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Healthy Lunch Plan: Under 600 Calories

Alright so I’ve said it before: I like to eat a lot in the morning and afternoon and then skimp on dinner. It just fits my lifestyle better and keeps me from getting headaches from low blood-sugar. I therefore usually eat a 600 calorie lunch - or thereabouts - but I am offering a slightly lower calorie lunch menu here that will be more applicable to a broader audience. This particular lunch is great because you do all the prep work (all 20 minutes of it) on Sunday evening and then just grab and go. Because you are planning ahead for a whole week and making your food from scratch you are saving a ton of money by not going out to eat or buying expensive snacks at the office’s honor bar.

Cucumbers

First off, I think you should pack yourself some cucumber slices. I discovered these about a year ago when a friend came over with a bunch of cucumbers from her garden. We dipped them in ranch dressing and I have been addicted ever since! So crunchy, so yummy, so much fiber! So here’s what you do: buy two cucumbers on Sunday, then wash them water, slice off each end and discard those, then slice into 1/4 inch-thick rounds. Don’t peel off the skin - it has all the good vitamins in it! This should take all of 5 minutes to accomplish. Then divvy the slices up into lunch containers for the week.

Brown Cow Yogurt

Next up is a serving of Brown Cow Vanilla Cream Top Yogurt. Yes, I am suggesting you just go all the way and get the fattening stuff instead of the low-fat stuff. Not only is it super-tasty but it is still way healthier for you than Yoplait and other competitors. Many of the Yoplait and other brands have high-fructose corn syrup in them, along with color additives that you just don’t need to ingest. The Brown Cow Vanilla just uses maple syrup as the sweetener. This stuff is food at its purest!

Muffins

Finally, make these Bran Apple Muffins for a really healthy, yet filling, grain item that should keep you going until dinner time. I’ve made these muffins twice and really am pleased with them. They are very healthy but tasty at the same time. Sure, they aren’t going to come close in taste to a chocolate chip giganto-muffin full of lard from the bakery but you will feel much better about yourself after eating one of these than after eating one of those!

So again, on Sunday, make the muffins (they’ll take you about 15 minutes to mix and pop in the oven), then you will have enough muffins for you to have 2 per day for a 5 day week! You can have one as an on-the-go breakfast and the other at lunch, or have one for a mid-morning snack and the other at lunch. Because you are making these from scratch you are saving money too!

My recommendations for tweaking the muffin recipe are: add 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon of white sugar to the dry part of the mix, and substitute 1/2 of the flour with whole-wheat flour to make this a healthier muffin. Do not substitute all of the flour with wheat flour though or you might just end up with 12 inedible bricks instead of the yummy muffins you set out for.

Calorie Breakdown Per Lunch Serving:

• Cucumber: 18 calories
• 2 tablespoons of ranch dressing: 140 calories
• Brown Cow Vanilla Yogurt: 210 calories per container
• 1 muffin: 200 calories
• TOTAL: 568 calories

Resources:

The resources I used to determine calories and ingredients were:

• Calorie-Count.com
• TheDailyPlate.com
• FoodFacts.com

Food Buying Trends - Our Chart

Chart outlier warning: I signed up for Mint, the service I use to track my finances, a few months ago, so it doesn’t actually have a full month’s worth of data for December 2007.

What we spend on food and dining out is obviously a lot more than the “average” U.S. spending, according to Mint’s data. I want to know a little bit more about this “average” spending data that Mint uses because it seems to me that if they have a lot of singleton users (i.e, not families) then yes, their spending would be a lot lower because they are only feeding one person. So what I really want to compare myself to are those people who have Mint accounts who are feeding four people, not just one or two.

Regardless, I’ll bet we still spend more than the average, albeit the difference is probably not quite so drastic. The thing I am most happy about regarding this chart is that it shows how much we have cut back on our spending! We spent over $300 less on food and dining in April than we did in March. Yay!

Also, did anybody notice the counter-intuitive trending going on in the US average numbers? I mean, with all this talk about food prices increasing, why would it be that the last 3 months have shown average declines in the amount we are spending on food? The only thing I can think of is that an increasing proportion of less affluent Mint users are signing up over time, thus pulling the averages downward more and more every month. Something to ponder anyway!

Making a Salad Healthier - Missing the Point

Going right along with the salad discussion from my previous post is this article on CNN today about building a healthier salad. This is ridiculous. I mean, come on, our real problem with eating is not that our salads aren’t healthy enough! If everyone had a salad, and nothing else, for dinner, then we would be a whole lot healthier. And I really don’t think it would matter if people put in 1 tablespoon of shredded cheese or 1/2 cup. Our problems with eating are not that we eat too much cheese or eat ranch dressing instead of vinaigrette! Our problem is that we go to fast food joints 2 or 3 times a week and consume 1000 calories there at one sitting, then go home and have a dinner consisting of another 1000 calories on top of the snack and breakfast we already had. That adds to about 300-400 calories more than most people need per day. Let’s focus on the real problem!

