El Nino Tuesday...with pictures, a budget, and menu

Unlike this picture taken last week after we received our Full Circle Farm CSA delivery, our fruit bowl is looking rather sad today. That's the thing about waiting until Tuesday for a produce delivery--you can find yourself rustling through eight limes and an apple in search of a little snack. Our vegetable drawers are looking equally dismal: five lonely carrots thumping about in the bottom drawer, and a few heads of romaine trying to look brave.

I guess it's one way to make Tuesdays take a walk on the wild side. I feel like it's Christmas today. I'm rubbing my hands together in glee, waiting for our produce to arrive.

Cora's sleeping and I should be, too. I'm recovering from a cold. It could be me, but I think it sucks to be pregnant, sick, running around with a toddler, AND not be able to take any kind of medicine. But anyway. Here I am. Instead of napping soundly, I'm going to write about food again. Which is becoming a trend, I admit. It's not that I think I am going to permanently veer into the world of food blogging, I'm just interested in this right now. I think it's contagious. In fact, as I was tucking Cora in for her nap, she drowsily looked up at me and said, "Mommy, someday soon we're going to have a garden."

One reason she's so excited about having a garden is because of a story called First Tomato, by Rosemary Wells (found in her book, Voyage to the Bunny Planet). In it, Ruby has a difficult day at school and daydreams about the Bunny Planet on her bus ride home. She flies to the Bunny Planet, where her mother asks her to pick the first tomato from their garden. Ruby puts on boots and a coat and runs outside by herself with a basket, where she harvests vegetables and the very first, red tomato from the vine. Her mother makes her First Tomato Soup "because she loves her so." I sing Cora a song based on the book and we've talked about going out to the garden and picking our very own food. I like that it is something she considers before drifting off to sleep.

We're all excited about the prospect of filling our fruit bowl with apples and pears from our trees, and bringing in baskets of green beans and peas, carrots and tomatoes and lettuce and broccoli and all the good things we hope to harvest from our garden. We're building the raised beds this month and hope to plant our first starts in early March.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Ahem. I meant to quickly log on to show you a few pictures because, well, my blog is dreadfully bare of them. I'm trying to be better about that. So here goes.

Today we were supposed to meet Brian for a picnic to celebrate a sunny, El Nino Tuesday. Just as we were about to jet out of the house with our tasty wares, he called and told us he was still in a meeting. So we unwrapped our sandwiches and plunked down our various containers of fruit and puffs and raisins and had a picnic in our kitchen. Here's Cora sampling the grapes:



And this is where I might make you laugh. That is, if you're one of those normal people who has no experience with gluten-free bread. The thing is, if you're accustomed to buying gluten-free bread at the store, you know the drill: you have to toast it to make it taste edible. That's how my life has been since I was 12. However, fast-forward to these last three months of baking my own bread, and you might stumble into my kitchen and wonder why one earth I'm taking pictures of my sandwich:



I didn't plan to take these pictures. I admit they're not the most artful, or in focus, or perfectly arranged, but they're real. They were quickly unwrapped and photographed just so I could post them here. But you do see, right? It's all there: mustard, jack cheese, tomato, romaine, stacked turkey, mayo, a sprinkle of black pepper. It's not just because I'm pregnant, I don't think, that I took such joy in eating this delectable little bit of goodness. I seriously thought I'd gone to heaven. I made the bread yesterday and it's soft and filled with seeds and gluten-free oatmeal, and it tastes hearty and soft and absolutely perfect, and it's not toasted, and it just makes me happy. I've been tinkering around with a couple of recipes and I'll post one for it someday soon, I just want to make sure it works every time. (In the meantime, if you're dying for delicious GF bread, look to this delicious recipe by Gluten Free Green Mommy.) It makes me happy to cut up a sandwich into pieces for Cora's little hands, too:



After our lunch, we tramped up to our park and I watched Cora race around in the sun. She was happy to swing for a full 10 minutes, which is unusual. I think it was because she was busy soaking up the sun.

JANUARY BUDGET UPDATE
Alrighty. We spent about $650 on groceries (including food and household supplies like dish soap, sponges, shampoo, toothpaste, and pull-ups) in January. We went out to two lunches and one dinner together, and Brian went out to about four in all with colleagues and friends. We both bought coffee and tea, too, on more than several occasions. I haven't added up the cost of those outings line by line, but I think they all add up to about $120. This is most definitely a significant savings over what we were spending last year.

