Surf, turf, potato salad and chunky, cheesy bread. With my steak cut up into bite sized pieces, just for me. Like a baby. (I’m such a child when it comes to eating prawns, ribs, burgers, steak, it’s not funny). And a king size block of white chocolate to pick at for dessert. *contented sigh*
Always the Planner and Broke Grad Student recently posted about bringing your own lunch vs buying it.
I bring my lunch every single day. Occasionally I allocate myself $10 for one lunch out (while I worked fulltime over the summer I did that once every couple of weeks, and I usually went to Revive and used one of their vouchers which they send out in their weekly e-newsletter). I usually have something like pasta, sandwiches, salad, leftovers, fried rice or soup, along with fruit, a muesli bar and crackers/cookies/my own baking. Yeah, it gets repetitive, but for as long as I can remember I’ve never really had exciting lunches. For most of primary school I had tuna sandwiches (I don’t know how I did it) and after I first moved out and was living on a shoestring, I ate jam sandwiches for months on end (can’t stand the stuff now!) So as long as I rotate the main component every so often, it works for me.
It doesn’t take me that long to make my lunch – just a few minutes the previous night most of the time. Eating out takes time. You have to leave the building, decide what you want, walk there, order and wait for your food. THEN you get to eat it. Places like Subway and restaurants with ready made food, that’s not an issue, but if you go to a food court or something you could be waiting for a good 15 minutes. That’s a pretty hefty chunk of time! I only have a half hour for lunch, although nobody is too strict about that. By the time I get my food and walk back to the office, my lunch break’s pretty much over. And sometimes work is just too busy to take any time to go out. What then?
Luckily, most of my coworkers bring their lunch. A few gather everyday at noon in the lunchroom, without fail. Others eat at their desks. (I’m a desk eater!) Like ATP, most people at work socialise in passing – in the hallways, in the lift, while making tea or by the water cooler. So I don’t feel ostracised for bringing in food.
I’m also a person who gets kind of paralysed by choice. I’ve gotten even worse of late, because eating out used to be a big treat when I was little. We rarely ever ate Wendys, Subway, BK, KFC, or imitation butter chicken/chow mein, etc. It’s not that I’ve overloaded on any of those things – they’re still expensive, after all! – but now I’ve eaten all of them enough to no longer be impressed. Very little appeals to me anymore; in fact when BF and I are looking for a quick dinner, it inevitably turns into a marathon quest because nothing looks or sounds especially good to us. It’s the same with lunches in town – they’re incredibly overpriced, and too often don’t even taste good.
I read an article in Canvas, cribbed from Psychology Today, a while ago about the strange eating habits people have. Nearly 20 per cent of people are repelled by raw tomatoes. Nearly the same amount just don’t like trying new foods, and 60 per cent of us eat just about the same thing for breakfast every day. I know I do! I used to eat cereal and toast when I was young. Then I used to just eat toast, then I switched to cereal. This year has been bitterly cold though and I’ve switched to porridge just because I don’t want to be pouring icy cold milk down my throat first thing when I get up. (Yes, I actually kind of like porridge, loaded with brown sugar).
I get really, insanely strong food cravings, and sometimes I can literally smell and taste whatever it is I want. Sometimes it’s sweet, like donuts or cheesecake or cookies. Sometimes it’s hearty, like pasta or stew. Sometimes it’s just plain trashy, like food court fried rice or butter chicken. It’s hardly ever something that’s really good for me, like sushi or salad (although I do enjoy both of those). There are all kinds of theories about food cravings, like craving a certain kind of flavour = lack of this or that nutrient in your diet. But this article reckoned cravings have more to do with culture and childhood than anything else.
There’s a lot of things I never ate growing up, and I just don’t see the appeal now. Like rice pudding, Dr Pepper, jerky, pork belly, crackling, jelly and lollies. (Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate in virtually all its incarnations. But I just don’t like lollies much; I think it’s the super plasticky, fake texture. I do, however, quite like sour lolllies on occasion don’t ask me why). And seriously, something as wobbly as jelly just shouldn’t be consumed!
Apparently, foods that are almost universally liked are fried chicken, fries, chocolate, cookies and packet mac and cheese – apparently people seem to respond to the orange colour, ha. Jeepers. Not one remotely healthy thing on that list!
We shopped at Countdown this week, and had to get things like batteries, a multiplug board and mop in addition to groceries. But with the help of my Visa Rewards Card (which is accepted there) we got out spending $113 out of pocket. Of course, I got home and realised I forgot to get any fruit, but we have some fruit salad somewhere in the pantry.
Although Countdown is pricier than PnS, it also has some really good specials from time to time. EG:
Cheese – 500g Anchor, 4.99. Saved 4.10 (finally prices are starting to come back down!)