The Frugal Lunch Salad

A whole heck of a lot of people eat a salad for lunch, whether it is their entire lunch or just a side. (I am one of those that eats a salad on the side - but then, I also front-load my calories early in the day and eat less in the evening.) The cost of the lunch salad can be broken down as follows:

Most Expensive: The Super-Duper Convenient Salad - $4.00

Buy this from the salad bar at your local grocery or restaurant. You are paying for the ability to say “hey I want a salad today.” Then presto - there it is! This salad will run you anywhere from $4-$10 per day for a total of $20-$50 for a 5-day workweek.

Medium Price: Salad in a Bag - $2.00

This is more work than the salad bar choice and you have to do some pre-planning. But it is so much cheaper!

2 bags of mixed-green salad greens = $3-$4 or ~1.60 per serving

Dressing = $4 per bottle or ~20 cents per serving

Croutons = $2 or ~20 cents per serving

Total cost per salad: $2.00, total cost per week: $10.00

Even though the salad is “pre-washed” you’ll want to wash it again at home (remember that spinach scare a few years ago?), then use your salad spinner to dry it or just lay it out on some paper towels for a while. Divide into 5 servings using plastic containers, then divide the dressing into 5 smaller containers (or just take the whole bottle to work). Put croutons in baggies. Put in the fridge and you are set for the week.

Least Expensive: Chop the Greens Yourself - $1.01

Prep your ingredients on a Sunday and have them ready to go for the week. If you buy a head of lettuce (1 head of green leaf lettuce is about $1.50) plus 1/2 pound of mesclun mix (about 60 cents) you’ll have enough greens for 2 weeks of salad. They might go bad after a week, though, so that is one downside. If you have a spouse or someone to share it with then this is a good option. Shred some carrots ($1.80) and 1 cup of cheese ($2.00); hard-boil 3 eggs ($1.20); add croutons ($2) and dressing ($4). This comes to about $1.65 or $8.25 for the whole week. Keep in mind that you’ve added cheese and eggs to this salad whereas you didn’t for the medium-priced salad. If you omitted the cheese and eggs then your total cost would be $5.05 for the week or $1.01 per day.

All these figures are based on my local Safeway prices.

More Dinner Planning Options

I just found another website that offers a dinner planning service called MenusForMoms that looks promising. I think you might want to check out this one in addition to the ones I listed here and also keep checking my site for more menus like the one I posted yesterday. I like my own menus because they are relatively easy, good for kids, and utilize a lot of the same foods throughout the week which saves you money by enabling you to buy in bulk more often.

MenusForMoms has a service whereby you can get the menus for free if you view their add-laced pages or pay $5/month for add-free menus. Their menu for this week includes a Cinco de Mayo casserole, pork chops, cheeseburger pie, baked salmon, and grilled chicken. If you like to have meat every night in your dinners then this site might be for you! We are more on the meat 2x a week schedule and we quite frankly can not figure out how or why people would want to eat meat more than that. It has recently come to my attention that a lot of people expect to eat meat every day. Weird. 

I especially like some of the articles on the site, including the one about the well-stocked pantry. Check it out here (if you are a dad or a single person, I guess this link won’t work for you. Just kidding. :P) They are also going to come out with a frugal dinner menu service soon…
 Save time and money with Menus4Moms’ dinner menus for busy moms!

Easy Dinners for the Whole Week!

Earlier I posted about some meal planning services and a book that can help you out when you are just too busy to create your own. I am still a little frustrated with those options due to them either taking too long to make or just not being very tasty. So I decided to make a menu and shopping list of my own to share with you. I sure hope it helps you out! I’ve made all of these recipes multiple times for my family and we love them all.

These are super-easy meals with the only thing that could be remotely difficult being the crepes. But you need a little challenge in your life, right?! They are so yummy that it is worth trying to make them. Here are the 5 meals for the week:

• Homemade Macaroni and Cheese / Asparagus
• Your choice of Meat / Frozen Vegetables / Mashed Potatoes
• Homemade Broccoli Soup / Bread
• Spinach and Cream Crepes
• Grilled Ham and Cheese / Spinach

SHOPPING LIST:

Meat (buy whatever is on sale, whatever cut: beef, chicken, or pork)

1 bunch of asparagus

2 onions

1 head of garlic

4 baking potatoes

1 bag or box of frozen vegetables – whatever you like to eat

2 boxes of frozen spinach (10 oz each)

16 oz. fresh or frozen broccoli

Optional: frozen fruit like peaches or strawberries

1 lb cheddar cheese

Butter, unsalted

5 cups of milk

Whipping cream (small)

Sour cream (small)

3 eggs

Flour

8 oz. of noodles like macaroni or penne (buy a wheat blend to be healthy!)

