Livin on a Budget
“You want some of this don’t you?” My brother was spooning spiced and salted chunks of buttery avocado into his mouth and all I could do was stare and salivate.
“God, that sucks! Should have budgeted for them.” I’m pretty sure the daggers in my eyes took a year off his life.
Have you ever watched someone eat one of your favorite foods when you, for whatever ridiculous reason, can’t partake? It’s not long before you turn into Bitter Betty and curse the person, the world, and the diet, detox or challenge you’ve accepted.
In theory, surviving on $5 a day is not difficult, especially if you only have to do it for a week. I’m currently in San Diego where we have this great natural foods market called Henry’s that is like Whole Foods but a tenth of the price, and it provides for low cost healthy living. But even though I shopped here for my groceries, $5 a day has its limits.
My strategy was to plan meals for the week that used some combination of the same ingredients, and to come in under budget so I could splurge later in the week if I wanted to. The Sunday before I started, I bought five bunches of green kale for $0.79 each, six grapefruits and three oranges for $0.29 each, green and yellow bell peppers, a two pound bag of carrots, two onions, a cucumber, four apples, two kiwis, barley flakes for breakfast, white rice and yellow split peas at $0.79 per pound, and almond milk. I also bought a half pound bag of coffee for $5 but then decided I would rather forgo caffeine for the week and have that money saved for later.
All-in, my grocery bill was $23. Pretty impressive huh? I was feeling very good about my purchases until Monday morning. My normal breakfast entails a bowl of oatmeal brimming with berries, banana and occasionally mango (I’m spoiled), but I couldn’t afford these luxuries, so when I made my barley flakes with almond milk, it looked like bowl of soggy recycled paper and I began to pout. And then when I compared my breakfast to my brother’s bowl heaping with color, the seeds of sibling bitterness took root and I felt immediate resentment. This was going to be harder than I thought.
For lunch, I made a huge Kale salad, cooked half a cup of rice and a half cup of split peas, ate a quarter cup and saved the rest for dinner. I followed this routine for another two days before I felt malnourished. Luckily I got a break on Wednesday night because it was my mom’s birthday and Fidel’s was her restaurant of choice. I had a $6 bean and rice burrito and at least a pound of free tortilla chips and salsa.
I think my voracious appreciation of the free chips and salsa caused my dad to worry about my diet because on Thursday he started offering me food like tomatoes and left over rice that they “weren’t going to eat anyways.” So this is what it feels like when people think you’re starving.
I figured at $29, I could accept a couple of tomatoes and a quarter cup of cooked rice and still have a few dollars left over, so I went back to Henry’s, bought a dozen eggs for $2, and ate like a queen for the remainder of the week.
This challenge was an interesting lesson in “need” vs. “want” and portion control. I had to ration my food so that I didn’t run out, which meant that even if I was still hungry after my planned meal, I had to decide if I really needed more food, or if I would survive without. There were a couple of times I felt really weak so I made more rice (my cheapest food), but most of the time I got by without.
And while $5 a day for food is extravagant by many of the world’s standards, it was a glimpse at what life would be like if I really did have to choose my purchases carefully. Until this week, I don’t think I ever completely grasped what this was like.
Growing up, I would never say we went without. We were not flush with money but we always had plenty of healthy food around, the gourmet sandwiches my dad would pack in our lunches were legendary and we even got pizza on Friday nights. And in college when I was on budget, if I ran out of food, I would just go over to the sorority house and eat in the snack kitchen for free.
So even though the mere sight of yellow split peas made me nauseous by the end of the week, I’m glad I experienced this. Separating need from want is important in all aspects of our lives and in this time when there is turmoil across the globe because people cannot meet their basic needs, I think we could all try a little harder to be conscious of how our actions might affect others.
The other day NPR did a story on quinoa and said that because this health food is so en vogue, consumption has risen, which has caused prices to rise, which has made it impossible for most Peruvians to purchase the grain they grow in their backyard (a standard consequence of globalism). There is a finite amount of resources on this planet, so consumption is very much a zero-sum game. More for you does actually mean less for someone else. I’m not suggesting people stop eating quinoa, or anything for that matter, but if we all took a look at our habits and tried to consume a little less, then maybe the less fortunate could have a little more. It’s just something to think about.