FEBRUARY BUDGET GOAL
This month I hope to spend at or under $600 on groceries. I've already spent $280 on a couple of big trips to Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, and we're fairly well stocked on the basics. We've bumped up our CSA delivery to the Family size (total monthly cost: $156), which I hope will give us a bit more to work with each week, and I plan to keep my weekly trips to the store very minimal--to purchase dairy, poultry or fish, and some kind of "treat" to round out the week. This could be sliced turkey for sandwiches, a chocolate bar or fancy cheese or wine, additional produce, or something uber-prepared to make a few meals more easy. We have about $150 to portion out over the next four weeks, or about $40 each week. Does that sound crazy? I don't know. I'm curious.

As you know, I plan all our meals around the weekly CSA delivery. This week I had a slightly more difficult time planning the menu, and I realized it was because our delivery was missing a winter green (like kale, chard, collard, etc.). I love hearty greens. And we're out of onions. So I purchased these items through Full Circle Farm's Green Grocer, as indicated below. (I bought $3.50 worth of garlic through the Green Grocer a couple of weeks ago and received eight lovely heads of garlic. I was impressed.)

Here's this week's CSA delivery:
0.75 pound Snow Peas
2 each Golden Bell Peppers
1.75 pounds La Ratte Potatoes FCF
3 each Avocados
0.66 pound Baby Spinach
1 each Romaine Lettuce
1 each Celery
1.5 pounds Roma Tomatoes
0.66 pound Cremini Mushrooms *
6 each Braeburn Apples *
6 each Navel Oranges
6 each Fuji Apples *
5 each D'anjou Pears *
*Grown in the Northwest.

Items from the Green Grocer:
1 bag Green Kale $3.49
1 bag Yellow Onions * $1.49

Here is this week's menu:

Monday:
Pasta salad with romaine, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, and chicken sausage. (And leftover turkey chili for those who want it.)

Tuesday:
Stir-fried snow peas, chicken, Cremini mushrooms, and baby spinach, with a ginger-garlic-tamari sauce; and steamed Jasmine white rice.

Wednesday:
Party/dinner with friends at their house.

Thursday:
Dinner with a friend at our house. Soft homemade GF flour tacos with Mexican brown rice, refried pinto beans, roasted mushrooms, peppers and onions, guacamole, romaine lettuce, black olives, Jack cheese, and salsa. (Make this in stages so it’s not so work-intensive.)

Friday:
Chicken Caesar salad and roasted potatoes.

Saturday:
Salmon noodle casserole with green peas, and apple-blueberry cobbler.

Sunday:
Toasted buckwheat (kasha) pilaf with sunflower seeds, and sautéed kale and chicken in garlic and olive oil.

Organic meals on a budget

Since my last post, I have been obsessed with finding ways to save money and eat well. Once we made the resolution to change our habits, I've combed through budgeting and organic living sites, reading about how other people save money and eat food that's good for you and the planet.

I should mention here that I understand organic produce and poultry have reached unaffordable levels for many people. It angers me beyond measure that we've screwed up something so basic, so simple as food. It didn't used to be this complicated. It used to be that we bought or grew nutritious food grown in hardy soil, hand-picked our eggs, and let chickens roam around in fresh air. Greed has messed up something vital to our health and well-being by mixing up food with what people can manage to pull out of banks and pockets.

Check out last week's article on MSNBC about how antibiotic resistance in animals is leading to antibiotic-resistant infections in humans.

Or this one about toxic stuff in the regular ol' food we eat (things like canned tomatoes, butter, non-organic potatoes).

The food industry has spent a lot of time and money convincing us that eating a chicken that's spent its entire life in a cage--beakless and footless, being pumped full of antibiotics and food it's not meant to eat--is natural, healthy food for us and our children. It's simply not true.

And studies now show that produce grown with pesticides is less nutritious, not to mention less tasty. In the meantime, to make it easier to produce mass amounts of corn, soy, wheat, and canola, they're genetically engineering the cells of these products to cause pests' stomachs to explode. Coincidentally, there has been a significant rise in allergies to these common foods--especially in young children.

