$56 in Feburary

We’re heading downhill on our $56 in February, and I just wanted to check in and give a report. As of right now, we’ve eaten $27 worth of food (exactly!) versus a budget of $30, to be under budget by $3. A typical weekday meal starts with oatmeal, followed by a chicken stew of some sort for lunch. Dinner is an empanada and we finish off the day with a cookie (snickerdoodle!).

I think that this third year is definitely the easiest, for three reasons. One is all of the lessons learned from previous years. I’m much better prepared and equipped to plan and make nutritionally dense foods that will keep us going the entire day. The second is that it had been a while since Chad and I last ate until we were too full, and this has helped us from feeling as hungry as we did that first year – our stomachs are just smaller than they have been in the past. The third and most delicious reason is empanadas. At the end of January I spent way too many hours making 41 empanadas with 3 different fillings (black bean, spicy chickpea, and chicken). However, that investment of time made this month’s dinners a breeze. All we have to do is bake them in the toaster oven for 30 minutes and we end up with a tasty, nutritious, satisfying meal. One of these days I’ll remember to take a picture.

There isn’t much of a point to this post besides checking in with the world and musing a bit about just how much time goes into making an activity like this work. And since this is my blog, I think I’ll just keep going.

My apartment smells very strongly of chicken. This afternoon I roasted the second of the two roasted chicken I bought at Costco last month, and now the bones are simmering in the stock pot with the leftover aromatics from the ‘ends’ freezer bag. That freezer bag is/was full of onion ends, carrot peels, mushroom stems and the leftovers of herbs and things. In a couple of hours, I’ll have the stock necessary to make the kale, potato and chicken soup we’ll be eating for lunch next week. The chicken for the stew comes from half of the roasted chicken, the other half got mixed with some parsley for this weeks roast chicken, pita and hummus sandwiches lunch. Total cost for 10 days of weekday lunches for the two of us: $10.88.

Total time is another matter. Yesterday I made the pita and hummus, I suppose the total time for that was about an hour active cooking time. The roast chicken was probably 45 minutes active time – mainly because it takes a while to completely carve and cube a roast chicken. I’m guessing that the soup will take about 30 more minutes active time, mainly for chopping onions and kale, then also for watching it to make sure it doesn’t over cook. Finally, I’ll probably make at least two loaves of bread this week to go with the soup, which will be about another 15 minutes active time. Total active time for 10 meals: 2.5 hours active time.

AH, but it’s the INACTIVE time that adds up. Chickpeas for the hummus had to soak overnight. I use the No Knead Bread method recently popularized by Mark Bittman, which take a full day and a half to rise and rest before baking. Chicken roasts, then rests, for a total of 2 hours and stock simmers for 3 to 4 hours. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not watching that pot boil, I’m writing this blog post from the comfort of my couch. It’s the inactive time is what makes the month possible (and delicious).

For example, a 1 pound bag of chickpeas is $1.69, whereas a 16 ounce can is say…$0.99 (give or take). A pound of dry chickpeas, once cooked, can fill at least four of those cans, at a savings of $2.27. It’s not a whole lot of money any other month, but that’s over a days worth of food for Chad and myself. Pennies add up quickly when you’re counting every one of them. Also, personally, I think that food that that takes a long time to cook often ends up tasting better – but that could just be me.

So! To finish up this meandering post, $11+2.5 hours active cooking+a couple of days inactive cooking=10 days of delicious lunches for me and Chad.

February starts on Monday, and so does another $56 in February. As of right now, we’re going to try for year three.

So what am I talking about? For those of you who come here for Foreign Service related information, the next month might be a bit of a departure from the norm. As the URL, pictures, and other blog posts suggest, this website is about the VonHinkens, that means me, my husband Chad, and whatever might be going on in our lives that we like to write about. In February, that means we talk about extremely frugal eating. This will be the third year Chad and I embark on an experience/experiment that involves us spending $56 on food for the month of February. If you want, you can read about $56 in February 2009.