“You want some of this don’t you?” My brother was spooning spiced and salted chunks of buttery avocado into his mouth and all I could do was stare and salivate.
“God, that sucks! Should have budgeted for them.” I’m pretty sure the daggers in my eyes took a year off his life.
Have you ever watched someone eat one of your favorite foods when you, for whatever ridiculous reason, can’t partake? It’s not long before you turn into Bitter Betty and curse the person, the world, and the diet, detox or challenge you’ve accepted.
In theory, surviving on $5 a day is not difficult, especially if you only have to do it for a week. I’m currently in San Diego where we have this great natural foods market called Henry’s that is like Whole Foods but a tenth of the price, and it provides for low cost healthy living. But even though I shopped here for my groceries, $5 a day has its limits.
My strategy was to plan meals for the week that used some combination of the same ingredients, and to come in under budget so I could splurge later in the week if I wanted to. The Sunday before I started, I bought five bunches of green kale for $0.79 each, six grapefruits and three oranges for $0.29 each, green and yellow bell peppers, a two pound bag of carrots, two onions, a cucumber, four apples, two kiwis, barley flakes for breakfast, white rice and yellow split peas at $0.79 per pound, and almond milk. I also bought a half pound bag of coffee for $5 but then decided I would rather forgo caffeine for the week and have that money saved for later.
All-in, my grocery bill was $23. Pretty impressive huh? I was feeling very good about my purchases until Monday morning. My normal breakfast entails a bowl of oatmeal brimming with berries, banana and occasionally mango (I’m spoiled), but I couldn’t afford these luxuries, so when I made my barley flakes with almond milk, it looked like bowl of soggy recycled paper and I began to pout. And then when I compared my breakfast to my brother’s bowl heaping with color, the seeds of sibling bitterness took root and I felt immediate resentment. This was going to be harder than I thought.
For lunch, I made a huge Kale salad, cooked half a cup of rice and a half cup of split peas, ate a quarter cup and saved the rest for dinner. I followed this routine for another two days before I felt malnourished. Luckily I got a break on Wednesday night because it was my mom’s birthday and Fidel’s was her restaurant of choice. I had a $6 bean and rice burrito and at least a pound of free tortilla chips and salsa.
I think my voracious appreciation of the free chips and salsa caused my dad to worry about my diet because on Thursday he started offering me food like tomatoes and left over rice that they “weren’t going to eat anyways.” So this is what it feels like when people think you’re starving.
I figured at $29, I could accept a couple of tomatoes and a quarter cup of cooked rice and still have a few dollars left over, so I went back to Henry’s, bought a dozen eggs for $2, and ate like a queen for the remainder of the week.
This challenge was an interesting lesson in “need” vs. “want” and portion control. I had to ration my food so that I didn’t run out, which meant that even if I was still hungry after my planned meal, I had to decide if I really needed more food, or if I would survive without. There were a couple of times I felt really weak so I made more rice (my cheapest food), but most of the time I got by without.
And while $5 a day for food is extravagant by many of the world’s standards, it was a glimpse at what life would be like if I really did have to choose my purchases carefully. Until this week, I don’t think I ever completely grasped what this was like.
Growing up, I would never say we went without. We were not flush with money but we always had plenty of healthy food around, the gourmet sandwiches my dad would pack in our lunches were legendary and we even got pizza on Friday nights. And in college when I was on budget, if I ran out of food, I would just go over to the sorority house and eat in the snack kitchen for free.
So even though the mere sight of yellow split peas made me nauseous by the end of the week, I’m glad I experienced this. Separating need from want is important in all aspects of our lives and in this time when there is turmoil across the globe because people cannot meet their basic needs, I think we could all try a little harder to be conscious of how our actions might affect others.
The other day NPR did a story on quinoa and said that because this health food is so en vogue, consumption has risen, which has caused prices to rise, which has made it impossible for most Peruvians to purchase the grain they grow in their backyard (a standard consequence of globalism). There is a finite amount of resources on this planet, so consumption is very much a zero-sum game. More for you does actually mean less for someone else. I’m not suggesting people stop eating quinoa, or anything for that matter, but if we all took a look at our habits and tried to consume a little less, then maybe the less fortunate could have a little more. It’s just something to think about.
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