Just a quick note today to let you know that I am doing some rearranging on my blog. I am testing out some new looks. I also have a sick daughter so not much time to post anything. Will update next week, this weekend I hope to get out and do some comparison shopping for the budget.
See you then.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Eating on a budget
I love reading blogs, I love to see how other people live, eat, design and what they think. I follow one blog Balancing Beauty and Bedlam at http://inpassionatepursuit.blogspot.com/, at the moment she is eating from her pantry and spending $25 a week on groceries. Wow, I am keeping a close eye on this blog, because that is fasinating that she can buy groceries for $25. I was looking through my grocery receipts yesterday and I spend that much alone on fruit and vegetables for the week. Most of the blogs I follow are in the U.S. and I know from living in Houston for a year that food is alot cheaper there then here in Canada. But can we apply some of the same principals to our grocery shopping here in Canada?
When I lived in Houston the weekend newspaper had alot of flyers and they were full of coupons. We are lucky here to see a couple of flyers with coupons and usually on name brand products that once you use the coupon the product is the same price as if you were to buy the store brand. I know they have double coupon days, store matching coupons, etc. we have the first Tuesday of the month when Safeway gives you 10% off your grocery purchase. Yipppeeee!
She talks about the reduced for quick sale bins and I know we have them here and I do frequently check them out, but am now going to be taking a closer look as in the past they don't look very good and I had no plans to use what was there in the next couple of days. I haven't seen a reduced for quick sale in the bakery section or the meat section regularly.
Another blog I follow, Bankrupt Vegan http://bankruptvegan.blogspot.com/, talks about buying food at a Salvage store, not sure what that is, don't think we have any in Canada. Maybe Liquidation World might be along those lines, unless I am missing something, please let me know. She got some smoking deals at the salvage store, here is her blog about it http://bankruptvegan.blogspot.com/2009/12/salvage-your-vegan-pantry.html. Note: I just did a quick google search for "salvage groceries in canada" and got nothing in Canada, lots of links to the U.S., go figure.
So I am inspired, to cut my grocery bill in 1/2 within a three month time frame (at the moment I spend about $250-$300 every two weeks). This will be feeding the husband and son meat, the daughter and myself vegetarian, eating well, eating our fruits and vegetables and staying on budget. I am going to be checking out the Liquidation World tomorrow, it is right beside our dentist office, which we will be at also I receive an email from a bulk food company, so I will be looking at that closer and I will be checking out the delivery service for fruits and vegetables. Not sure if that will save me money on gas coming and going to the grocery store, I will figure that out.
So here is my pantry and fridge at the moment. Wow, when I post these pictures, it looks like I have a very full pantry, why do I look in here all the time and find nothing to eat.
So my plan is to not buy any groceries until the 15th of January, weeellllll, I might have to buy some milk along the way. Okay, I have put it in print so now I need to stick to it. We have alot of fruit and vegetables, fresh and frozen, so we should be good. I am always concerned about having enough fruits and vegetables
When I lived in Houston the weekend newspaper had alot of flyers and they were full of coupons. We are lucky here to see a couple of flyers with coupons and usually on name brand products that once you use the coupon the product is the same price as if you were to buy the store brand. I know they have double coupon days, store matching coupons, etc. we have the first Tuesday of the month when Safeway gives you 10% off your grocery purchase. Yipppeeee!
She talks about the reduced for quick sale bins and I know we have them here and I do frequently check them out, but am now going to be taking a closer look as in the past they don't look very good and I had no plans to use what was there in the next couple of days. I haven't seen a reduced for quick sale in the bakery section or the meat section regularly.
Another blog I follow, Bankrupt Vegan http://bankruptvegan.blogspot.com/, talks about buying food at a Salvage store, not sure what that is, don't think we have any in Canada. Maybe Liquidation World might be along those lines, unless I am missing something, please let me know. She got some smoking deals at the salvage store, here is her blog about it http://bankruptvegan.blogspot.com/2009/12/salvage-your-vegan-pantry.html. Note: I just did a quick google search for "salvage groceries in canada" and got nothing in Canada, lots of links to the U.S., go figure.
So I am inspired, to cut my grocery bill in 1/2 within a three month time frame (at the moment I spend about $250-$300 every two weeks). This will be feeding the husband and son meat, the daughter and myself vegetarian, eating well, eating our fruits and vegetables and staying on budget. I am going to be checking out the Liquidation World tomorrow, it is right beside our dentist office, which we will be at also I receive an email from a bulk food company, so I will be looking at that closer and I will be checking out the delivery service for fruits and vegetables. Not sure if that will save me money on gas coming and going to the grocery store, I will figure that out.
