Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Paleo on $84.88 a month day 30 - Done!

I finished the last challenge day by finishing odds and ends.

For breakfast, I had the usual greens and eggs, with some of the container of grass-fed beef that I had put in the freezer (containing lots of leeks and fennel) and beets and half a grapefruit from trader Delta.

Lunch was a stir-fry of greens, the last of the mushrooms and chicken.  I also enjoyed beet juice with lemon, and a dab of pineapple guava jam from trader Rebekah.

For dinner, I enjoyed the other half of the grapefruit, chicken cooked in butter, a soup made with meat broth, fennel, leek and celery, nuts from trader Dean, beets, a can of smoked oysters and and eggs cooked in beef fat with greens and feta cheese from trader Felix.

I bought a can of smoked oysters for a dollar, leaving me with $15.12 in the kitty.  I still have tons of food:  purchased chicken and a kitchen full of lemons, oranges, tangerines and kumquats.

This challenge was much more fun than last year, probably because I got to know of more places in town that hold quick sales.  Within the year, a new dollar-type store came to town, and I was able to enjoy a few more luxuries like liver sausage, sardines, oysters and eggs at a much better price than before.  It also helped that a trading partner moved across the country a few weeks before starting the challenge and left me with a couple of bags of pantry and fridge stuff.  There was lots of crap in the bag, too, but you didn't hear about it until now.  I took all the pasta and bean soup to a local community center, and then threw out (I mean composted) the inedibles like the 20-year-old spices and the rancid snacks.  But I did have several kinds of vinegars, pickles, sauces and sugars at my disposal, and that helped with variety.  It also helped that I started a seasonal volunteering gig mid-challenge, and they sure did come through with some wonderful food and some really great coffee.  (And a wonderful time, I might add.  I will certainly be helping them out next time!)

I get so so tired of hearing how a paleo diet is unattainable financially.  Sure, it is more expensive than the beans and rice diet I used to follow.  But I really doubt that eating paleo for 84-some dollars a month is three times what a vast majority of vegetarians and SAD-eaters pay for their food, with the required soy analogs and packaged necessities.

Some friends were complaining about the price of bread, and of having to pay more than $5 for the loaves that they enjoy, and then having to waste it when they made a sandwich for a visitor and they wouldn't eat the bread.  Mock meats and bags of salad greens are also really expensive, as is almost any type of fruit.  So, I really saved some bucks by not having to purchase 3-5 pieces of exotic fruit every day.  I was fine on just my locally-sourced and home-grown citrus, and the few berries and freezer jam I came across.

Today, I thought I would jump out of bed, go to the kitchen and scarf down a sweet potato or some cheese.  But instead, I made my normal breakfast with the last of the grass-fed beef, and forgot about the other foods.  Could I do this forever?  It certainly is a pain to cook "my food" and "their food" at home, and to keep track of everything, but I think it is certainly doable.

Thank you for reading!

10 comments:

  1. An excellent experiment. :) Really shows that healthy eating doesn't have to be expensive - just creative.

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  2. Well done, have enjoyed following your journey these past 30 days, and are looking forward to your next post, whatever it may be.
    All the best Jan

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  3. :-) does this mean that next year you'll try to do it on even less money?

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  4. I guess the most expensive way to eat involves consuming larges quantities of organic vegetables and fruits, eating on a low budget which is not based around starchy carbs is possible even for a person without a garden and trading partners when enough of meat and eggs gets consumed.

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  5. Hey, Almond and Jan, thanks for reading. I get a completely different following when I do these challenges, compared to the usual snarky stuff. I am glad that some people find this to be interesting. Frankly, I am tired of the, "but paleo is so expensive" meme.

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  6. Tess, I don't think I will even try to do with less money. When I did this the first time in 2010, it was mostly vegetarian, and I know I can do it well under a dollar a day. I will probably try to do it next May. IDK, everyone thinks that summer is super easy. There is SO much available and the only time I can get free eggs. I think I could do vegetarian even cheaper than before because I have built up my network so much in the intervening years.

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  7. Thanks Galina! I think the most expensive way to eat is to buy a bunch of stuff, intending to cook healthy, and then getting lazy or busy and going out to eat instead, and then wasting all the purchases. It is my experience before I had so many trading partners is that organic fruit is so much more expensive than organic veggies in season. My local farmer's market really charges a luxury mark-up, probably due to the intensive amount of waste associated with the fresh fruit market. I think any kind of packaged crap diet is the most expensive, and the worst, whether it has meat in it or not.

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  8. Probably, it is not totally suit the post, but I want to share my outrage - a whole ELEMENTARY school in NY going vegetarian, and comments are mostly positive http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/02/health/new-york-vegetarian-school/index.html#disqus_thread.
    When France banes vegetarianism in school cafeterias at 2011 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2011/oct/26/french-government-banning-vegetarianism-schools), school in NY going vegetarian at 2013!

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  9. When I was a vegetarian, I think meat-eaters were much more tolerant. Now I have a whole host of people (former friends maybe?) who are disgusted by eating with me.
    I just had a similar discussion with a friend who just went veg, sounded just like that principal. She just could not get it in the whole wide world why I wouldn't be happy eating a cup of beans a day.

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