Eating Healthy on a Budget: Food Diary #2

Hello all, thank you for you patience! Here is the second half of my food diary for the first week of this series. As a bonus, my flatmate returned from a trip home with a substantial harvest of home-grown plums, three cheers for fresh fruit!
It's been seven days since my shop, what am I left with? On Thursday morning I had two eggs and a banana spare for a pancake breakfast. Otherwise, I am left with just a small amount of lettuce, one remaining potato, the tinned corn, and half the cheese.  This means that none of the produce has gone to waste and that I bought a good amount of food to last the week. I was lucky to be able to get a few free snacks, from the haul of plums, but I have enough odds and ends in the pantry that I could have easily made it work without. I have been a little lacking in appetite this week for a few reasons, and it has been too hot for my morning run, so it would be usual for me to eat a little more than this (I often snack on flourless, sugar-free mug cakes to top up for the day but didn't feel the need this week). The following is the remainder of my food diary, and below is my intention for shopping and blogging this week. Enjoy!

Sunday
Breakfast - Pumpkin pancakes and a banana on the side (recipe!)

Lunch – Lettuce and cucumber salad with lots of olive oil

Snack – Tangelo

Dinner – Quick Spanish stew-like dish of fried chorizo, 1/2 tin of diced tomatoes, 1 diced carrot, 1 tbsp olive oil, topped with grated cheese

Protein: 49g

Monday
Breakfast - Brown rice porridge with a sliced banana and splash of soy milk, 1 plum
Lunch - Lettuce, cucumber and tomato salad with tuna
Snack - 1 plum

Dinner - Spanish tortilla, served with mixed veggies and a handful of grated cheese.

For those unaware, a Spanish tortilla, or Spanish omelette, is a dish similar to a frittata, consisting of just potatoes and egg (and sometimes onion, depending on who you ask!).  It's a really simple dish, full of protein and healthy starches, totally delicious, and very budget-friendly. One tortilla (5 or 6 eggs and one medium potato) makes two serves or four snacks.
Protein: 48g


Tuesday
Breakfast - Smoothie: 1 banana, 1 tbsp cocoa, 1 cup soy milk, 1 plum, 1 tbsp quinoa flakes
Quinoa flakes are another handy to thing have in the pantry, but are definitely on my "luxury items" list!
Lunch - Lettuce, tomato, cucumber salad with tuna and olive oil

#mealprep

Snack - 1 plum
Dinner - Spanish tortilla, served with mixed veggies
Protein: 57g

Recipe, as above

Wednesday
Breakfast - Banana pancakes

Lunch - Lettuce and cucumber salad with tuna (my last tin!)
Snack  - 1 plum
Dinner - Lamb stew with quinoa, left over from earlier in the week
Protein: 56g

 


It's supermarket day today.  I'm aware for my shop that I still have my frozen vegetables and oven fries in the freezer, and I've checked the in-store specials - if you are in NZ and ready to shop today, Countdown is selling size 16 whole fresh chickens for $9, which is a decent price, and I'll be describing how to make the most of a whole chicken in the blog this week.  I will also be posting some recipes, starting later today with no-grain pancakes and continuing with a few more simple baking recipes. If you have any questions or comments, let me know!

I'm baa-aack

Hey guys,

A lot has changed for me since my last post.  I've moved to a new city, started studying for my Master's and read a LOT of food research that has led to many changes in my dietary habits.  Now that I'm back on a student budget and food is on my brain more than ever before, I want to start writing on the topic again.  I don't want to make any promises about content or frequency of posts but stay tuned if you are interested in non-prescriptivist diets, low carb recipes and interesting food science facts.

xx Aimee

First Week Update

Ok, so it's been one week since I started to really put a bit more effort into my eating habits.  I have not been perfect - as you can see from the last post there was a flat pizza night and I did have a Quarter Pounder on Wednesday (just the burger, no fries!) but I've made a massive improvement on my previous habits.  I already feel a lot more energised, and I'm not as tempted to sit on the couch and watch TV all day.
As well as making a conscious effort to eat better, I've also started taking an iron supplement once a day - I can't say whether or not this is what's behind my energy increase but I think it usually takes a couple of weeks for iron levels to improve from a supplement so I'd say my overall dietary changes are probably the cause.
I'm finding the diary very helpful, I've found it more beneficial to log what I've eaten for a few consecutive days than to try to maintain it non stop, but I can already really see where and why I need improvements.  Planning ahead is key - the meal plan I made last week was really helpful but once I'd got to day four, I had a few rushed meals that weren't as balanced as I'd have liked.  Although I intend to plan ahead more, I'm trying to negate the impact of the rush by cramming in lots of veggies into my "last minute" meals.  For example last night, after a long-ish day at work I just wanted something yum to eat.  I decided on Mexican but instead of making it with minced beef and not much else, I made it entirely out of vegetables.  Into the pan went three portions of frozen spinach, a half cup of green beans, a few chopped mushrooms, half a can of kidney beans, half a can of tomatoes and some Mexican seasoning.  I used baked taco shells instead of burritos or wraps and added a wee bit of grated Edam instead of sour cream.  Not a perfect meal by any stretch, and I probably made a little too much, but it was packed with a variety of vegetables, contained a protein source and was relatively low in fat!

I'm still wanting to experiment more and hopefully today I'll be doing a bit of "healthy baking". Last week I made a no-added-sugar banana bread which was really tasty, I might make it again soon and post the recipe.  I tweaked it a little bit and replaced the ground almond from the original recipe with wholemeal flour because of the cost.  I was a bit worried about the fat content since there was no butter and the only oils in the recipes came from the almond, shredded coconut and some peanut butter but it was actually really moist in the end!  It's funny how this all makes me realise how much I was taught growing up about the chemistry of baking!
If I do some more cooking today I'll make sure to post recipes and results up here.
Have a good day!
:)