So here is my pantry and fridge at the moment. Wow, when I post these pictures, it looks like I have a very full pantry, why do I look in here all the time and find nothing to eat.
So my plan is to not buy any groceries until the 15th of January, weeellllll, I might have to buy some milk along the way. Okay, I have put it in print so now I need to stick to it. We have alot of fruit and vegetables, fresh and frozen, so we should be good. I am always concerned about having enough fruits and vegetables
For a recap of our dinner last night, I made ravioli with mushroom sauce and corn. I took a recipe from 1001 Low Fat Vegetarian Cookbook and tweeked it a bit. I stuffed the ravioli with a goat cheese mixture that had sundried tomatoes, oregano and some sauteed garlic and onions and I used wonton wrappers for the ravioli part. They turned out really good, the only thing was when I cooked the ravioli in batches and they stuck together when I put them on the plate. The mushroom sauce was awesome, the husband liked it, the son wouldn't even look at it, this is why we had corn and the daughter had a couple of bits, but she is not feeling well.
With this post my menu will change a bit this week. I will keep you up to date on what is happening. Hopefully I can inspire other Canadians to do some digging out there to find cheap groceries, different places to look for groceries and smoking deals. Send me any links, suggestions or comments with regards to this post, I would love to hear from you.
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Local eating
Since my post yesterday I have done some digging into local eating. We have a couple of farmers markets in Calgary, not close to where we live and are only open on the weekends at which time they are a zoo to get in and out of. So doing some online searches and I found http://www.spud.ca/about/whatsnew.cfm and http://www.freshorganics.ca/. Both of these companies deliver bins of fruit and vegetables to your door, both seem to be the same cost. Spuds also has organic and home products, bakery items, just about everything you would find in a store. Farm Fresh Organics is a bin delivery service with Family Fare, Bachelor Box, Fruit basket and Salad bowl options. I have tried Farm Fresh Organics before, but this was when it was my husband and myself and I found that we just didn't eat the produce fast enough before it went bad. Now that we have a family of four, it just might work.
Here are the options for both:
Spuds: you need to register with the site, then you "go shopping", pick your produce for your harvest box and checkout. You can set your preferences for your harvest box, how often you want it delivered and how much you want to spend and you can edit your selections at any time. One options I like is that you can choose variety before local, local before variety or local only. If you are looking to support local farmers this is a great option. There is a calculator to help you determine how much produce you will need and how often, also a great feature. I also like that this company will deliver other groceries as well. This is a company out of California.
Farm Fresh Organics: this is the service we used before, we liked it, but as I said didn't eat it fast enough. Their website was down for some options, so I will go by what I remember. You had a bin deposit, I believe $20 and the produce was $35?,then choose how often to have it delivered. You filled out a form, told them what you didn't want in the bin (celery, yuck!) your top 3 vegetables and top 3 fruits. What I liked about this service is you never really knew what you were going to get, which made us try new fruits and vegetables. The bins always contained something I had never heard of or never cooked with before, I liked that idea. This is a local company out of Calgary.
I am going to do a bit of crunching and see if this is a budget friendly option for us. It would seem that $35 every two weeks for fruits and vegetables would be a good idea, but will it be enough to feed the family? I will keep you posted.
So here is what I have been eating lately, a couple of nights ago the rest of the family had beef dip and I had seitan dip with gouda cheese and yams fries, I made a veganiasse dip with dijon mustard and garlic for the fries and the seitan dip. I also added a tomato slice after I took the picture.
Last night I made Pasta with Enlightened Alfredo Sauce from Nava Atlas, The Vegetarian Family Cookbook. The alfredo sauce was made from soft tofu, my husband, who is not a fan of cream sauces at all, liked this and when I told him it wasn't a cream sauce he was quite surprised. I topped the pasta with left over tomatoes from the seitan dip, to add some colour and a different flavour. This is our daughters dish, this picture turned out better.
Here are the options for both:
Spuds: you need to register with the site, then you "go shopping", pick your produce for your harvest box and checkout. You can set your preferences for your harvest box, how often you want it delivered and how much you want to spend and you can edit your selections at any time. One options I like is that you can choose variety before local, local before variety or local only. If you are looking to support local farmers this is a great option. There is a calculator to help you determine how much produce you will need and how often, also a great feature. I also like that this company will deliver other groceries as well. This is a company out of California.
