The INSIDER Summary:
- For $40 a week, averaging out to around six dollars a day, you can make delicious, healthy meals.
- Chicken sausage, tinned salmon, rice, eggs, and spinach turn into faux-risotto, vegetable soup, and fried rice.
As I was doing my monthly budgeting, I realized how much I'd been spending on groceries. It seemed sorta crazy that all that money could go to much better things. I decided to try and challenge both my self-control and my cooking skills by spending $40 on groceries for the whole week — which averages out to less than six dollars on food a day! Take that, McDonald's.
I left my local grocery store with chicken sausage, tinned salmon, basa filets, a carton of eggs, an onion, garlic, potatoes, carrots, a bag of spinach, pesto sauce, tomato sauce, whole tomatoes, rice, pasta, and cucumbers for $39.81 AUD (about $30.53 USD) — leaving me just under budget. I have soy sauce, tabasco, vinegar, oil, honey, brown sugar, salt and pepper in my pantry already so I don't include those in my grocery costs.
Day 1
Breakfast is a spinach, cucumber, tomato and spiralized carrot salad with a fried egg on top. I attempt to use the pesto as a dressing, but the pre-made stuff is much thicker than the pesto I usually make — not the best for salad.
For lunch, I test out the pesto with some pasta and it turns out great. I mix in sauteed mushrooms, sausage, garlic and onions along with tomatoes and spinach. Superb. It's so tasty I wind up making the same thing for dinner (with only spinach this time — gotta save those groceries, y'all).
By the end of the day, I'm down one tomato, half a bag of spinach (whoops), half an onion, two carrots, half a cucumber, half a jar of pesto and half a package of spaghetti. Since I didn't have class today, I wound up cooking more than I usually do and it really dug into my provisions. I'll have learn how to manage my goods better.
Day 2
Half a cup of rice, two small potatoes, a sausage, two eggs, two carrots and a cucumber were my lunch. I know, it's a lot. I was making a "few" side dishes for another article and made the very dumb choice to try to eat them all for lunch. My stomach feels like it's going to burst but I do feel productive for having cooked so many new things.
After class, I get drinks with some girlfriends (booze wasn't included in this challenge) and my lunch manages to last me through the excursion, but by the time I get home at 2 am, my stomach is grumbling — so it's fried rice time.
I use my leftover rice from this morning (fun fact: old/dried out rice is great for frying up, it doesn't get mushy) and throw in eggs and some garlic. I add a dash of soy sauce and some tabasco and I've got myself another easy meal.
Day 3
For breakfast, I have rice with sautéed spinach and teriyaki basa on the side. It's honestly delicious. I'd never tried to make my own teriyaki sauce before, but I found that cooking my fish in soy sauce and brown sugar was just as good (if not better) than the pre-made stuff. I would've liked to have kept these ingredients for longer and really stretched out their use, but the spinach had gotten soggy and the fish was dangerously close to its expiration date. Bummer.
I have classes from 11 am to 6 pm so I also make a lil' something to take to school: fried rice, some of the leftover fish and some carrot slices. When I finally dig into it at 3 pm, it still tastes delicious — even cold! Way better than forking over 15 bucks at the on-campus café for a sandwich. On my way back home, my ovarian cyst starts acting up so I take a few painkillers and call it a day.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider