Eating On $3 A Day For 30 days Food Challenge Begins Nov 1st.

[arakboss]

Coleslaw baby! Super cheap. Cabbage, carrots, Celery, Mayo, a little sugar, a little vinegar, a little lemon juice, a little cilantro, and a little horse radish. Cabbage is cheap, and lasts fairly well.

I have a head in the fridge. I am lazy and use bottled cole slaw dressing. I add apples, pineapple and sometimes grapes along with carrots and cabbage. I save the celery for peanut butter dipping

 

[OldBroad44]

Winter salad will be my lunch today! Thanks for the posts, very imfornative.

If you include hard boiled eggs, cheese, chunks of cold cooked chicken or turkey breasts, or cooked beans of a mild flavored variety, Winter Salad becomes a whole meal. White beans are always mild flavored. White Garbanzo are especially nice in salads. The classic heirloom beans Jacob's Cattle and Soldier are mild flavored. Pinto and black beans are too full flavor ed for this use and overwhelm the flavor of the vegetables. Seinfeld sauerkraut is delicious and crunchy, even though its in jars. Most commercial sauerkraut brands are mushy. Winter Salad is even better the second day.

 

[arakboss]

My wife bless her heart doesn't believe we are going to suffer through any serious economic trouble. Because of that belief she thinks that the saving money on food is unnecessary. Me thinks she just doesn't want to quit eating out. Maybe I watch to much gloom and doom on CNBC. Or maybe since my wage increases are few and far between I have a greater motivation to save money on stuff I am going to be sending down to the sewage plant. I would rather add primers, projectiles and powder to the shelves than taco bell wrappers to the garbage can.

 

[arakboss]

If you include hard boiled eggs, cheese, chunks of cold cooked chicken or turkey breasts, or cooked beans of a mild flavored variety, Winter Salad becomes a whole meal. White beans are always mild flavored. White Garbanzo are especially nice in salads. The classic heirloom beans Jacob's Cattle and Soldier are mild flavored. Pinto and black beans are too full flavor ed for this use and overwhelm the flavor of the vegetables. Seinfeld sauerkraut is delicious and crunchy, even though its in jars. Most commercial sauerkraut brands are mushy. Winter Salad is even better the second day.

I bought an acorn squash yesterday. I am going to try adding it to my stir fry and soups. $.38 a lb

I have added chick peas to macaroni salad before and they were mild flavored.

 

[OldBroad44]

I bought an acorn squash yesterday. I am going to try adding it to my stir fry and soups. $.38 a lb

I have added chick peas to macaroni salad before and they were mild flavored.

Chickpeas in English = garbanzos in Spanish. Cicer arietinum. Most people in the maritime NW call them garbanzos. Now is when the fall/winter squash of the Cucurbita pepo varieties are prime. This includes nearly all the acorn varieties that are sold commercially and the delicata types and many pumpkins. The delicata varieties such as Candystick Dessert Delicata, Honeyboat Delicata, Zeppalin Delicata, and Sugarloaf--Hessel Delicata are more delicious than any acorn. Also try the acorn Festival, which is a hybrid of a delicata and an acorn. Candystick tastes like a Medjool date. The delicata squash have tender edible skins. If any of these fall squash are unsweet or astringent or starchy it means they were picked too early or were not cured after picking. Most squash don't get cured, a major reason why squash isn't very popular. To cure squash just bring it indoors with the people and let it sit in a bowl or on a shelf for about three weeks before eating. These squash don't store well. They lose sweetness and flavor and become stringer if eaten much after New Years.

 

[OldBroad44]

Now we need some meat. You all probably know about hunting the big game animals in season. You can hunt and trap rabbits and nutria year round. A friend of mine whose garden is regularly attacked by nutria says they taste good. He traps them in live traps and shoots them in the trap. Some gophers are as big as the rabbits and are easy to trap with cinch traps. Haven't tasted any but they are vegetarian, so my guess is they taste good. Raccoons and opposums are eaten in the South. But they are often captured and caged and fed windfall apples and other garden produce for a few weeks to sweeten and fatten them. Probably not legal here. Critters that have been eating fish, dog food, or garbage may be pretty rank unless sweeten up that way. If you were desperate enough...a strong barecue sauce with plenty if gsrlic covers many sins. Then some cities have pigeons.... And of course there are fish.

However, I think the most attractive approach is to find the right person and help him butcher in exchange for meat. You want someone with just a few steers, lambs/sheep, turkeys,, ducks, geese, or chickens. Someone raising meat primarily for his own family with just a few extras to cover feed costs. Such as the guy selling veggies and maybe eggs at the farners market. (You have to have a lot of insurance to sell meat at the farmers market, so if you are, you have many animals and are set up for butchering or use a USDA butcer.)The guy selling fruit or vegetables probably has a few animals for the family and a few more to sell by the whole animal to cover feed costs. Someone who hates butchering and doesn't have any help. Or enough help. Offer to help butcher the steer in exchange for a front quarter plus the stuff they don't want such as the head, hide, lungs, and liver if they don't like liver. Then offer to sell the hide and horns if there are any on Craigs list. Offer to kill and butcher their two dozen chickens all by yourself in exchange for a third of them. Or offer to take their old unproductive chickens off their hands, swapping something you want to get rid of or some of the fruit you've scrounged. Then you slow roast these old tough birds till they are tender. Or slow cook them in barbecue sauce. And they make chicken soup that is way more flavorful than you get with young birds.

