Paleo on $100 a month - Upping my protein

Since giving blood, I have been craving food, water and especially protein, so Tuesday's meals reflected that.

Breakfast started out with a pastured egg from trader Beryl, cooked with greens and leftover ground beef.  I also finished off the chicken and had a piece of orange from trader William.

I trolled some stores for freebie snacks and specials, and hit the liver motherlode.  A whole package of beef liver for $1.71.  That should be enough for the rest of the month, and a great addition to my diet.  I had a sample of beef pot roast and the usual creamer with a dab of coffee.

I also got more sale pork and wolfed most of it down along with lots of cabbage from trader Rafael and my own squash.  I finished the meal with a shake made with kale, oranges from trader William, lemon from trader Patty, and protein powder from trader Nadine.

Tomorrow I need to get up early and get into the garden.  I'll be meeting up with some trading partners later in the day and they are begging for more chard.

Purchases today:  beef liver for 1.71, pork for 2.40, leaving me with only a dollar in the cash jar.

Details here.

Paleo on 100 Dollars a Month Day 5 - Carbing up

Today was more an exercise in how to avoid FREE, carby and junky foods that were placed before me at every turn.  I managed to avoid all the fake stuff, all the grains, refined sugars, cookies, hydrogenated oils, and anything dipped or dribbled with fudge.

It helped that I had the leftover pouch tuna for breakfast, along with a "pastured" egg from trader Beryl, oranges from trader William, a tangerine from trader Debby and my own sauerkraut, sunchokes and kale.

I was wide awake all day, courtesy of coffee from traders Gordon, Debby and Tony.  Trader Patty dropped off a huge boatload of lemons today, so lemon juice went into everything.

For lunch I snacked from the garden, and enjoyed ground beef.  I harvested my first blueberry today, with a strawberry, a radish, some nasturtiums and snow peas.

By late afternoon, I was at the blood donation center, a pint lighter and looking at a whole table of treats laid before my eyes.  Nutter butters, Cheese-its, Chips-a-holic -hoy, cranberry "cocktail", all in stacks and rows, with a nice lady saying, "Have another".  I took the 100% juice and some trail mix.  (OK, LOTS of trail mix.)  As I munched on the trail mix, I pondered my iron levels, which were in the higher range for my gender.  When I was a vegetarian, I got turned down all the time when I tried to give blood.

For dinner I enjoyed leftover chicken with pea pods from trader Joyce, baby turnips from trader Helene, beets and an orange from trader William.

Today's purchases:  beef at $2.49 a pound.  It is not labeled as grass-fed, but it usually tastes like it is from mostly-grass.  $2.04 left in the cash jar.

Paleo on $100 a month - day 4 - Have I become a Vegetarian?

I looked over my food log and my goodness, it looks like when I was a vegetarian.  Green drinks, soy protein, cheese, protein-free meals.  What's up with that?  The diet is showing up on my face.

Soon my coconut oil will be paid off and I'll be able to get more meat and rely less on freebies from my local grocery stores.  I didn't exactly troll the stores today, but I did have to stop by the usual places.  I attended a potluck and took cooked chard and fruit punch.  Unfortunately the other attendees brought just drinks and carby stuff, and I was so hungry that I had to break into the free protein powder pouch I had picked up when I returned the curry powder.

Have I become one of THOSE people, the people you never want to wait behind at the grocery store?  I used my new curry powder in the chard, and it was pretty weird.  I thought it might just be old, so I took it back.  The store says 100% guaranteed.  They want me to try things.  Usually I would just throw bad stuff away, but I paid a whole 22 cents for it, so it went back.  I kept the 10 cents of accumulated bag credits from the whole multi-day ordeal.

Folks at the potluck said the curry powder was a little weird.  It smelled more like an Indian head shop than real culinary curry powder.

I am in the black today, with 1.46 left in the money jar.  Tomorrow will be better.  I'm eating beef.  The thrill of having extra money will be short-lived.  I gazed at the deep hole I carved into my container of coconut oil and realized I'll need another container before the challenge is over.

Paleo on 100 dollars a month - Day 3 Emergency Surgery

I had to schedule an emergency sauerkraut-making session after trader Rafael gifted a couple of purple cabbages.

If after hearing "emergency surgery" you imagine the cabbages quickly wheeled in while docs with paddles yell "CLEAR" and then they stick in a bunch of IV's, well that is close to what happened.  "Rafael" was discarding the cabbages because they were infested with aphids and one looked like the top was eaten off by animals.  But I know that aphids are pretty easy to wash off and that the cabbage lobotomy was probably due to splitting after starting to bolt.

Modern cabbages are sort of like those turkeys bred for excess breast meat who can no longer walk or mate.  If the cabbage is almost ready and it gets hot, it will split across the top instead of unfolding naturally like a plant should when it is going to seed.  The result is a cavern right across the crown.  If you catch it soon after it happens, most of the cabbage is perfectly fine.

After the helicopter landed in the backyard, I wheeled the almost-brain-dead cabbage into the kitchen, carefully took off every leaf and cut off the jagged edges.  I might have to spring for more salt if I keep doing this.  Who says only Dr. Kruse can do brain surgery without a scalpel?

Mostly leftovers eaten today, plus some plum paste made from trader Sandy's bounty.  I mix it with water and it makes a really nice punch with no extra sweetener needed.  I didn't buy anything today, so I am only $1.83 in the hole.  Dinner out tonight, and I am not tracking at all.

Paleo on 100 dollars a month - day 2

I am already bored.  It was sous vide tuna for breakfast.  Well, not really, it was just a pouch of albacore tuna from trader Michael.  I don't usually have tuna like this, how do people eat this?  Seriously, it needed half a gallon of mayo.  I put most of it back into a storage container for later.  Respect the pouch?  No way.