Farm Fresh Organics: this is the service we used before, we liked it, but as I said didn't eat it fast enough. Their website was down for some options, so I will go by what I remember. You had a bin deposit, I believe $20 and the produce was $35?,then choose how often to have it delivered. You filled out a form, told them what you didn't want in the bin (celery, yuck!) your top 3 vegetables and top 3 fruits. What I liked about this service is you never really knew what you were going to get, which made us try new fruits and vegetables. The bins always contained something I had never heard of or never cooked with before, I liked that idea. This is a local company out of Calgary.
I am going to do a bit of crunching and see if this is a budget friendly option for us. It would seem that $35 every two weeks for fruits and vegetables would be a good idea, but will it be enough to feed the family? I will keep you posted.
So here is what I have been eating lately, a couple of nights ago the rest of the family had beef dip and I had seitan dip with gouda cheese and yams fries, I made a veganiasse dip with dijon mustard and garlic for the fries and the seitan dip. I also added a tomato slice after I took the picture.
Tonight's dinner is Herbed Cheese Ravioli with Wild Mushroom Sauce from 1001 Low Fat Vegetarian Recipes. The ravioli is made from won ton wrappers, I will let you know how they turn out, sounds interesting
Monday, January 4, 2010
Do we really know what is in our food???
To begin with I have a soap box and frequently get on it. My husband bugs me about it, but I feel I need to say some things, want the world to know about them and that is partially why I started this blog.
I think the world is getting farther and farther away from family values and good eating. I admit I am big on whatever is convenient is easier, but is that the way to go? We watched a very interesting movie over the holidays, Food Inc. My impression when I heard of this movie was that it was about our meat and why you should go vegetarian or vegan. I was wrong, this movie was about our food, yes, it included meat, chicken and pork, but also corn, soybeans and other foods. Do we really know now a day’s where our food comes from and what goes in it? I know I don’t and this movie was an eye opener for me. Granted this was made in the U.S. about the U.S. food industry, but how much affects us in Canada? I have a lot of questions and over the next couple of weeks am going to be doing some research on the Canada aspect of our food industry.
Here is a brief summary of the movie: the way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years, then ever before. We have McDonald’s to blame for the way meat is now processed; they are the ones that moved away from the sit down diners, car hops to the fast food chains. This meant that food needed to be grown faster to keep up with the demand. Cows are fed corn, something they don’t normally eat, which is grass. The introduction of corn into a cow’s diet has led to E-Coli, they now “clean” meat with an ammonia mixture to kill the E-Coli before it is packaged for sale, YUCK! A company in the states has the market cornered on soybeans, they have patented the soybeans and if a farmer is caught using their own soybeans this company can sue them for copyright infringement. Sounds fair? Every time we go to the grocery store and our food is scanned, we are saying to the companies producing these foods that we are going to eat all the chemicals they are adding to our foods. We don’t eat in season anymore, fruits and vegetables are available to us 365 days of the year, which means they need to be shipped half way around the world for us to eat “fresh”, which leads to them being treated with chemicals to make sure they doesn’t spoil on the way. The movie is also about how the farm workers are being treated and it's not well. It's hard to believe that companies still exploit their workers, but they do. Okay, that’s enough of my soap box, I hope everyone watches this movie and starts asking questions. Here are some links to the website:
http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-issues.php
http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-film.php
I decided that I am going to pull a convinience food out of my pantry, check the labels and start researching an ingredient. So today I am looking at "100% Whole Grain Ritz Crackers", the ingredients list didn't look too bad, the first few items are whole grain wheat flour, vegetable oil shortening, sugar and salt. Hmm, not too bad, but then there are a few I’m not sure of monocalcium phosphate, soya lecithin, amylase, protease and papain. Does anyone know what those are?
From Wikipedia:
Monocalcium phosphate: Calcium dihydrogen phosphate is also used in the food industry as a leavening agent to cause baked goods to rise. Because it is acidic, when combined with an alkali ingredient – commonly sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) or potassium bicarbonate – it reacts to produce carbon dioxide and a salt. The carbon dioxide gas is what leavens the baked good. When combined in a ready-made baking powder, the acid and alkali ingredients are included in the right proportions such that they will exactly neutralize each other and not significantly affect the overall pH of the product.
Apart from acting as leavening agent, it also inhibits microbial activity because of the phosphate ions present in the molecule.
Soya Lecithin: Lecithin is used commercially in foods requiring a natural emulsifier and/or lubricant, and in pharmaceuticals as protective coverings. For example, lecithin is the emulsifier that keeps cocoa and cocoa butter in a candy bar from separating. In margarines, especially those containing high levels of fat (>75%), lecithin is added as an 'anti-spattering' agent for shallow frying.
