.
Cheaper Granola
Mix:
1 c organic flour (420 cal $0.33)
1 1/2 dry milk powder (216 cal $1.44)
1 cup regular sunflower seeds (804 cal $0.70)
6 cups organic oats (1896 cal $2.40)
1 c regular peanuts (828 cal $0.80)
Mix:
1/4 c honey (120 cal $1.06)
1/4 c sugar ( 183 cal $0.06)
2 T molasses (120 cal $0.66)
1 c regular butter (1750 cal $4.00)
Mix it all up bake at 300 degrees in a pan as big as a turkey roaster. Bake for an hour stirring every fifteen minutes and then every ten minutes towards the end.
add 1 c raisins (624 cal $0.80)
Add the raisins after it's baked or it will burn.
Total calories: 6961
total cost: $12.25
Makes 12 cups. Each cup 580 cal and $1.02
If you want to drive the calories up for a cheap amount of money add some cream in with the milk. A cup of 33% cream has 821 calories in it and costs you $1.20. It's not the best thing for your health to eat saturated fat and I imagine it's not much better to drink something with saturated fat. Still, it's a great way to drive up the calories in your breakfast as well as in the cheese sauce without driving up the price too much.
Cheaper White Sauce
2 cups milk (260 cal $1.00)
1 1/2 c 33% cream (1229 cal $1.82)
5 tbsp flour (105 cal $0.08)
2 tbsp milk powder (45 cal $0.50)
1 tbsp chili paste (0 cal $0.10)
1 tbsp pesto sauce (54 cal $0.36)
3 tsp garlic powder (0 cal $0.03)
1/2 tsp salt (0 cal $0.01)
Total calories: 1693
total cost: $3.90
original serving size was five one cup portions at 338 cal and $0.78
Increase serving size to 1 1/2 cups (352 ml): 506 cal $1.15
Cheaper Casserole
I really love this casserole. I think it's going to be really delicious. It only has two ingredients so technically it's not a casserole anymore. The most fun I had all day was adding and subtracting until all the ingredients were eliminated except the rice and sausage.
Daily:
80 grams white rice 260 cal $0.16
70 grams pork sausage 210 cal $0.80
Total: 470 calories $0.96
The Cheaper Diet
1 1/4 cup cheaper granola (725 cal $1.25)
3/4 cup organic milk (100 cal $0.37)
80 grams white rice (260 cal $0.16)
70 grams pork sausage (210 cal $0.80)
1 piece banana cream pie (580 cal $1.05)
Total:1875 cal
Total: $3.63
A cheap way to hit maintenance would be to add more rice, or add cream.
Sigh. Okay there is some use if you want to feel like you're doing something even if it has no ultimate affect.
1. Am I being evicted?
2. Am I being sued?
3. Am I being convicted?
4. Is the power still on?
5. Do I have gas?
6. Is my spouse or partner chasing me with a shotgun?
7. Do I have a place to sleep?
8. Do I have access to a food supply?
9. Do I have access to clean water?
10. Am I sane once and a while?
11. Am I happy once and a while?
12. Do I have access to drugs and alcohol?
13. Do I have a job?
14. Does the child, children, fish, dog or cat look happy?
15. Does the vehicle run?
16. Have I increased my options in the job market?
17. Have I had a chance to enjoy the sunshine?
18. Am I healthy most of the time?
19. Am I able to haul my own ass around if I had to?
If you are alive and able to answer yes or no to any of those questions then you are doing great! Keep it up! Good job!
This is a great day in the life of the Food Geek. I set my sights as low as I could and I am now reaping the benefits of my labors. I set my sights on a daily food budget of $3.50. It seemed unlikely that I would be able to hit the target but trying to hit $3.50 has resulted in a substantial improvement in my spending. In fact judging by the last ten days my daily spending has improved by two hundred and forty percent from last month. For the last ten days I averaged $5.90 each day as apposed to last month when I averaged $14.50 daily. I'm sure a big part of that was due to the fact that I was surfing off food I had on hand. Several weekends in a row I decided to use what I had in the cupboards and plan how to hit my targets instead of running to the shopping center. Supplies are running a little low but nothing beats a stubborn bitch like a stubborn bitch on a power trip.
Sample Menu
2 cups coffee each with 1 tbsp maple syrup and 1 tbsp cream (120 cal $0.95)
1 cup cooked rice (326 cal $0.27)
A serving of white sauce (423 cal $0.78)
3 pork sausage (90 grams 271 cal $1.20)
1 piece breakfast loaf (660 cal $1.30)
1 cup organic yogurt ( 200 cal $1.25)
Total calories: 2000
total cost: $5.75
Breakfast Blogger Loaf
Soak the following items in a big bowl in FIVE cups of water overnight:
2 cups oats
2 cup sunflower seeds
6 rice cakes crumbled
1/2 cup chia seeds
1 cup hemp seeds
1/2 cup sugar
Do not drain any excess water.
Mix into wet oat mixture:
1/2 cup butter melted
1/2 cup coconut oil melted
1 cup peanut butter
3/4 cup honey
Mix in:
1 1/2 cup organic flour
Total calories for whole recipe: 8603
Total cost: $17.16
Thirteen pieces 661 cal at $1.32
Fill the batter into a greased 9"x13" baking pan AND a greased 9" round pie pan. Bake 325 degrees for 50-55 minutes.
This recipe was a spectacular accident. I had tried to make two batches of energy bars hold together using only a sugar syrup. They didn't hold together very well and they were way too sweet. Determined not to waste them I decided the only way to save them was to soak the sugar out. I was then going to make granola but instead ended up with a batter the same texture as cake batter. I decided to go with it and pour it in a cake pan. It turned out beautiful. I can't think of anything I've had in a long time that tastes this good. It doesn't need anything on it. As a side note I boiled the sugar water that drained off and I only expected to make syrup. It must be a little known secret that if you leech the starch out of some oats into the sugar water you get a really nice caramel sauce if you boil it.
