Another reason to like summer

[mousme]

Fresh veggies are just about the best thing about summer. Maybe the fresh fruit and berries beat the veggies, but not by much.

I have become a rabbit of late. I've been eating almost nothing but veggies, mostly raw. My gazpacho was a success, I might add, despite the absence of fresh dill. I am a little out of sorts with my body, which has decided to *gain* weight on an almost exclusively-veggie diet (go figure), but the joy I am getting out of the fruits and veggies pretty much cancels out any minor vexation on my part.

I am currently experimenting with veggie smoothies. I have been having tofu and fruit smoothies for breakfast on and off for a few months now, and the results have been invariably delicious, so I decided to branch out into vegetables and see if I couldn't simplify my lunch prep. Right now I just blended a bunch of celery, spinach, a banana, carrot juice, and half a cup of (very yummy organic) vanilla yogurt. It's not bad, but I've shoved it in the freezer, testing out a theory that it will be delicious when properly chilled. I may make it with ice cubes next time. Then again, I may find a combination I like better.

My coworker printed out a bunch of veggie smoothie recipes yesterday, and I'm using those as a basis for my own experimentation. If nothing else, working with a weight-and-nutrition-obsessed girl has made me more aware of what I'm putting in my mouth. I was a little dismayed at *just* how bad Tim Horton's stuff is, especially the muffins and Timbits. It makes me a little sad, but I have decided that I'm not going to deprive myself if I really want something: I'll just stop making a habit of going every day and simply go for a treat, or if I go more regularly, I'll just stick to a coffee, which is my main reason for going anyway. It'll cost less in the long run, anyway.

Whatever benighted person said that it was cheap to eat well on a regular basis was sadly deluded, I must say. Sure, if you're eating nothing but canned and dry food, then it's cheap. The minute you get into fresh produce the prices skyrocket. I honestly don't know how people with reduced incomes manage. Even when I was earning my lowest salary, which wasn't minimum wage, I found it hard to both pay my bills and eat healthy and fresh things.

Ah well. At least now I can buy a $3 bottle of carrot juice and not worry how the hell I'm going to pay rent. It's been nearly a year since I've been financially solvent, and I'm still not used to the feeling. I still boggle every time I see money in my bank account at the end of the month. It's not a ton of money, but it's not a negative amount, which is something in and of itself.

Comments

[forthright.livejournal.com]

I agree with the various people who direct you away from the big grocery stores and towards smaller produce stores / Chinese groceries / Atwater Market as a source of cheaper produce. It is also true that a lot of the super-hyped organic omega-3 cruelty-free etc. food is going to cost you a great deal if that's your thing. And of course the traditional student diet of takeout pizza and Chinese 3-5 times a week minimum is ridiculously expensive and unhealthy to boot. Finally, healthy rice and pasta dishes are dirt cheap and easy to cook.

Having said all that, a $1.00 box of Kraft Dinner plus $0.40 for two wieners to add some protein can provide lunch for two adults and one hungry toddler. $1.40 will not ever provide enough fresh produce for a similar healthy meal, and if you want real non-processed meat to add to that, good luck! Not to mention that if you're working long hours and only have yourself to feed, the effort to put together such a meal is considerable for the end result. Despite all those points in the first paragraph I think you're completely right that it is *not* cheap to eat well on a regular basis.

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

It really depends on how you define "eating well". I agree, feeding a toddler is more expensive, because they're picky eaters, and the kind of produce they will eat is almost invariably more expensive than macaroni unless you grow your own. Having said that, in college I lived on cabbage, potatoes, and milk powder almost exclusively. I would often buy the produce in bulk 'as is' and then have to throw out the bruised bits. I got all my nutritional needs met for under $100 a month - I was a little too thin for my bone structure, but getting my RDA of everything, neither of which would have been true if I'd been living on ramen like most college students. You can eat more enjoyably on a bigger budget, and cheaper if you aren't too worried about vitamin content, but for the maximum nutritive value per dollar I think the cheapest, most filling vegetables are the way to go. I was working in a food bank at the time, and wryly calculated that my clients were eating a dollar value of about four times what I was in a month, and not getting any discernable vitamins at all most meals.

[forthright.livejournal.com]

Yeah, while I don't think that the cabbage-potato-milk powder diet is what people are talking about when they refer to the "eat well for less" principle, I also agree that some people don't seem to have the slightest ability to figure out where there is real value in their food budget and where they are just wasting money.

If I ever needed to, I could cut our food budget in half without *too* much hardship, although as you say, toddler food creates a bit of a problem. I may spend $1.75 a day on a coffee from Tim Horton's, but you can be sure that if I need to save $50 a month I know where I could start! As for myself, I could survive very happily on what would be an extremely high-carb but nonetheless adequate diet of rice, potatoes and pasta with some very simple flavours, but that's me, and that wouldn't work for everyone.

I do really think though that some of the 'eat well for less' rhetoric comes from vegetarians who think they are saving money by not buying meat, as part of a rationalization for their diet. Many of the vegetarians I know are buying high-cost expensive store-bought organics that can't possibly be cheaper than a whole chicken or a kilo of stewing beef. Or they eat out three times a week and then no matter what is in their pantry, it's not cheaper!

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

I think part of the issue is the mainstreaming of foodie-dom, where people simultaneously use "eating well" to mean "eating a delicious, restaurant-quality, home cooked meal out of fashionable ingredients" and "getting all the nutrients you need." You can't do the first on a tight budget. You just can't. There are some few foods for which it's possible to both cut costs and improve quality by cooking from scratch: Home-baked bread, even organic, is both cheaper and better than store-bought if you buy your flour in bulk. Rice, dry pasta and dry beans bought in bulk are cheaper than Kraft Dinner, or for that matter meat. Other than that kind of thing, the only way you can save money by eating more nutritiously is to *only* look at the prices when you're in the produce aisle. We would not be able to eat organic produce if we did not fill up on big sacks of onions and carrots, which are the cheapest organic foods going, and use the more exciting stuff very sparingly.

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

And, I have friends who drink 2l bottles of Coke a day, and eat fast-food lunches every day at work, but make snide remarks about how I must be rich to eat organic produce. Whereas my feeling is, you would have to feel pretty rich to spend that kind of money on totally empty calories. There's a value difference there.

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

It may also depend on the size of your appetite, I think. I am impressed that you can feed 3 people one box of KD plus 2 weiners! It would take about twice as much of each to feed the three in my household. But a cabbage and a potato, which costs about the same, can make a very filling hash for that many people and maybe even leave leftovers.