Whenever we bring up this tradition (does three times make it a tradition?), people say at least one of the following three things: ‘that’s not possible,’ ‘how?,’ and ‘why?’ Let me give you the short responses:

“That’s not possible!” To this I say HA! Back in 2007, when we did this the first time, I wanted to do it primarily to find out if I could. I can, and I can even come in under budget. So yeah, there is a little bit of pride, and a little testing to see if I can still pull it off.

“How?” It takes a lot of planning. A LOT. Coming in on (or under) budget is an extreme logistical project for me. Chad is very supportive, but he’s not the one cooking everything from scratch. And I mean it when I say from scratch. Beans come from dry, I make my own stock (if I’m going to use it), sometimes I’ll make yogurt, cottage cheese, and breads (including pita – it really is very easy). This takes a lot of time and frankly, I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to do it this year. This year I’m working for a company that keeps me pretty busy, and there’s the faint possibility of travel for work during the month, but we’re going to try anyway. We’ll see what happens.

“Why?” This is most complicated and least tangible answer. There are a lot of reasons that might not make sense to anyone outside of our little family of two. At first it was to see if we could. Then the money saving aspect, especially when we were trying to pay off our credit cards, was really attractive. However, our reasons have grown more philosophical as we continue – it has become an exercise in mindfulness.

During February, we are much more aware of what we eat, what goes into our food, and what we put in our bodies than we are in any other month. We are also more cognizant of how much we consume, and this is not limited to food. While Chad and I are already pretty light eaters, February reminds us of what it’s like to be hungry. The annual reminder makes us hate waste of all kinds, and since we don’t want to hoard anything, we don’t acquire more than we need.

I won’t be blogging quite so often about this year’s $56 in February, I’m not going to have the time. Also, it’ll probably be a big repeat of last year, and that can get boring. But I’ll post now and then about how we’re doing. Here’s a quick spoiler: we’ll be eating a LOT of empanda-pasty-samosa-pie type of food. Cheap and delicious!

February is long gone, and I’m just now getting around to posting my final thoughts on such a busy month. On top of meeting my indispensable FSOA study group twice a week I spent so much time cooking that I didn’t really get a chance to blog. I can’t say I’m surprised since this happened last time we did this project.

Excuses aside, I’ve finally posted the full and final grocery/ingredient list. There’s another permanent link over at the $56 in February Page, which I think I’ll keep up there.

This year’s February was much easier than when we did this in 2007. I think it’s a combination of an improvement in my cooking skills and much better planning. MUCH better planning – there is an excel sheet with many pages. All told, Chad and I both lost about 10 pounds that we could definitely stand to loose. Our stomachs shrank a bit, which I don’t mind at all – it goes along with one of the reasons we do this: mindfulness.

I’ve seen several websites or articles of other people doing the same (or similar) project for various reasons. They may want to call attention to world hunger issues, save money, loose weight, see if it’s possible to do, etc. While we may have a few of the same motives, Chad and I are not looking for any publicity or attention out of this project, we do this for us.

This is primarily an exercise in mindfulness. Each of the worlds major religions have fasting or restrictive periods and it’s often a time of thought and reflection. Here are a few things that are reinforced for us during February:

When people find out about $56 in February, the first question is always HOW do we do it. The short answer is that we eat simple foods that I make from scratch. The pita and hummus we’re eating for dinner this week is ridiculously cheap to make ourselves. A quart of hummus is about $3.87, and a medium loaf of pita (about the size of a salad plate) costs $0.56 for eight (about a pound). At Wegmans, where I buy most of my groceries, that would be about $9 for that amount of hummus, and $1.79 for the pita.

But by far, oatmeal is my favorite example. Rolled oats (again, at Wegmans), cost $0.99 a pound. The recommended serving is 2 ounces ($0.12), add a table spoon of brown sugar ($0.02) and some water (FREE!) and you’ve got breakfast for $0.14. Our actual serving size is much smaller, 1 ounce for me, 1.5 for Chad. Oatmeal is very filling. By contrast, some Quaker Instant Oatmeal at Wegmans is $3.19 for a box of ten servings (or $0.32 a serving).

