If Your Blog Was a Meal….

I don’t know what was up with me last week, my mind was doing funny things.

I was making penne a la vodka for The Boy last week, and I decided that if Daisy ever came to visit, that’s what I’d make. I’d probably throw in a limoncello cocktail as well for good measure. I mean really, what else would you make her?

From there I decided to assign foods to some of my favourite blogs. Like I said, my mind was doing funny things.

In Debt, Fat, Short with Bad Teeth: Tiramisu. It’s short, will make you fat without a touch of restraint and moderation, and most people forget it’s soaked in alcohol! But it’s sooooooo good. Who really wants to stop eating it? Come on, you know you don’t.

Musings of an Abstract Aucklander: Spicy curried lettuce wraps. I’m not even really sure why. It’s got to be a throw back from some of the tasty recipes or trips to restaurants that she occasionally posts on her site. All I can say is I really want to go to New Zealand!

Upendilife: I want to say jerk chicken, but I know he’s in Barbados not Jamaica. I’m not sure if they serve jerk chicken in Barbados, so I’m just going to modify it to spice rubbed roast chicken. It’s feel good food, and so is his blog. Even when he’s worried about things, he seems so happy and upbeat. Especially when he’s talking about his girlfriend P. His blog is a happy warm dinner.

See Debt Run: Either a hot fudge sundae or a marble cake. Two distinctly different flavours coming together to form one (two) awesome cohesive dessert(s).

Fabulously Fru-girl: Being another female Engineer it would be easy to say beer and free pizza, but that really doesn’t describe her at all (not that I think she’d turn it down if offered ). Fru-girl is classier than that. Her blog is like brunch at a little hole in the wall joint that few people know about.

Broke TO: A cup of Earl Grey tea and a small plate of cheese and sliced fruit. A girl after my own heart. I was rather happy to read that I wasn’t the only one who subbed another cup of tea and a snack for an actual meal, lol.

My 1/2 Dozen Daily: Whenever I picture Carla’s blog, I picture a patchwork quilt. A patchwork quilt isn’t a food at all. Ratatouille however, the patchwork quilt of veggie casseroles, is food. It’s healthy, wholesome, and a little different with every bite.

Money After Graduation: Starbucks Grande Soy Chai Tea Latte. I may have butchered the ordering there. I’m not even sure if Bridget drinks soy, but this seems to suit her to a T.

Blonde on a Budget: A cupcake. For some reason I’ve always associated Cait with the defunct blog Cupcakes and Cash, even though I know it’s not her blog. I don’t know why. Cait just seems like a cupcake kinda gal.

Mutant Supermodel: Dark chocolate with sea salt. This is was an amazing discovery for me, it’s got the right amount of pop to it. Right up there with chocolate dipped potato chips. If you haven’t tried chocolate dipped potato chips yet, seriously, what’s stopping you?

Okay, I’m done being silly now. Do you make funny associations with blogs? If you were to assign my blog a food, what would it be?

Recommended Reading: Leaving a bra on the kitchen table: An ode to living alone

zzzzzZZZZZzzzzzCOFFEEzzzZZZZzzzz

May I just say that waking up to this Monday morning afternoon made my week?

Thank you Marissa for the retweet

My brain is a hot mess today.

I’m not stressed about money in any way shape or form, that’s not what’s messing with my mind.

It’s coffee.

That wonderfully flavourful dark brown elixer that the a good portion of the world’s mornings revolve around. Liquid caffeine. Great for waking you up, or in my case on night shift, keeping you awake.

The problem here is that I’m drinking it in the evenings to take the edge off staying up at night. When I get home I’m not actually falling asleep right away, and when I do make myself try to sleep its not restful. Then I wake up the next morning feeling groggy and the cycle repeats itself.

Today I feel like a zombie. Ugh.

*faceplant*

Out comes the coffee again.

It’s a vicious cycle, you know that? I’ve kicked the coffee habit twice before for the same reason. It keeps me up all night, then in the morning I’m dependant on it again to keep myself going because I didn’t get a good enough night’s sleep. I’ve been back on the coffee wagon again for a couple months now, and its catching up to me.

I need a nap.

