just for you <3
Slacker Gurl
Living on a tight budget sucks. Eating on a tight
budget sucks even more. Too many of us know the noodle story to get by
or the $5 pizza special that sometimes made us wish we didn’t have the
$5 to begin with. Seriously, how can one pizza hold so much grease on
it? So when you do have the money to do a bit more of a menu what can
you do and what options can you have? Well I am here to tell you that
from my own experience there is quite a bit when you choose to commit to
cooking at home.
Sure there are the benefits of doing more of your
own cooking. For one, it can be healthier for you not to mention
cheaper. On the other hand, not joining co-workers and friends for a
meal out can leave you feeling left out in the cold. But hey what can
you do. Well one thing I have tried to do is to make sure what I am
eating from home is equal to or even better than the food that I would
get sitting down at a restaurant. Okay while you don’t have your
favorite places to eat secret recipe you can surely create something on
your own that is just as good and we all know that there are a zillion
recipes on the web to try out. So here we go.
I'm single in the sense that the only person I cook
for more often than not is me. Therefore my grocery shopping is done
with me in mind. My goal was not to cut everything out and starve myself
but instead to buy the things I want on a weekly basis, stick to them,
and make them last. Amazingly enough I was able to do it.
Basically I only eat two major meals a day. Yea, I
already know that isn't correct on the nutrition front but I snack
enough to make me happy enough. Plus, I'm not giving diet and nutrition
tips here anyway.
My first meal is breakfast and when I was a kid I
loved cereal. As an adult I may have liked the bad or somewhat expensive
breakfasts like cookies, meal bars or Mc Donald’s – with the grease
content don’t ask me how I wanted that place for breakfast – but now I
am back to cereal. Why? When you find it on sale and then take a cup
with you to work per day which is the recommended serving size, you are
set with breakfast for at least two weeks or more pending the cereal
brand you buy. Deception can be in the size of the box compared to the
content of the cereal in the bag. In a tough economy the manufacturers
are doing no better then us. And don’t worry there is a solution to
putting milk in your cereal when you eat breakfast at work. The little
individual size serving of milk in the plastic to go container can last
a week or more. Seriously, how much milk in your cereal do you really
need? Typically that little bottle can be found at your grocery store
for $0.99.
With breakfast covered we move into the in-between
meal, snacks. The trick to buying snacks and making them worth the money
you pay for them is eating 1 serving size per day. That serving size
isn't too shabby either. I have made pretzels, candy, chips, and cookies
last for two weeks. Look at the serving size on the bag to help you know
how many lunches they will last for. And when you can find a bag of
coconut cookies at Walmart for $1 … hello! Combine your snacks to take
to work and that 1 serving size is more than enough. For example – to be
Green, eco friendly and cheap – I let my dry snacks play in one bag
together. One of my take to work snack bags will include chocolate
covered peanuts, pretzels and cookies. The idea here is to have
something to grab and snack on over the period of the day, not chow down
all at once.
Snack Bonus: The cheap popcorn in a
brownbag. Take a brownbag, like us old people used to do for school
lunches, pour in the bottom a smooth single layer of popcorn kernels,
fold up the top of the bag just enough so that it doesn’t come open, put
in the microwave, press the popcorn button and wah-lah you have the
equivalent of air popped popcorn. And the savings per bag are incredible
even when you add a pat of melted butter to it!