 

[arakboss]

I am hoping to have my metabolic rate restored and stabilized by the end of the year. To ring in the New Year and keep my food challenges interesting, I am going to try a month long $1.25 Tree Store Diet Challenge. I will up my budget to $4 a day and everything I eat (minus spices and condiments) will come from Dollar Store. I found lots of one day dollar store eating challenges and some that extended it to a week. I didn't see any month long challenges, maybe because the participants died from starvation or malnutrition

I rarely buy food products at the dollar store so it will be a new experience for me to get the bulk of my calories from there.

The goal will be to see if I can get sufficient calories to maintain weight and feel good by the end of the month, on a $4 a day budget. I doubt I will spend much on their veggies and fruit thus I will rely on my multi vitamin to keep me alive.


This gal made a decent haul for $10 (pre-inflation) days.

 

[arakboss]

I have been eating veggies like they are going out of style. I am now starting to eat some more grains. I just polished off a good size bowl of oatmeal with some acorn squash added to it. It wasn't great but it wasn't bad.

The start of my $3 a day diet is only a couple of weeks away. I decided to do an all cereal diet for the week leading up to Nov 1st. The guy in the video below tried it and said he felt pretty good energy wise. I should be well adapted to grains by Nov 1st. Then I have to worry about acclimating to beans. My guidelines are going to allow for a lot more choice than he gave himself. I will allow for hot cereals like oatmeal, cream of wheat, grits, other grains and I will be using milk or milk subsitutes instead of water on my cereals. I also have raisins, dried apples and dried banana chips I will add to some cereals (if they are still edible). I will attempt 7 days of eating cereal only beginning Oct 25th through Oct 31st.

 

[oremike]

I know this might offend your delicate sensibilities but around here the local food bank/churches/gleaners give away fruit and vegetable boxes to any that want them. It's different than the food stamp food boxes. It's more farmer extra that they would rather see eaten rather than go to waste.

 

[arakboss]

Bimart has 8lb bags of Jonagold apples for $7 and 10lb bags of potatoes for $2. Both of these items are a great deal these days.

 

[arakboss]

I know this might offend your delicate sensibilities but around here the local food bank/churches/gleaners give away fruit and vegetable boxes to any that want them. It's different than the food stamp food boxes. It's more farmer extra that they would rather see eaten rather than go to waste.

I wanted to leave that food for somebody who needs it more than I but thanks for the tip. My mom has been getting free meat and bread products from a neighbor and she has passed on some of it to me. The products are at or past sell by dates but so far most of it has been fine to eat.

There are some near or past pull date bakery goods I can get for a $.50 donation per item and sometimes they have entire cakes, dozen donut boxes, all kinds of fancy french breads, bagels, etc available. I have been avoiding the items because of my diet but I may indulge one of these days soon.


Jimmy John's is another source for cheap bread. They sell their slightly less than fresh breads for .50 a loaf. If you grab some plan on using them that day as they dry out quickly. The bread is fairly dense and makes great french bread.

 

[Lilhigbee]

I wanted to leave that food for somebody who needs it more than I but thanks for the tip

You might talk to the folks running the donation center. The American Legion here often gets a donation of food boxes to give away and the volunteers wind up taking lots of it home because they run out of people to give the food to long before they run out of food. They may be happy to see you to have someone to give the food to before it spoils.

 

[arakboss]

You might talk to the folks running the donation center. The American Legion here often gets a donation of food boxes to give away and the volunteers wind up taking lots of it home because they run out of people to give the food to long before they run out of food. They may be happy to see you to have someone to give the food to before it spoils.

That is where my mom is getting the food. Her neighbor volunteers at a post and that neighbor is always trying give food out to the neighbors. Sometimes the food is not good but overall it is safe to eat and the price is right (free). There seems to be no shortage of donated food around the metro area. Your quality standards may have to be adjusted a little but as Tom always said, "free is a very good price"

 

[OldBroad44]

I know this might offend your delicate sensibilities but around here the local food bank/churches/gleaners give away fruit and vegetable boxes to any that want them. It's different than the food stamp food boxes. It's more farmer extra that they would rather see eaten rather than go to waste.

