In Memory of Lox

It's better that you face the facts now. There are foods - maybe some of your favorites - that you will not be able to buy while Eating in 3D.

ED

Breakfast

Latte

Bagel with cream cheese, tomato and smoke salmon

Lunch

Turkey and Swiss cheese on 1/2 a bagel

Radishes

1/2 apple

1 hard-boiled egg

Peach yogurt

Dinner

Pasta Bowtie with Marinara sauce and meatballs

Salad with tomatoes, avocado, pecans and Balsamic vinaigrette

Total Daily Expenditure: $11.59

JAMIE

Breakfast

Latte

Lunch

Turkey and Swiss cheese on 1/2 a bagel

Radishes

1/2 apple

1 hard-boiled egg

Peach yogurt

Dinner

Pasta Bowtie with Marinara sauce and meatballs

Salad with tomatoes, avocado, pecans and Balsamic vinaigrette

Total Daily Expenditure: $7.48 

CELIA

Breakfast

Nectarine

Apple

Milk

Lunch

3 Bean Tostada with Tomatoes

Mango slices

Baby Carrots

Milk

Dinner

Pasta Bowtie with Marinara sauce and meatballs

Salad with tomatoes, avocado, pecans and Balsamic vinaigrette

Kiwi

Total Daily Expenditure: $7.30

Lessons Learned and Observations

No matter how much you love your foie gras, crab, lox, or caviar, you’ll never find a way to work it in to Eating in 3D unless you liquify these delicacies and spray a thin mist on the rest of your food items. I foolishly bought some wild smoked salmon knowing how much Celia likes bagels and lox for breakfast. It never occurred to me that two ounces of lox will set you back $2.50 – one-quarter of your total daily budget. Save the specialty items for special occasions or buy a spray bottle.

Apples for Dinner

Ug! I feel like we are moving one step forward and then two steps back. We were on track for a good day until the evening turned into a school shopping misadventure. Ed and Celia returned late from shopping. I had eaten leftovers so they foraged in the kitchen nibbling apples, bagels and peanut butter.

ED

Breakfast

Latte

Granola

Milk

Strawberries

Lunch

Turkey and Swiss on Whole Wheat English muffin

Cherry tomatoes

Dinner

Toasted bagel with peanut butter

Apple

Total Daily Expenditure: $5.90

JAMIE

Breakfast

Latte

Lunch

2 fish tacos

Dinner

Salmon patty

Quinoa and Chard

Strawberries

Milk

Total Daily Expenditure: $12.93

CELIA

Breakfast

Rice Crispies

Milk

Strawberries

Lunch

Turkey and Cheddar on Whole Wheat English muffin

Cherry tomatoes

Nectarine

Dinner

Apple with peanut butter

Total Daily Expenditure: $5.46

Lessons Learned and Observation

Sometimes life get’s in the way of eating right. Today was one of those days.

I met a friend for lunch at a restaurant in Old Town – killing my budget. My Zocalo grilled swordfish tacos (the BEST in town) were delicious but the bit of cabbage on them didn’t contribute much to my veg total. 

Ed and Celia grabbed a less-than-ideal dinner on the run.

Had he eaten a real dinner he would have done very well for the day.

The end result was a low cost day that lacked our nutritional basics. 

Lessons from the first two weeks

1.  Eating in 3D is possible. Definitely. But it takes more thought and vigilance that one might think or wish to invest. But like anything new, Eating in 3D would eventually become routine and, therefore, more easily sustainable.

2.  You can’t eat with hope – plan backwards to make your numbers. In the beginning I just jotted down our eating and then added it all up at the end of the day. WRONG! It is better to add it up as you go and then plan your dinner around what is lacking from the day's nutrition. This saves you from inadvertently destroying your budget on a fish fillet for dinner after you've already consumed 6 ounces of protein earlier in the day.

3.  Pack your lunch! Not only does this saves you money but it allows you to control your nutrition in a way that eating out simply cannot.  Creating Starbucks-esque lunch plates with fruit, vegetables, grains and protein. It takes no time at all to throw these items in a container.

