Skipping meals does not pay. No matter how hard you try to correct the course of events with a nutritious dinner, a poor beginning to the day is hard to overcome.
ED
BRUNCH
Latte
Starbucks Calcium Meal
Drip coffee
DINNER
Salmon patty on whole grain English muffin with Dill Sauce
Quinoa and Chard
Fresh Heirloom tomatoes
Total Daily Expenditure: $11.80
JAMIE
BRUNCH
Latte
Starbucks Protein Meal
Drip coffee
DINNER
Salmon patty on whole grain English muffin with Dill Sauce
Quinoa and Chard
Fresh Heirloom tomatoes
Total Daily Expenditure: $11.80
CELIA
BRUNCH
Starbucks Kids Meal
Green Machine
DINNER
Salmon patty on whole grain English muffin with Dill Sauce
Quinoa and Chard
Fresh Heirloom tomatoes
Total Daily Expenditure: $8.66
Lessons Learned and Observations
We all woke late and decided to walk the 2.5 miles into Little Italy for brunch. Of course, knowing that we had only about $5.00 each to spend it was pretty certainly going to be a bagel. Passing by the throngs of tourists and locals leisurely ordering up plates of seafood pasta, nibbling on steaming bread and sipping espresso drinks, I admit that I cursed the experiment. Missing the ritual of eating out is by far the worst aspect of Eating in 3D for me. There is something fundamentally more delicious about a meal that you did not have to prepare with your own hands.
But now that I have become keenly aware of what food actually costs, I question whether a plate of ravioli can, in good conscience, cost $14.95. Is the patio seating and linen table cloth worth $12.00 a plate? Eyeing a light-as-air tiramisu float by on a waiter’s tray, I think, yes, sometimes it is.
It turns out our $5.00 options in little Italy included 2 slices of pizza, a brat, a bagel or a something from the Starbucks cold case. We opted for the Starbucks Protein, Calcium and Kid’s plates because they offered the best array of nutrition. But that is where our best intentions departed. We buckled under the influence of the coffee aromas and bought drip coffees for Ed and me and a small Green Machine veggie drink for Celia. The Starbucks bill came to $18.70. I rationalize that this is alright because, having slept through breakfast, we only have one more big meal in the day and we can still hit the budget.
When dinner rolled around, we had long since burned off the Starbucks meals. I prepared Trader Joe’s Salmon Patties on the grill and served them on toasted English muffins with a dill sauce I made from sour cream, a dollop of stone ground mustard and fresh dill. On the side I prepared the Trade Joe’s Quinoa Duo and added sautéed chard to boost our vegetables. Finally, being hungry, the fresh heirloom tomatoes from the CSA looked so irresistible that I sliced them up and served them as well. In hind sight, I would have saved the tomatoes for another meal. We had plenty of food as it is and at $.90 per serving, we all exceeded our budgets.
The true story here is that while you save cash by skipping a meal, you sink your nutritional goals right out of the gate. We fell short across the board. Foiled again!
bear with me, I'm reading through your archives.
ReplyDeleteI think your mistake here is giving an evenly divided budget to each meal. You're not going to eat $2.50 or $5 worth of food at every meal. And you won't even eat that much every day. Just like with a diet, you save up and then splurge.
You'll find that eating a bowl of milky oatmeal with banana and nuts for breakfast every day costs under $1 per serving and leaves you more money for lunch and dinner. Having a chicken and salad sandwich for lunch costs under $1.50, leaving you more for dinner. Eating at home five days a week leaves you plenty of extra money to spend $20pp on dinner or lunch out on the weekend.
Cheryl