Dining for Dollars and Making Sense

An old high school friend, Allie, has been reading my blog (thank you!) and she asked about eating ethically on a budget. This is something that my college students ask about, too. And something that is important to consider as eating ethically concerns everyone and poverty issues about food and food security are not immune to consideration here.

So I made myself a challenge--this week I am going to write about ethical eating on a budget and post some recipes that can be done ethically easily and for low cost. This is not about compromising quality or ethics and I'll still be eating well.

I started on Sunday, and this meant prepping ahead for the week. I did some cooking on Sunday that will carry me through much of the week. This is a necessity for me during the academic year if I want to eat healthy, ethically, and less expensively. I know a lot of single professionals who eat a lot of take out, which gets expensive, and honestly, I would rather buy good quality ingredients and shoes than spend all my money on take out.

One caveat before I post my recipes and cost calculations for them, I am not a math whiz. So, if you find an error, let me know and I will correct it.

Sunday Breakfast: Coffee and Waffles
Roast House Fair Trade, Organic Shade Grown Coffee, bought on sale at the Main Market Co-op at $7.99, minus my member discount. I weighed the beans and it came to 1 ounce, so it was $.45 for the pot.

Waffles--I used to be an avid Bisquick user, but now I make a homemade version of Bisquick. This does involve using some less than ideal ingredients on occasion, but I can use local flour.

The recipe for the homemade "bisquick" is:

8 cups flour
2 tablespoons baking powder
1 tablespoons salt
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups dry milk
2 cups shortening

For waffles, 2 cups of this mixture ($1.20)
1 1/2 cups organic milk ($1.08)
1 local egg ($.50)
1 tablespoon oil ($.05)
1/4 cup local oatmeal ($.10)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts ($1.50)
1/4 cup organic shredded unsweetened coconut ($.50)

Served with local butter ($.12) and real maple syrup bought on sale ($.29), comes to $.45 per waffle. If you skip the nuts, etc, in the waffle mix (reduce milk to 1 1/3 cups), the cost comes down to $.29.

Not bad even if you have two waffles.

Sunday Lunch: Pizza
I admit, I love pizza. And I love it even more if it is homemade. Something about it reminds me of good childhood dinners. I have written about making pizza before, so this will be a bit quicker.

The pizza I made had a mixture of local white and wheat flour for the dough, organic crushed canned tomatoes, whole milk mozzarella from the co-op, some Parmesan, and a collection of red peppers, pappadew peppers and pepperoncini. About a dollar's worth of flour, a negligible amount for sugar, salt, oil and yeast, but let's put a price tag of $.35 for all of it, likely the yeast is the most expensive part. Cheese came in at $2.05, tomato sauce at $.42 (I buy organic tomatoes by the case--I used to do it at the local grocer's case sale, but will do so now at the co-op), and assorted peppers $1.00. That's $4.82 for the whole pizza by my estimation. It serves about 3, so we're talking $1.61 per serving. Again, not bad.

Sunday Dinner: Chicken Tortilla Soup
Weirdly, the first time I had chicken tortilla soup was when I was living in Minnesota. I went to a Christmas time soup party. We made two kinds of soup and ate and everyone got to take some soup home. It was like a cookie swap for soup. I have no idea what the other kind of soup we made was, but this one I really liked and have been making and modifying it ever since.

I love making soup, too. It is great to take for lunch to school. I am always the envy of those who are having canned soup in my department. It can be healthy, is a great way to eat your veggies, and by making it yourself you can adjust the sodium level a lot. Plus, making soup is economical and makes a lot of servings. This recipe makes 12 1 cup servings, which could be lunch and dinner for a single person for most of a week. I tend to make several kinds of soup over several weekends freezing some so I can have different kinds for lunch during a week.

Ingredients:
1 chicken breast, organic, ($3.50)
32 ounces organic, free range chicken broth ($2.00) on sale
16 ounces frozen corn kernels ($1.99)
can of organic black beans ($1.29)
organic, local onion ($.75)
organic local red pepper ($1.00)
lime ($.39)
2 cans fire roasted organic tomatoes ($2.78)

Comes to $1.14 per serving, with garnishes of organic corn chips and cheddar cheese (another $.30) it's $1.44 per serving.

That means for Sunday my meals cost $4.40. That's about the same as a medium flavored latte on campus. That really puts it into perspective, I think.

Eating ethically on a budget does require some forethought and some planning. It requires some time in that I have to cook myself and not rely on prepared, processed or packaged.

I'll be back later in the week with some more about how my ethical eating on a budget goes this week and where I likely faltered some! Happy eating!