4.  Make it easy on yourself by eating the serving sizes recommended. If it says 2/3 cup peas per person, stick to it no matter how much you hate to leave 2 servings in the bag. At the end of the week put all of the partial portions together in a soup or veggie medley. Sticking to the recommended serving sizes will make it infinitely easier to keep track of your nutrition data and reduce your portions to a proper size. I promise, you will not be hungry.

5.  Skip the soda, juices, etc… and drink a glass of milk. One thing that becomes immediately evident Eating in 3D is that everything you consume that is not nutritious displaces something healthy you could have drank. It took us a while to figure it out but you will not likely get your three servings of dairy each day with drinking moo juice. An added benefit is that a glass of milk makes any meal more filling. If you must drink soda - make it diet.

6.  Although I don't show you the daily totals for vitamins A and C, Calcium and Iron, I do track them. This leaves me to ask, what the hell has iron in it? We haven’t scratched the surface of our RDA of Iron yet. I suggest a One-A-Day supplement.

7.  Don’t strive for protein. Chances are, you’ll get plenty. We've been low carb eaters for years so a meal just doesn't feel right without a slab of protein. But at a maximum daily allowance of 6 ounces a day - those slabs ought to be wedges. Control the protein and you'll control your cholesterol and calories from fat ratio.

8.  Pasta rocks. At less than 20 cents a serving, and few drawbacks, pasta is the bedrock of this project. But keep it whole wheat to get your whole grain numbers up. My take on Carbonara with ham chunks, peas and whole grain pasta totaled up to about $2.45 but it delivered a power nutritional punch and seemed like an indulgence.

9.  Forget about eating out. Seriously, it simply cannot be done in budget. By the time you add tax and tip to your selection – no matter how inexpensive - you are sunk.

10.  Sadly, the dog will suffer. No one is more upset about our experiment than our lab-mutt Lola. The beauty of right-sizing portions is that you don’t over eat or waste food. Of course, this is a matter of opinion. Lola doesn’t see the beauty in it at all. All three of us have stayed on the clean plate honor roll since we started Eating in 3D. Our dinners have been tasty, our appetites primed, and the portions perfectly sized such that our bowls leave the table empty as Lola looks on aghast.

Lazy Sunday Snafu

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!

Party Time!

Unless you are a recluse, you probably have occasion to share a meal with friends. You will also have days when the pace of events finds you standing in line at a taco shack utterly devoid of self control. This day exemplifies what happens to good intentions and will power in the face of In-n-Out burgers and birthday cake.

ED

Breakfast

Latte

Ham Omelet

Lunch

Carnitas Taco with cheese and tomato

Dinner

In-n-Out Double/Double

Birthday cake

Total Daily Expenditure: $10.24

JAMIE

Breakfast

Drip Coffee with 1/2 cup milk

Lunch

Vegetable and Tofu Curry

Dinner

Carrots with Oyster Dip

In-n-Out Double/Double

Total Daily Expenditure: $10.42 

CELIA

Breakfast

Apple Cinnamon Oatmeal and Raspberries

Milk

Lunch

Bean and Cheese Burrito

Horchata

Dinner

Carrots

Potato Chips

In-n-Out Double/Double

Birthday cake

Total Daily Expenditure: $11.54

Lesson Learned and Observations

Weekends are always a little wonky for us. If I have my way, I’ll sleep through breakfast and focus my energy on lunch when my feet finally hit the floor. Ed and Celia fend for themselves. We often grab fast food on obligatory Home Depot runs or just graze on whatever is laying around from the previous week.

On this particular Saturday, Ed took Celia to the beach and we all attended an afternoon birthday party for a 3-year-old daughter of dear friends. As a result you can see that there is NO rhyme or reason to the day’s food consumption. Simply put – we blew it big time.

For the sake of the experiment, I’ve assigned the cost of the party food – an inspired choice of In-n-Out burgers and birthday cake selected by the birthday girl.  We were all over for the day brining our family total to $32.20.

In a word, our nutrition sucked. I managed to get my vegetables through a left over curry and some carrots on the party veggie tray. We all got our protein thanks to the deliciously decadent Double-Doubles. Celia found half of her milk serving in a Horchata – which might be taking liberties with the definition of “milk.” Look at Ed’s cholesterol and sodium levels. Need I say more?