Griffins malt/wine/arrowroot biscuits – 2 for $3.50 (except you always have to buy both to get the discounted price, which can be a pain)
Meadowlea margarine – 2 for $5. Saved 2.50
Watties canned cooking sauces – 2 for $4.60. Saved 1.80
Leaning Tower pizzas – 2.99 ea. Saved 2.70
And CD are usually pretty good about scanning through the correct prices, too.
Damn you BF, for lying to me. You said cookies were the easiest thing in the world to make!
We squeaked in at just under $120 for groceries this week. Hurrah!
So it’s not going to be a particularly exciting or healthy week. Which is just as well, as it’s going to be a busy and stressful one, and the easier the dinners are to throw together, the better.
Sunday: Rolls with chicken and salad
Monday: Chicken kiev
Tuesday: Pork belly and fried cabbage
Wednesday: Nuggets and chips
Thursday: Shepherd’s pie
Friday: Nuggets and mashed potato
Saturday: Fried rice
Yes, I still love chicken nuggets and so does BF. Don’t judge…
I’m sitting here rubbing my tummy with glee (sort of); I love when BF throws together epic meals like the one we just had!
I should have taken a photo…grr. He made surf and turf with steak, prawns, mushrooms and onions (stir fried with a pinch of soy sauce) and a bit of KFC potato and gravy on the side (a weakness we both share…).
Much as I loved the prawns, it was the mushrooms I wolfed down! One of my favourite fall back dishes was born from a desperate weekend brunch consisting of leftovers – toss in onions, mushrooms and canned tomatoes, and even better if potatoes can be incorporated somehow.
We went to Countdown for the first time in a couple of months and made it out at $130. Which was pretty good considering what we bought – lots of meat, a few splurges and even some produce. This week we’re having nachos, chili, chicken giouvetsi, and fried cabbage.
Standouts (in a good way): Cabbage half, 1.85; capsicum, 99c; 24 prawn cutlets, 5.03 (we don’t normally eat THIS well!!);500g brown sugar, 1.25; Nature’s Fresh bread, 2 for $5 (now we’re eating two loaves a week, I usually get name brand as there’s virtually always a 2 for $4 or 2 for $5 deal on); Select chilli beans, 1.59.
Standouts (bad): “Breakfast” mushroom pack, 4.98; Raro, 1.79, Home brand milk 4.75 (thirty cents cheaper at PnS, get with it Progressive!!)
Assessing the damage….
$147 for this week, so I was pretty close on guessing $150 at the checkout. I figured anything under that would be okay. considering it included a 5.50 carpet cleaner, $10 razors and $6 shaving cream for BF, I think we did pretty well.
Here’s what we’re having for dinners this week:
Lemon/basil pasta
Chicken fried rice
Peanut satay burgers x2
Lemon and basil pasta
Sausages with peas and corn
Chicken/sour cream tortilla bake
Bolognese
Sense mentioned she was keen for some new cheap recipes.
Not sure how much I can help with that, but I thought I’d post up some dinner ideas.
**I am also bursting to try: Spanakorizo and Chickpea Curry from Closet Cooking! **
Sorry it isn’t a very exciting or varied menu, but like I said, at $120 a week “destitute gourmet” is pushing the definition 🙂
I find it really difficult to gauge if our grocery spending is reasonable. One of my friends said a while ago her family of four spends about what we do (or a bit more). WHAT?? But they are Indian and her mother stays home, I think, and they cook a lot from scratch.
It’s all well and good for Hillbilly Housewife to go on about baking your own breads and stuff, but I am just too busy and want cheap and filling with less work. If I was a SAHP, I would totally adopt her ideas, though.
We seem to spend more than the few friends we have who don’t still live at home. But we both have fast metabolisms and eat a lot. And we don’t eat out at all anymore, so our shopping accounts for ALL our food. That, and I hate baked beans with a passion and rarely eat noodles – except for the Yum Yum shrimp flavoured packs, which are 50c compared to about 10c for the really cheap, nasty noodles. Seriously. Yum Yum noodles are the shiz.
Tonight I made stirfry, with one of those Asian Wok packet sauces (Chinese BBQ for anyone who cares).
Unfortunately, it really wasn’t that good. The beef was cooked, but it had a weird sort of soft, fleshy texture inside. Cheap steak, I guess – you get what you pay for. I didn’t manage to finish mine, and BF didn’t put much away either.
But he did make sure to eat the onions and veges and gravy and all the rice, so ups to him! Our food budget is definitely going further these days, eating cheaper meats and managing to stay at around $120 a week, INCLUDING lunches.
So right now we have a ton of stirfry meat leftover, and I don’t know what to do with it. I suggested chucking them in some sort of stew, or in a fried rice, both of which BF vetoed (“You need to stop trying to do something with it! It’s CRAP! Just throw it out!”)
But…there’s so much of it! And it’s meat, precious MEAT!
I probably won’t end up eating the leftovers…I can’t stomach much more of it. But I hate wasting (relatively) good food. What about you?
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