I'm not saying good food guarantees good health; it just helps a great deal. So we've made a priority out of eating well. The thing is, as I mentioned before, we've spent a fair bit of money doing it. I want that money for our student loans and savings.

To get started with our new budgeting goals, I spent some time tagging all our purchases on Wesabe, a third-party money management tool/financial community and looking at our spending trends. I also read financial, budgeting, food, and family blogs, and found families of six who live on $62.50/week. Of course, I am always also reminded the voice of Barbara Kingsolver from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, who ate locally and off their (giant) farm for a year. And finally there are few of my friends' gourmet foodie blogs that inspire me to try to make ingredients count toward something tasty enough to be worthy of all the effort.

Trying to make sense of these resources in a personal way that actually works is turning out to be a fun challenge for me.

So, I suppose some figures would help here. Eventually I would like to spend $400-$600/month on food and general supplies. This is more than some people spend and less than some people spend, but for us this would be a very significant savings over what we've spent on a monthly basis in the past. On average, we spent $750-$1100 on groceries and supplies per month (in December, we spent more). This includes diapers and toilet paper and general household supplies, of which we generally buy very little. It doesn't include going out to eat. Yes, it's true. I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but somehow our food resolution doesn't feel as compelling without sharing the numbers.

I should add the caveat that we spent the most during months when we entertained a lot, made big dinners for friends, and hosted holiday dinners. Wine and beer is included in the grocery purchases. (For large groups this adds quite a cushion of moolah.)

Looking at some of the food budgeting resources out there, I can at least acknowledge that we aren't the only average consumers who dip into the four-figures when it comes to food. At the top of the line, I found a family in London spending the equivalent of $2,000 a month on food. People who live in highly urban settings with higher costs of living tend to spend more. Those with ready access to farmland and big backyards and lower costs of living tend to spend less. This makes sense, of course.

Combined with a renewed sense of being conscious about how much we spend, Brian is also interested in eating less meat for health reasons. Because I'm content eating mainly vegetarian food, his interest makes it easier to cook more healthy, easy, whole foods-based meals. We'll see how long this lasts.

So, the big experiment this month is that I'm only going shopping once, except for a biweekly trip to purchase more eggs and yogurt (and maybe something else, we'll see). To help us accomplish this, I signed up for our local CSA produce delivery system through Full Circle Farm. Coincidentally, Brian's company just signed up to be a community delivery location, so every Tuesday at 1 p.m., Brian will be able to go into his lunchroom and pick up our box of vegetables and fruit.

We used Full Circle Farm for over a year and quit the service when I stopped working, largely because I wanted to go out and pick out all our own fruits and vegetables, and because we were tiring of the winter fare--beets, squash, potatoes, and more beets, squash, and potatoes. Now, Full Circle Farm allows you to substitute every item in your box with something else, making it more flexible and accommodating to our needs. It's a great way to support small--and local--farms. We signed up to receive a standard size box on a weekly basis for $30/week, a total of $120/month of our food budget.

This week's box contents include:
1 Broccoli
2 Hass Avocados
3 Fuji Apples
1 pound Roma Tomatoes
1 bunch Green Kale
4 Pinova Apples
0.75 pounds Green Bell Peppers
4 Fairchild Tangerines
0.4 pounds Mushrooms
2 Ruby Grapefruits
1 Green Leaf Lettuce
3 D'anjou Pears

Here's our dinner menu for this week:

Monday:
Apple-butternut squash soup and fresh-baked bread. (I cut up 2 butternut squashes and an apple last week and stuck 'em in the freezer. I'll cook the soup this afternoon.)

Tuesday:
Baked salmon, avocado-tomato-cucumber salad, and pressure-cooked brown rice.

Wednesday:
Dinner with friends at their house.

Thursday:
Black bean and rice Mexican bowl with lettuce, red onion, avocado, and corn. (Optional: ground turkey.)

Friday:
Sauteed broccoli and tofu with rice.

Saturday:
Quinoa with toasted seeds, green salad, and baked chicken.

Sunday:
Red potato (and maybe corn) chowder and salad.

Other options if the mood hits: enchiladas, chili and cornbread. Regardless, I'm cooking the enchiladas and chili this weekend and freezing it for easy lunches and dinners.