Seasoned breadcrumbs (only if you bought chicken on sale)

Brown sugar (only buy if you bought pork on sale)

3 cups of low-sodium chicken stock

Olive oil

Vegetable oil

Bread

Sliced deli ham

RECIPES:

1. Homemade Macaroni and Cheese / Asparagus

Man N Cheese: This is from McCall’s Cookbook and is absolutely wonderful! It has been a staple in my family for a LONG time.

Set oven to 375 degrees.

Cook 8 oz of noodles using package directions.

Melt 1/4 cup butter in a small saucepan (don’t burn it!), remove from heat and use a whisk to blend in 1/4 cup of flour, when all the lumps are out return it to the heat and gradually add in 2 cups of milk, just a little bit at a time at first while you whisk it in. Add all the milk and bring to a boil while stirring and boil for 1 minute. You can raise to med-high or high heat if you stir it constantly to get it to boil faster. That’s the white sauce.

Drain the noodles and put half of them in an 8″ square baking dish.

Grate 2 cups of cheddar cheese.

Put 1 cup of cheddar on the noodles, then put the other half of the noodles on top of that, then put the rest of the cheddar on those. Pour the white sauce you just made all over the noodles and cheese.

Bake 15-20 minutes.

Asparagus: This is in season right now so get it while it is good and relatively cheap! Wash it and cut off the thick ends a few inches up. Boil them in 6 cups of water for 5-10 minutes, 5 if you like them crisp and 10 if you like them rubbery. We like ‘em done for 8 minutes. Take them out, serve, and eat.

2. Your choice of Meat / Frozen Vegetables / Mashed Potatoes

Meat: you’ve purchased whatever was on sale. If chicken, dip it in a milk/egg bath, then dip in seasoned breadcrumbs (add cumin and/or garlic powder to the breadcrumbs if you like), then bake. If beef, season simply with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, then bake or grill. If pork, smear a crushed garlic (one or 2 cloves) and brown sugar (1 cup) mixture over the pork and then bake.

Mashed potatoes: Peel 4 baking potatoes, cut them into quarters, then boil them in water until they are quite soft. Dump the potatoes into a kitchen aid and beat them with some butter (2 tablespoons), 1/2 cup milk, some cut-up chives, cut-up parsley, or any combination of those ingredients if you have them on hand. If you don’t have a kitchen aid mash them up with a potato masher or back of a ladle. Only serve 1/2 of the mashed potatoes! Save the rest for tomorrow night.

Veggies: take out of freezer and prep as per package directions. 

3. Homemade Broccoli Soup / Bread

Put a tablespoon of olive oil in a big pot, heat it up w/ medium heat, then put in a few cloves of crushed garlic for a few seconds. Then put in 1/2 cup of chopped onion. Saute the onion and garlic for about 6-7 minutes. Then add 3 cups of chicken stock and 3 cups of water. Add the left-over mashed potatoes from last night and broccoli (if fresh broccoli, wash and cut it into pieces first). Raise the heat, bring to boil, simmer for about 10 minutes. You can eat it like this if you don’t have an immersion blender (I wouldn’t fuss with putting it into a regular blender - too much trouble!), just add a few cups of grated cheddar cheese, stir it in until melted, and eat. If you do have an immersion blender, blend the soup first, then add the cheese, stir, and enjoy! Serve with bread.

4. Spinach and Cream Crepes

Use the recipe found here, it is delicious! For the spinach filling: heat 1 tablespoon olive oil in a medium saucepan. Add 1 cup of chopped onion, saute for about 6-7 minutes until translucent. Add 2 boxes (10 oz each) of spinach and stir until the spinach is soft. If there is a lot of liquid in the pot then you can drain some of it out into the sink. Stir in 1 tablespoon of salt and maybe 1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg if you like it. That’s the filling! For the cream, combine 1/4 cup of whipping cream with 1/4 cup of sour cream. Dot some of the cream mixture on top of spinach filling before wrapping the crepe up. (Use the cream sparingly!)

Only use 1/2 of the spinach filling for tonight’s dinner! Save the rest for tomorrow night’s dinner.

If you get crazy, make sweet crepes for dessert. Heat up a bag of frozen fruit in a pot with a few tablespoons of butter and about 1/2 cup of sugar. Heat until the fruit is syrupy and very soft. Put in crepes. Whip the left over whipping cream with a whisk in a Kitchen Aid or other mixer and then add some sugar, to taste (start with like 1/4 cup sugar). That’s your whipped cream to put on top of the dessert crepes!