Right. When the farm I collaborate with grows winter squash of varieties I've bred, we use the biggest and best to harvest seed to clean and sell to retail seed stores. The biggest fruits produce bigger more vigorous seed. The second best we and our volunteers eat as well as share with a local adult disabled home and sometimes with a local church that produces meals for the poor. Third best get sold in farmers markets, where they are still as old or better than other people's best. Then we invite in he local gleaners group, who take all the rest These are undersized mostly, but are still good food. Every squash plant that produced multiple big fruit produces a couple of undersized ones too. These taste just as good but you have to use more to get a meal. Many small local farms participate in such gifting with the fresh vegetables or fruit that is undersized or blemished but is still good food.

 

[arakboss]

Starting $3 a day diet tonight. Current weight is 189lbs. I need to try and maintain around this weight. Odd days will be high carb, lower fat. Even days will be low carb, higher fat. I should get sufficient protein without making an effort to count it.

Tomorrow morning, I am getting more free meat and eggs from my mom that her neighbor brought over. She brought her bread too but she chucked the bread thinking it didn't look like it would last.

I am going to cook up some beans tomorrow morning and start introducing those into my diet on high carb days. Not looking forward to the digestion adaption period for the beans but I finally feel adapted to grains.

 

[OldBroad44]

Hello @arakboss . in skimming back through your posts I note the dried fruit. Dried fruit seems to act more like candy than like fruit. Its concentrated sugar. And can cause the runs. At least if you eat it the way I tend to if I have any. Which is to eat all there is straight. Just in case you get tempted to pig out on it instead of putting it in your cerial.

Note that mostly carbs without fat are digested much more rapidly than carbs in a meal with some fat. This can cause blood sugar spikes, which causes you to overproduce insulin. The high insulin level can cause you to ship all that high amt of blood sugar into fat cells and make fat, and cause a blood sugar level drop so fast and to such low levels you both get shaky and also crave more food, even though you just ate an hour ago. And you especially crave more carbs or sweets, just what created the problem in the first place.. If you find yourself craving more carbs or sweats after a high carb grain meal, get some fat in there. Or switch to carbs that are slower to digest. Grain and potato carbs are fast to digest without some fat to slow things down. Beans also have carbs which are slow to be digested.

As for adjusting to beans. It helps if you cook them yourself starting with dry beans. Commercial canned beans will create more digestive issues. I think they either don't soak the beans, dont soak them long enough or don't change the water while soaking. My home cooked beans are a lot easier on the digestive track than commercial beans. I soak a quart of beans in at least a gallon of water for at least eight hours or until beans are all fully swollen. It can take longer and depends on species and variety and how old beans are. It is necessary to stir the beans every few hours, especially at first. The bean seeds are "imbibing" water, the first stage in germination. Its an active process that requires oxygen. A lot of biochemustry is happening. Beans are converting storage products into active molecules and preparing to germinate.So if you don't stir the imbibing beans they use up all the oxygen in the water at the bottom of the container, and many beans die instead of fully swelling, especially those at the bottom of the bean layer. I also replace the water a couple of times during the imbibing phase with fresh water with a fresh batch of oxygen in it. This also helps by getting rid of most of the bacteria that may start to grow in the water as well as the educated leaves out of the beans. That last was the contribution of Autocorrect. Let's try that again. as well as the exudates that leach out of the beans.

Instruction s for cooking beans often give an alternate method that starts with just boiling beans briefly. Then letting them sit an hour or so to absorb water. Then cooking. Beans so prepared don't taste as good and are much harder on the digestive system than the first method I gave. An exception is all cowpeas including black eyed peas and ordinary dry peas. These are fine to just cook without soaking. Dry peas are especially easy on the gut.

Good luck with your diet experiment, Arakboss. Keep us posted .

 

[arakboss]

I was 190.2 last night after my high carb day. Today was low carb day and this evening I weighed 186.4.

 

[CamoDeafie]

I was 190.2 last night after my high carb day. Today was low carb day and this evening I weighed 186.4.

So.. 4 pounds of poop?

 

[arakboss]

So.. 4 pounds of poop?

I did have a good BM today but I think most of the weight drop was water.

 

[OldBroad44]

Apparent changes in weight below about 5 lbs don't mean much. For starters, unless your scale is more than a typical bathroom scale, its probably only reproducible within about 2 or three lbs. In fact, when I use my bathroom scale I step onto it, note weight, step off and move the scale a little, step on again, note weight, etc, for three measurement, and circle and count the median. They usually vary over 3lbs.

Second, you can, indeed, hold 2 or more lbs of feces and urine. If you take mostly one big dump sometime in the morning you might want to step on the scale after instead of sometimes before and sometimes after. Finally, your tissues can be holding variable amounts of water that can easily add another couple of pounds of variability. If you've eaten more salt your tissues hold more water for a while. If you weigh yourself with clothes on that introduces more variability. Given all these factors, during periods when I was tracking my weight I found it unuseful to weigh myself more than once a week. Or to consider as significant anything less than 5 lbs of change unless it persisted the following week.