I had more fun watching the cats try to get into the empty pouch for the last bit of juice.   What a great way to enjoy my morning mug of green tea courtesy of trader Oscar.

Lunch was a bit more interesting.  After trolling several markets for food (and getting used to that half a cup of half and half a day), I thought I found something nice.  Baby shrimp was priced at a very low 2.99 a pound so I snapped up a couple of packages, one for myself and one for my family.  I have found that I have to make two meals or else my stuff is in danger of getting eaten by someone other than me.  And that is a pain, because I weigh and measure everything out.

I cooked the family meal first, and then followed up with my package of shrimp.  As I continued to cook, I noticed it was getting slimy.  Uh oh, a bad batch.  I threw it away. (..along with my veggies and the coconut oil for cooking and not happy at all since I used a carrot from trader Helene and they are hard to come by.)

I carefully sniffed the remaining shrimp from the family package and it seemed OK, and since the first batch was already eaten, I was really hoping it was OK.  I decided that I would "buy" the remaining shrimp from the house since I was hungry and I couldn't keep it around much longer even though it had a March 5th date.

I sat down to eat my meal and before I realized it, the new batch had become slimy and I had eaten one really bad shrimp.  After that, I sniffed each shrimp carefully.  I picked through it until I lost my appetite.

One thing that really concerned me about the shrimp is that they seemed very salty.  Since I added no seasonings except pepper from Trader Michael, I knew it was salt from the shrimp itself.  I don't usually buy this type of shrimp, and this will be my last time.  I did a little digging and found out what probably made the shrimp both salty and slimy:  sodium triphosphate.  Yuk!!

I went right back to the store with the shrimp label, and since they were out of the sale duck confit, I picked up some sale pork instead, with a small bag of bulk curry powder and an additional bag credit.  I enjoyed a huge plate of pork, seasoned with sauerkraut and served with my own beets, squash and a squeeze of orange juice from trader Patty.  My purchases today added up to $2.63, putting me $4.90 in the hole for the month so far.  Check out the food log here.http://www.sparkpeople.com/mypage.asp?id=RAGTHIEF

Tip of the day:  If you are going to go into debt, do it with coconut oil.

Paleo on 100 dollars a Month - Interrupting this regular broadcast

What I had planned went out the window when the season's first artichoke appeared.  It was the star for dinner.  I sure did miss drowning it in butter.  The star for dessert was one lone strawberry from my garden, not the first of the season, but the first that was actually sweet and edible enough for most people's standards.  As a low-carber, I found it almost sickeningly sweet.

I stopped by a store for a tiny nut snack and got 5 cents knocked off for bringing my own bag.  That comes out to an additional 10 percent discount.  The wonderful cashews will last for two snacks if I continue to eat them in homeopathic quantities. I enjoyed orange slices from trader Isaac throughout the day.

Shopping was fun, as I dashed into a few places (all nearby, so no extra energy used here) to check sales and fill up on free coffee.  I went a little hog wild on the half and half, and now realize how much protein that stuff has.

Lunch consisted of a couple of samplings of free protein powder from traders Debby and Nadine, and snow peas from traders Joyce, Florence and Ernesto.  I have learned not to trust anything labelled "vegn".  Is it really vegan, or is it just fake vegan?  Either way, the protein powder didn't taste as bad as I thought it would, but it seemed to produce an almost immediate allergic reaction.  When I ran the tracker, I noticed that I was above the RDA for plant lectins for the day.  Oh well.

I made chicken for dinner.  I don't usually "do" boneless skinless chicken breasts but they were on sale.  They were dry, but the bland taste was improved with fennel, garlic celery and za'atar from trader Leslie.  My own home-grown winter squash was topped with cinnamon from trader Kirk.  This time of the year is kind of a pain to cook, since so much of what I get out of the garden needs the pressure cooker.  I felt I was babysitting the pressure cooker all afternoon.

I started another small batch of sauerkraut with extra salt.  When I calculated the amount of money I got each day to spend on food, I was left with 18 cents, which I applied to my salt stash.  No way can I eat that much salt in a month.  It is just for canning and preserving.

Purchases:  cashews for 43 cents
one pound chicken for 1.99 (sure had to search through the packages for the exact weight)
- 5.34 left in the cash jar.
(diet details are here.  Click on the "shared food and fitness tracker" button.  The macronutrient ratios are on the brief blogpost.)

Paleo on 100 Dollars a Month - Day 1

I woke up late and NOT hungry.  (Could it have been the late-nite pork and avocado snack?)

For today's breakfast, I had planned to try some protein powder, but switched to plan B.  I enjoyed real green tea from trading partner Alberto, a "pastured" egg from partner Beryl, kumquats from partner Chris and garden vegetables like kale and kohlrabi.

I continued cleaning out the fridge while monitoring the pressure cooker full of beans.  FULL OF BEANS?  How paleo is that?  I am cooking them in meat broth.  Is this a cheat?  Usually I save cooking broth in the fridge and then throw it away a week later.  Or, if I am really organized, I carefully freeze it and then throw it out a couple of years later.  The freezer is already mostly full, and I'll need that last inch or so of space for the kumquats.  There isn't enough room for a jar of anything, so into my mouth it goes.  Throughout the challenge, I will be making use of meat fats that are usually thrown away.  I think there are still a couple of ham bones in the freezer, but I can't remember who gave me what.

I get $3.07 a day actual cash (that's $3.22 a day minus the cost of the garden) and I will be in "a deficit situation" for a few days before paying off the coconut oil.  Ahh, I feel thinner already, and the freezer does too.

Details re: what I am actually eating are posted here.