5. Grilled Ham and Cheese / Spinach

Soften some butter in the microwave (just 10 - 20 seconds will do, don’t melt it), then spread the butter on one side of a bunch of pieces of bread. Put a slice or two of cheddar cheese on one slice and a slice of deli ham on that. Keep the butter facing out. Put another slice of bread on top, butter side out. Heat skillet to medium and put the sandwich on it. Let it brown on one side, then flip and brown on the other side. Make as many as you need and serve them with the spinach from last night, heated up in the microwave, as a side dish. Tell the kids that this is like eating a fancy breakfast - except for dinner!

Broke Down - Had Take Out

We broke down and ordered take-out tonight. It was excellent, of course; expensive - of course; and I ate too much - of course! My youngest (3.5 yrs) ate half a spring-roll, then was excused to go play, then declared “I want something to eat!” about 5 minutes later as if there weren’t 5 boxes of food on the table. At least this time it wasn’t my own cooking that was so easily dismissed. Hopefully our little dalliance will not put us over our food budget for the month ($800).

Food Prices Up, Humor Up…

It is nice to see gourmands making fun of themselves, as in this piece yesterday by Daniel Gross in Slate. (By the way, does anyone else constantly confuse him with Bill Gross of PIMCO?) Anyway, I think a lot of gourmands were getting a bit full of it over last decade or so; the new term “foodie” was even popularized during this time (more on the origins of the word). 

So that’s why it was so great to see a funny piece on the price of food and how it will affect all those people who spend enormous amounts at places like Whole Foods for imported wine, cheese, seafood, and the rest of it. Gross says…”Alas, the cost of being precious about food has also never been greater.” I took particular note of this part of the article:

When you journey to a food-snob haven—be it the local farmer’s market, a wine store, or a Whole Foods—you’ve already decided that you’re going to pay far more for foodstuffs than you would at the Stop & Shop across the street.

Farmer’s markets are usually extolled as great places to go for cheap produce while helping your local economy, the environment, and your health to boot. But I had always had a hunch that prices were much higher there than at the grocery. I couldn’t say for sure since I haven’t gone to our local farmer’s market in years but was interested to read this, which seemingly justified my absence from the market.

What do you think about image versus frugality?

I have been thinking about the dichotomy between keeping up a successful image and being frugal. On the one hand, I think it is important to project success in order to be successful. This is for two reasons: 1) so you yourself can believe that you are and will continue to be successful and 2) so that others will view you as a success and thus be more willing to come to you first when a job needs filled, a project needs done, etc.

And how do we project a successful image? Well, for a lot of people that will come not only from their personality but also from their visible material possessions like cars and clothing. That has got to be the reason that people spend so much money on those things when you could get very acceptable cars and clothing for much cheaper (think a Civic over a Beamer). For those of us in various types of self-employment, many of our clients would not want to do business with us if we drove around in a beat-up, lime-green car. Indeed, it would project the idea that “nobody else does business with us so why should you”?

On the other hand, very successful people sometime drive around in beat-up cars! I once knew the owner of a big engineering firm that eventually got bought-out for a large sum. The guy drove around in this thing that was probably 25 years old and he did all of the maintenance on it himself. So he was both frugal and successful but if you met him on the street you certainly wouldn’t know it. Would you do business with him? Well, these are my thoughts on the matter for now. I don’t know where I stand on this. Probably somewhere in between. There’s also a line between being frugal and being disrespectful of yourself (like not bathing or eating cheap and unhealthy food when you could easily afford fresh fruits and vegetables) that I wouldn’t want to cross. How about you?

April 2008 Budget Update

Well, we did it! We stayed within budget and then some this month! We had budgeted $800 for groceries and restaurant meals for the month for our family of four and came in at $775. We were helped along by a $50 gift card to a restaurant chain that we got from our rewards credit card. Other than that we did not go out to eat at all, except one trip to DQ for ice cream after the kiddos went to sleep (and who can give up that??!!).

The $775 we spent was way less than we usually spend. I know that we could still potentially save even more money, judging by what I see other people reporting on other financial blogs, but we do tend to frequent a more upscale grocery store which we know charges higher prices. Our reasons for going to that grocery store are threefold: 1) There are never any lines at the check-out counters so we save valuable time, 2) We often see people we know there and feel it is worth the social and networking opportunity, and 3) Great produce from local farms.

Our budget looks great when we look at it on Mint. The numbers on the right show our average spending on those categories for the past 3 months (since that’s how long I’ve been a member of Mint) and the numbers on the left are our totals for this month. There is a $55 grocery bill that isn’t reflected in this yet since it is still pending in our checking account (we just spent that $ last night). Here’s to hoping we can keep ourselves at this level of spending for the rest of the year!