Amylase: Amylase enzymes finds use in bread making and to break down complex sugars such as starch (found in flour) into simple sugars. Yeast then feeds on these simple sugars and converts it into the waste products of alcohol and CO2. This imparts flavour and causes the bread to rise. While Amylase enzymes are found naturally in yeast cells, it takes time for the yeast to produce enough of these enzymes to break down significant quantities of starch in the bread. This is the reason for long fermented doughs such as sour dough. Modern bread making techniques have included amylase enzymes (often in the form of malted barley) into bread improver thereby making the bread making process faster and more practical for commercial use.
When used as a food additive Amylase has E number E1100, and may be derived from swine pancreas or mould mushroom.
Workers in factories that work with amylase for any of the above uses are at increased risk of occupational asthma. 5-9% of bakers have a positive skin test, and a fourth to a third of bakers with breathing problems are hypersensitive to amylase.
Protease: I couldn’t find on Wikepedia what this food additive does, but it did say that protease is used in many laundry detergents. Interesting!
Papain: Its utility is in breaking down tough meat fibers and has been utilized for thousands of years in its native South America. It is sold as a component in powdered meat tenderizer available in most supermarkets. Papain, in the form of a meat tenderizer such as Adolph's, made into a paste with water, is also a home remedy treatment for jellyfish, bee, yellow jacket (wasps) stings, mosquito bites, and possibly stingray wounds, breaking down the protein toxins in the venom. It is also the main ingredient in Stop Itch and Stop Itch Plus, a DermaTech Laboratories first aid cream popular in Australia.
Papain can be used to dissociate cells in the first step of cell culture preparations. A 10-minute treatment of small tissue pieces (less than 1 mm cubed) will allow papain to begin breaking down the extracellular matrix molecules holding the cells together. After 10 minutes, the tissue should be treated with a protease inhibitor solution to stop the protease action (if left untreated papain's activity will lead to complete lysis of the cells). The tissue must then be triturated (passed quickly up and down through a Pasteur pipette) in order to break up the pieces of tissue into a single cell suspension.
It is also used as an ingredient in various enzymatic debriding preparations, notably Accuzyme. These are used in the care of some chronic wounds to clean up dead tissue.
Papain can also be found as an ingredient in some toothpastes or mints as teeth-whitener. Its whitening effect in toothpastes and mints however is minimal, because the papain is present in low concentrations, and will be quickly diluted by saliva. It would take several months of using the whitening product to have noticeably whiter teeth.
So there you have it, some ingredients are used in laundry detergents, are made from swine pancreas or mould mushroom or used to clean up dead tissue, yummy! Oh, don't get me wrong, I have all sorts of convinient foods in our pantry and I am eating these ingredients as well. But this is something to think about...
I will post my menu for the week later today, but for now, think about what you eat and where it comes from.
I think the world is getting farther and farther away from family values and good eating. I admit I am big on whatever is convenient is easier, but is that the way to go? We watched a very interesting movie over the holidays, Food Inc. My impression when I heard of this movie was that it was about our meat and why you should go vegetarian or vegan. I was wrong, this movie was about our food, yes, it included meat, chicken and pork, but also corn, soybeans and other foods. Do we really know now a day’s where our food comes from and what goes in it? I know I don’t and this movie was an eye opener for me. Granted this was made in the U.S. about the U.S. food industry, but how much affects us in Canada? I have a lot of questions and over the next couple of weeks am going to be doing some research on the Canada aspect of our food industry.
Here is a brief summary of the movie: the way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years, then ever before. We have McDonald’s to blame for the way meat is now processed; they are the ones that moved away from the sit down diners, car hops to the fast food chains. This meant that food needed to be grown faster to keep up with the demand. Cows are fed corn, something they don’t normally eat, which is grass. The introduction of corn into a cow’s diet has led to E-Coli, they now “clean” meat with an ammonia mixture to kill the E-Coli before it is packaged for sale, YUCK! A company in the states has the market cornered on soybeans, they have patented the soybeans and if a farmer is caught using their own soybeans this company can sue them for copyright infringement. Sounds fair? Every time we go to the grocery store and our food is scanned, we are saying to the companies producing these foods that we are going to eat all the chemicals they are adding to our foods. We don’t eat in season anymore, fruits and vegetables are available to us 365 days of the year, which means they need to be shipped half way around the world for us to eat “fresh”, which leads to them being treated with chemicals to make sure they doesn’t spoil on the way. The movie is also about how the farm workers are being treated and it's not well. It's hard to believe that companies still exploit their workers, but they do. Okay, that’s enough of my soap box, I hope everyone watches this movie and starts asking questions. Here are some links to the website:
http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-issues.php
http://www.foodincmovie.com/about-the-film.php
I decided that I am going to pull a convinience food out of my pantry, check the labels and start researching an ingredient. So today I am looking at "100% Whole Grain Ritz Crackers", the ingredients list didn't look too bad, the first few items are whole grain wheat flour, vegetable oil shortening, sugar and salt. Hmm, not too bad, but then there are a few I’m not sure of monocalcium phosphate, soya lecithin, amylase, protease and papain. Does anyone know what those are?