With this monthly shopping system, I've already spent about $405, not including four weeks of CSA deliveries. Total including 2 wks of CSA: $525. Over the goal, but it's my first time out of the gate. I'm guessing by the end of the month we'll hit $550. This total includes $85 I spent on a bunch of gluten-free flours and 3 giant bags of Pamela's (very expensive) gluten-free baking mix. I'm splitting the cost over the next 3 months. I like our home-baked gluten-free bread a lot more than what we can find in the store. And Pamela's makes the best cookies, crumbles, sweet breads, and Sunday morning pancakes. Probably not a lot of cost-savings in the end, unless I compare it to buying all the sweets pre-baked and going out for pancakes every Sunday, but worth it to be able to make treats whenever we want.

I think I managed to buy a lot of stuff. A month's worth? I don't know, I guess we'll find out. I think we have enough other staples (nut butters, jams, soy sauce, salt, rice, etc.) to last this month. Want to know what we bought? I'm just going to list everything out, which is going to take awhile but for right now, hey. Once a month. Big deal. Why? Because it'll keep me honest. Also because I like to read this stuff on other people's blogs. I don't know exact measurements for a lot of it, but here goes:

Vegetables:
CSA plus--
*3 bags org frozen corn
*3 bags org frozen green beans
*3 bags org frozen spinach
*3 bags org carrots
*2 bags of frozen artichoke hearts
*2 large cartons org Roma tomatoes
*2 cartons org sugar plum tomatoes
*5 big hass avocados
(I bought the corn, beans, carrots, spinach, and tomatoes from Trader Joe's, but next time I'm going to go to Costco and buy their organic options). I got the artichokes from Trader Joes--Costco doesn't have 'em. Okay, admittedly, they're not organic, but they do happen to be the the most delicious addition to pasta sauce ever. Yum. I'm going to stew the roma tomatoes and freeze them for soups.)

Poultry (bought fresh then individually bagged and frozen):
*5 org free-range chicken breasts
*5 org free-range chicken thighs
*10 org chicken sausages
*2 boxes kosher ground turkey (oops, on reflection, I don't think this was organic)

Fish:
*4 large fillets of wild frozen salmon

Grain/pasta/bread:
*2 lbs org quinoa
*3 lbs org gluten-free oats
*28 ounces Rice sticks (Pad Thai noodles)
*2 lbs org rice pasta
*Multi-grain bread for Brian

Beans:
*2 pounds org black beans
*2 pounds org pinto beans
*2 pounds org kidney beans
*1-1/2 pounds org lentils
*3 packages of org tofu
*4 big containers of org soy milk and 2 small unsweetened containers

Dairy:
*Organic 2% milk
*Cheddar cheese
*Organic jack cheese
*Parmesan
*Organic yogurt (large tub)
*Organic butter
*2 cartons of organic free-range eggs

Baking supplies(this was split b/w Whole Foods and Amazon purchases--Amazon offers wholesale-style quantities and prices on specialty flours):
*Sorghum
*Teff
*Potato starch
*Tapioca starch
*Yeast
*Brown rice flour
*Pamela's baking mix

Fruit:
CSA delivery plus:
*2 pounds org raisins
*Big bottle of org apple juice
*1/2 lb shredded org coconut
*3 bags org frozen blueberries
*4 lemons
*6 limes

Nuts/seeds:
*1/2 lb org sunflower seeds
*1/4 lb org sesame seeds
*1 lb mixed nuts
*1/2 lb slivered almonds

Sweeteners:
*Large bottle org maple syrup
*Large bottle honey

Oil:
*Lg bottle olive oil
*Lg bottle grapeseed oil

Vinegar:
*Organic apple cider vinegar

Misc:
*Pad Thai sauce (I need to start making this from scratch, it'll probably taste better)
*Jar of pineapple salsa
*Jar of regular salsa
*2 bags of 7th Generation pull-ups
*Conditioner
*Liquid multi-vitamins for Cora
*Homeopathic medicine (1) for Brian

Nearly New!

It is hard to believe this year is coming to an end and 2010 is so close on the horizon, barely peeking over the edge with its inherent possibilities and resolutions.

A recap seems fitting here, if only because I won't remember everything unless I write it down.

So, here's 2009 in a nutshell:

*First time since college without an employer and caring for a child (my child!) full-time. (Yep, it's not the same as being a nanny.) :)

*Winter/Spring was really tough. Too many doctor's visits and not enough hand washing.