I’m thinking I may have to kick the coffee habit again. Not this week though, I need to ween myself off. I nursed a Venti drink last night, so tonight I downgraded myself to a Grande. Tomorrow I’ll probably get myself a Tall. Then it’ll be Friday and I’ll be able to mostly sleep in my hair dresser’s chair when I wake up since I’m going for my first hair cut since November. Yay!

I went into my usual hair place yesterday to make an appointment, only to find out my stylist had left, so they had no one to do hair (it’s a small spa/tanning/hair place). So instead I went to the hair place a little further down the road that just opened a month ago and made an appointment there. *fingers crossed* It’s too bad, I really liked my stylist.

Anyway, back to the coffee. The Savvy Money Pincher is currently doing a 40 day sugar detox. I’ve done sugar/caffeine detoxes before, though never for a specified number of days. They really do work well. I think starting Monday I’m going to do a mini sugar/caffeine detox to get myself back on track, because WOW do I need it. I love the taste of coffee, so I think I’ll go back to drinking decaf when I do have it.

Do you rely on caffeine for your morning pick me up? What do you drink to stay alert? Do you think you could switch up your morning routine and still function well?

Recommended Reading: Back to Life, Back to Reality!

Found!

My laptop cord has been recovered off the floor in the back seat of my car. It would appear that it fell out of my bag last night when I was bringing my stuff in the house after work. I had already made plans for my afternoon by the time I found it, so going back inside and blogging some more wasn’t in the cards yesterday. Catching up with a friend over tea and picking up groceries however, were in the cards.

With the price of fuel ever increasing, I find I have to have a good excuse to drive downtown. Hopping in the car because I really want to go to that awesome cheese shop or bakery? Not going to happen. Going to the cheese shop or bakery when I’m already going to be downtown visiting someone? That’s more likely. This time the store in question was the organic grocery store.

There’s two of these stores in town, one on either side of the river. I went to the store on the north side, because it was conveniently located between my tea stop and work. This location is smaller and has less selection, but still contains an interesting variety of food.

And holy crap was it expensive!

I don’t know if it’s because I’m not used to paying the prices anymore, or if they’ve really gone up that much. Maybe it’s because I’ve switched to a gluten free diet since the last time I spent an appreciable amount of money there, and the items I was looking at cost more? That would only explain part of it. I picked up a single, large, shrink wrapped boneless skinless chicken breast out of a cooler: $16. It was a rather large chicken breast, but not that large! I ended up buying a couple items on sale, some artisan goat cheese from Salt Spring Island ($10 – that’s the price for this stuff everywhere), and a small package of buckwheat flour only soba noodles ($10 – it’s the first package I’ve found anywhere that doesn’t include wheat). The damage was over $26, and everything fit in my purse. Unbelievable.

I’ve known for quite a while that eating organic and saving money were going to butt heads, so this wasn’t exactly unexpected. Was it painful to look at the total? Yes. But again, it wasn’t unexpected. I wish I lived in an area where farmers markets equal cheap food, but it’s pretty much the opposite here. Eating local, organic food is expensive.

So, I’ve decided that this will be my first grocery challenge. I have $33 left for groceries next week; I’m going to see it I can buy a week’s worth of groceries from the organic store on that. $35 a week would work out to being just over $150 a month, so it’s a reasonable amount of money to spend on food for one person.

My shopping cart MUST meet the following criteria:

• It must contain a source of protein.
• It must contain fruit and vegetables.
• It must contain food that will last longer than the week to help replenish pantry staples that get used.
• It must be food *I* can eat. (no loading up on cheap wheat and corn based products)
• It must have enough bulk that I can get a week’s worth of meals out of it.
• The items must compose actual meals, not snacks. (no eating potato chips for breakfast)

I’m not going to lie, I’ll be surprised if I can do it at this store. $6 for a dozen eggs or a litre of milk does not a cheap budget make. I’m going to try though, and I get the feeling that the bulk aisle and I are about to become very good friends.

Do any of you shop at specialty stores, or do you shop for bulk value only? Do you find it difficult working higher priced items into your budget? Where do you splurge and save in your grocery budget?

Recommended Reading: The Big White Elephant In The Room.

My Beef Beef.

First things first: Congratulations Captain Sweatpants for being Freshly Pressed yesterday!

Secondly, has anyone seen Judy?