All in all, this day serves to demonstrate how easily you can exceed your budget and still get close to no nutritional value. All of that aside, it was the best damn Double-double I’ve had in years.

There’s a hole in my Whole Grain numbers

Not a bad day overall. We all came in on or under budget, ringing up a family total of $27.60 for the day. The centrally planned lunches are really helping out numbers but we still have to address the shortfall in the whole grain and milk categories.

ED

Breakfast

Go Lean Crunch with vanilla yogurt

Lunch

Turkey and Cheddar on 1/2 Wheat English muffin

Carrots & Celery

Dried plums

Dinner

Bowtie Pasta with Chicken Meatballs and Chard in Olive Oil

Salad with tomato and avocado with Balsamic dressing

Total Daily Expenditure: $8.16

JAMIE

Breakfast

Smashed avocado on Wheat Toast with tomato

Lunch

Turkey and Swiss on ½ a Bagel

Carrots & Cherry Tomato

Dried plums

Hard-boiled egg

Dinner

Bowtie Pasta with Chicken Meatballs and Chard in Olive Oil

Salad with tomato and avocado with Balsamic dressing

Total Daily Expenditure: $10.00

CELIA

Breakfast

Go Lean Crunch with Milk

Banana

Lunch

Turkey and Swiss on ½ a Bagel

Carrots & Cherry Tomato

Dried plums

2 hard-boiled eggs

Dinner

Bowtie Pasta with Chicken Meatballs and Chard in Olive Oil

Salad with tomato and avocado with Balsamic dressing

Total Daily Expenditure: $9.45

Lessons Learned and Observations

I’m frustrated by whole grains – really, who isn’t? According to the food powers that be, we should have 3 servings or roughly 84 grams of whole grains each day. I'm game, but how do I know how many grams of whole grains are in my oatmeal, wheat bread or quinoa?  Does 100% wheat mean it's whole grain? What does multigrain mean? Whole wheat sounds promising but there is nothing that qanitifes its "wholeness" on the package.

This is where The Whole Grains Council comes in. In the pursuit of getting Americans to consume more whole grains, they are providing resources to help us to know a whole grain when we see one. You’ll occasionally find a special packaging symbol on products telling you exactly how many grams of whole grain are in each serving. Many marketing savvy producers include this information under the banner of “Heart Healthy” food. But, by no means is this commonly applied to all whole grain offerings.

The Whole Grain Council lords over all whole grains or foods made from them contain all the essential parts and naturally-occurring nutrients of the entire grain seed. If the grain has been processed (e.g., cracked, crushed, rolled, extruded, and/or cooked), the food product should deliver approximately the same rich balance of nutrients that are found in the original grain seed.

The obvious suspects are Corn, including whole cornmeal and popcorn; Oats, including oatmeal; barley; Rice, both brown rice and colored rice; Wheat, and Wild rice. But there is a much more exotic world of whole grains into which few dare to travel: Amaranth, Buckwheat, Millet, Quinoa, Rye, Sorghum (also called milo), Teff, and Triticale.  Not to mention the more obscure “other cereal grasses from the Poaceae (or Gramineous) family” such as canary seed, Job's tears, Montina, Timothy, fonio, etc. which also qualify as whole grains when consumed with all of their bran, germ and endosperm.

But I digress… My point was that you are not likely to find the quantity of whole grain clearly demarked on your canary see – endosperm or not.

Due to this snag in my data collection, I altered my original method which tried to quantify whole grains in grams per day to reflect simple servings per day. Realistically, this is much more practical. If you eat a bowl of oatmeal or Go Lean Crunch (our favorite) cereal – point for you! A turkey sandwich on whole wheat for lunch – 2 points! Throw in whole wheat pasta or brown rice for dinner and you have met the mark.

Still, in my whole grain naiveté, I did a poor job of purchasing for this particular requirement. I bought too many plain Jane pastas (I’m sure the Pasta Council would disagree) and even some egregious white bread. I’ve noted the error of my ways and will stick to the all things consumed in bran, germ or endosperm from now on.