*Summer was glorious. Gl-or-i-ous. Camping, hiking, beach combing, sunset watching, picnics, sunning, swimming, romping through parks. Deception Pass, Camano Island, San Juan Island (saw a beautiful pod of Orca Whales here), San Diego, Whidbey, Vashon, Bainbridge, Port Orchard, the Peninsula, ferry rides and car rides and a couple of plane rides. Lots of moments to stare out a rolled down window after a day in the sun. The best summer in a long time. Long days rule.

*Started running again! Woot! I'm excited to start again sometime next year.

*Started a novel. Still just 92 pages and counting.

*Lots and lots of restlessness. Put our house on the market (whew, that was a lot of work). Thought we'd move to an island, but didn't.

*Cora turned TWO. We partied with her animals for two months prior while listening to thousands of replays of "Happy Birthday."

*Got pregnant with #2. Yippee!

*Cooked up a storm. I love to cook.

*Rarely managed to stay within my food budget.

Which is a good intro to resolutions for 2010:

*Stick to a brand new food budget and still eat nutritious, organic food. (I am way too embarrassed to state how much we've managed to spend per month on multiple occasions; let's just say I am trying to cut it by 1/3 and eventually in half.) Consequently, I've been combing through online resources searching for the answers. I swear, I think I'm going to create an Excel file with all our foods listed out with prices next to them. No more impulse buying. No more dark chocolate and sea salt covered almonds just because they sound lovely. It has to be on The List. The Grocery List. The One I Will Hold True and Dear. I want the money we save to be a bonus, an unexpected extra amount we can reroute to other places--savings, debts, vacations, whatever. I like that we eat well; I don't like that it feels like our money gets eaten and thrown away.

*This means I need to be one of those extremely organized go-getters who makes menus and lists and shops for deals and buys in bulk and cooks nearly everything from scratch. Repeatedly. While I do cook a lot of things from scratch, the uber-organized menu-making diva thing doesn't come naturally, as I am sure I have stated before. This is not typically my personality. While I do consider price and budget, I like to browse and buy when it comes to food. However, I am going to do better. Much better. And so is Brian.

*Start a garden in our backyard.

*Invite people over more often.

*Start year 1 of our 4-1/2 year goal to become debt-free. For all you non-student-loan-bearing people, pat yourselves on the backs and be grateful. We are going to comb through our student loan debt and throw a big party in 4-5 years. I can't wait for that party. We'll serve over-the-top delicious food and beverages and give grand and glorious toasts. We'll wear top hats and sequins (ok, maybe not, but who knows?). We'll serve tiny little sandwiches and buttery crackers covered in salmon and watercress and creme fraiche and buy bottles and bottles of sparkly drinks. Our children will be 7 and 5, respectively, and we'll both be almost 38 years old, but for goodness sake, we won't owe anyone anything, except for this small thing called our mortgage.

*Maybe if I write about our budgeting/debt-paying experience, we'll have a better chance of sticking to our goals. Watch out, I might write about it here.

*Have a baby.

*Finish my novel.

*Start running again.

I feel very motivated. Spreadsheets and recipes and bulk foods, here I come. In these days of in-between holidays and New Year reflection, I am remembering how difficult it was last winter to reconcile myself to the fact that I was chopping off my salary and instead of portioning out thousands to their respective destination (nanny, mortgage, yardwork, savings), I needed to consider the dollars, the tens, the hundreds. It felt uncomfortable, pedantic and constraining. After a year of watching countless families suffer financial setbacks due to a recession and job losses, and experiencing everything I traded my salary for, I have a different frame of mind. I am so regretful that we didn't save every penny of my salary when we could, because lo and behold, we didn't need it. We just didn't know it back then. While I can't turn back time, I want to shake ourselves free of our student debt (oh what a mighty freedom that will be!), save as much as we can, continue to cook because we love to, and reap the rewards of being more conscientious about what we eat--and how much we spend on it. I want to simplify and prioritize. It feels like a new kind of freedom is ahead, one that is more directed and full of choice, less fractured by wanderlust and indecision.

Of course, not surprisingly, more than anything else this year, I am excited to meet our new family member in June. Will it be a girl? A boy? What kind of baby will it be? I've been imagining a bassinet by our bed, and the little form in there. Holy mole.