Back to the beef. I’ve been doing a fair bit of humming and hawing over my meat expenditures lately. I’ll go to the grocery store with a dollar figure in mind that I want to keep my groceries under, then fume at the prices on the packages.

I used to buy all lean cuts of meat when I went to the store. You know the ones: boneless skinless chicken breasts, extra lean ground beef, pork tenderloin, etc… The problem is that they’re bloody expensive these days. I’ve been switching up my meat cuts to ones with less processing: regular ground beef and chicken thighs with bones in and skin on.

Optimally I’d like to be buying these from local farmers, but I’m failing miserably trying to keep my belt tightened until the debt is paid off. I’d like to start spending more of my money at the farmer’s market again this summer.

The store I frequent is admittedly not the cheapest one in town. That being said, when town encompasses 684 square kilometres of land, and gas prices are ticking upwards, I’m not going to drive all over town shopping store to store looking for deals. If I’m near a store that I know has a decent price on something, I’ll stock up. If I see a sale at my usual store on something I frequently use, I’ll stock up. Otherwise, simplicity is my modus operandi.

Which brings me back to ground beef.

The only major difference between regular ground beef and its leaner counterparts is the fat content. More often than not, I drain the fat off. I found myself looking at the cheaper price on it recently and wondered if the protein itself was cheaper when I bought the regular, or if I’ve been pouring my “savings” into a container to cool and throw out in the garbage.

Wouldn’t that suck?

So I popped by the grocery store last night to look at their prices. I was hoping to talk to someone in the meat department about what fat percentages they use on meat in the store, but they had already gone home for the night. Instead I hit up the Canadian Beef website to get an average fat content for the three types of ground beef sold at the store. You may be shocked by them if you’re not used to seeing them.

	Regular	Lean	Extra Lean
Fat Content	24.7%	13.7%	7.6%
Price/kg	$7.69	$9.99	$12.50
Price/kg (fully drained)	$10.21	$11.58	$13.53

While the protein content on the extra lean ground beef is much higher than the regular, it still can’t touch it in terms of price. While more of the package may end up solidifying in an old tin can, the price per kg of the drained beef is still cheaper when buying the regular beef.

These prices were taken off of the small packages of meat that a typical single person would buy. Maybe around half a kilogram (~1 lb) of ground meat. Enter the frustrations of budgeting and cooking for a single person: the bulk pack. A 2kg bulk pack of lean ground beef is $10. That’s half the price of their regularly packaged lean ground beef! For the last couple pay periods when I’ve worked through my grocery list I have had about $7 that gets budgeted towards meat. A little more if I can get other things on sale. It’s been a reasonable amount; last pay day I bought 4 chicken thighs and half a kg of regular ground beef on that. I’ve been trying to get out of buying things in bulk so that I can get a better feel for how much I actually eat and need to spend.

Half priced bulk packs of lean ground beef doesn’t actually help me in that endeavour, but it’s still cheaper overall. Next time I’m picking up meat I’ll probably end up buying one of the bulk packs and splitting it up into smaller portions in the freezer.

If you eat it, how do you buy your meat? Do you shop by price, or by what you’ll use in a certain period of time? How much of your budget goes to meat?

Recommended Reading: Frugal or Cheap? There is a Difference.

Denied!

You know how sometimes you get hit with a chocolate craving, and you decide that it’s best to just give in off the get go rather than trying to ignore it and dragging it out? That was me this afternoon. I wanted chocolate damn it.

And caramel.

And nougat.

Heck, why not get all 3 right off the get bat grab a Mars bar from the lunch room? That’s what the machine is there for, right?

Except I don’t have any coins on me.

Oh wait, I have $5 in my wallet! I found it folded up between a couple cards recently. The machine accepts bills too, so this is perfect!

I grabbed the bill, walked to the lunch room, and proceeded to collect my sweet bounty Mars bar.

The machine sucked my bill in, and spit it back out.

*smooths out wrinkles in bill*

And again.

And again.

And again.

The machine wouldn’t take my money. I finally gave up and went back to my desk, chocolateless.

I lived. Kinda.

I’m not pissed off that I didn’t get my chocolate nearly as much as I’m pissed off that the damn machine is looking after my wallet and waistline better than I am. Rub it in a little more why don’t ya. Standing there in all of your smug candy containing glory. Piss me off.

*huff*

Recommended Reading: Starting Seeds Indoors.