On Saturday, I’ll post the table of all of the groceries we’ve gone through for the month. They are all pretty much foundation ingredients.

One of these years, I’m going to do a good job with blogging about February.  I think that this year was a little better than last, but this month has been so busy (Chad’s taking 3 classes, I meet my study group twice a week) that I’m spending so much of my energy cooking our food that I haven’t had enough time to write about it.

We’re both doing well.  This year is so much easier than 2005.  Next year will be even better.  I think my favorite new thing to make are snickerdoodles and pita bread (both very cheap and very easy).  In the next few days I’ll be making several updates to the page. I plan on adding a page that shows a table of each ingredient I’ve used in cooking this month, including prices, etc, to show exactly what we ate to make it through the month. I can tell you now that list will consist primarily of oatmeal, flour, rice, legumes and chicken. It’ll be interesting. When that page goes up, I’ll let you know. It’ll probably be at the same time I write my final thoughts.

Maybe next year I’ll just ask someone to take notes and do the write-ups for me…*sigh*

Well, we’re getting into the second week of our $56 in February challenge, and we’re both doing well.

Health
While we do get a little hungry before meal time, I think that’s absolutely healthy – we shouldn’t feel full all of the time – we aren’t sitting around hungry all day long. My weight is holding steady at what it was when we started (even though I lost about 5 pounds thanks to the stomach flu in the last days of January), and Chad’s only lost about 5 pounds as well.

Money
According to the schedule, we shouldn’t have spent more than $18 on food. We have consumed $15.40! We’re a little high while we’re having the scones for breakfast, but we’ve finished eating them, we’ll be back down to about $1.52 a day.

Food
The planning I put into this last month has really paid off. Thanks to buying in bulk, and our friends the legume, we’re able to get some pretty nutritious balanced meals. And we even have enough money left over to get cookies for dessert (I can make 24 snickerdoodles for only $0.99!).

Overall, we’re doing well. While there are definitely some foods we miss, this month is pretty important to both of us not only as a challenge but also as a reminder of frugality and a lesson in moderation.

I meant to blog before January ended, but the stomach flu had other plans for me. On the plus side, my stomach shrank enough that yesterday’s intake reduction didn’t bother me as much as it might have. But I’d rather not revisit how my weekend started, I’d rather talk about how it ended. With chicken pies. Twenty-four half serving chicken pies. The entire time I was rolling out the dough, scenes from Sweeney Todd danced through my brain. Maybe I was hungrier than I thought.

For brunch, I used the remainder of some jasmine rice (just under 2 cups cooked, so about 1 cup uncooked) that was in the refrigerator, two eggs, about an ounce of garlic and some soy sauce to make fried rice. That comes to:
Rice – $0.27
Garlic – $0.22
Oil – $0.01
Eggs – $0.25
Soy – free (I’ll explain tomorrow)
Total – $0.77

Not too bad eh? Plenty of proteins and carbs to keep us going through the day until I could make my chicken pies. I didn’t even finish all of my (slightly smaller than Chad’s) portion, so he ate it later in the afternoon as snack.

I’d like the primary recipes for this month to stand alone, so the chicken pie will be getting it’s own post shortly. Don’t worry, I won’t forget, we’ll be eating them all week long. What I really wanted to post here was our costs and our nutrition for the day. So let me get that out of the way while I still remember to do it:

Calorie wise (and otherwise), yesterday was pretty poor. However, we didn’t have brunch until 11 am and didn’t start feeling hungry until around 6:15 pm or so. We ate at around 6:45 pm and felt pretty good about this first day. Today’s caloric intake should be much, much better.

Money wise, we did really well!  If this keeps up, I’ll be able to make some extra stuff to keep us healthier.  =)

Upcoming Posts:
- Chicken Pie Recipe
- Rules for February
- A few words about Coffee
- BREAD (it’s cheap!)