From Wikipedia:
Monocalcium phosphate: Calcium dihydrogen phosphate is also used in the food industry as a leavening agent to cause baked goods to rise. Because it is acidic, when combined with an alkali ingredient – commonly sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) or potassium bicarbonate – it reacts to produce carbon dioxide and a salt. The carbon dioxide gas is what leavens the baked good. When combined in a ready-made baking powder, the acid and alkali ingredients are included in the right proportions such that they will exactly neutralize each other and not significantly affect the overall pH of the product.
Apart from acting as leavening agent, it also inhibits microbial activity because of the phosphate ions present in the molecule.
Soya Lecithin: Lecithin is used commercially in foods requiring a natural emulsifier and/or lubricant, and in pharmaceuticals as protective coverings. For example, lecithin is the emulsifier that keeps cocoa and cocoa butter in a candy bar from separating. In margarines, especially those containing high levels of fat (>75%), lecithin is added as an 'anti-spattering' agent for shallow frying.
Amylase: Amylase enzymes finds use in bread making and to break down complex sugars such as starch (found in flour) into simple sugars. Yeast then feeds on these simple sugars and converts it into the waste products of alcohol and CO2. This imparts flavour and causes the bread to rise. While Amylase enzymes are found naturally in yeast cells, it takes time for the yeast to produce enough of these enzymes to break down significant quantities of starch in the bread. This is the reason for long fermented doughs such as sour dough. Modern bread making techniques have included amylase enzymes (often in the form of malted barley) into bread improver thereby making the bread making process faster and more practical for commercial use.
When used as a food additive Amylase has E number E1100, and may be derived from swine pancreas or mould mushroom.
Workers in factories that work with amylase for any of the above uses are at increased risk of occupational asthma. 5-9% of bakers have a positive skin test, and a fourth to a third of bakers with breathing problems are hypersensitive to amylase.
Protease: I couldn’t find on Wikepedia what this food additive does, but it did say that protease is used in many laundry detergents. Interesting!
Papain: Its utility is in breaking down tough meat fibers and has been utilized for thousands of years in its native South America. It is sold as a component in powdered meat tenderizer available in most supermarkets. Papain, in the form of a meat tenderizer such as Adolph's, made into a paste with water, is also a home remedy treatment for jellyfish, bee, yellow jacket (wasps) stings, mosquito bites, and possibly stingray wounds, breaking down the protein toxins in the venom. It is also the main ingredient in Stop Itch and Stop Itch Plus, a DermaTech Laboratories first aid cream popular in Australia.
Papain can be used to dissociate cells in the first step of cell culture preparations. A 10-minute treatment of small tissue pieces (less than 1 mm cubed) will allow papain to begin breaking down the extracellular matrix molecules holding the cells together. After 10 minutes, the tissue should be treated with a protease inhibitor solution to stop the protease action (if left untreated papain's activity will lead to complete lysis of the cells). The tissue must then be triturated (passed quickly up and down through a Pasteur pipette) in order to break up the pieces of tissue into a single cell suspension.
It is also used as an ingredient in various enzymatic debriding preparations, notably Accuzyme. These are used in the care of some chronic wounds to clean up dead tissue.
Papain can also be found as an ingredient in some toothpastes or mints as teeth-whitener. Its whitening effect in toothpastes and mints however is minimal, because the papain is present in low concentrations, and will be quickly diluted by saliva. It would take several months of using the whitening product to have noticeably whiter teeth.
So there you have it, some ingredients are used in laundry detergents, are made from swine pancreas or mould mushroom or used to clean up dead tissue, yummy! Oh, don't get me wrong, I have all sorts of convinient foods in our pantry and I am eating these ingredients as well. But this is something to think about...
I will post my menu for the week later today, but for now, think about what you eat and where it comes from.
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