July I did an experiment...or as Gramma would have called it...did nothing at all.
Nowadays cooking everything I ate from scratch ingredients myself for an entire month is not the norm.
By "ingredients" I mean no premixes (no "cake mix" "pancake mix" etc)flavored coffee, bag-o-salad, prepped veggies from the store...whole veg and fruit YES, cut veg and fruit NO.
There were 2 exception meals. I was invited to join friends in a meal made my a visitor from out of state. They actually made almost everything from ingredients! I had a few store bought pickles and some pimento stuffed olives. The main dishes were bean soup from dry beans and chili with meat. I had quite a bit of chili. It was great! I skipped the crackers and bread.
Fortunately I like making mustard so I had that as a condiment. Along with all the flavored vinegars I make. I needed to buy some kombucha from the folks who supply me with kombucha vinegar for free. SO...I re-brewed the kombucha with berries and mango skins. It re-fermented and we called it good.
The other exception meal was a pre-committed meal at a work event my department was hosting. It would be odd to cater a meal and refuse to eat it! We catered in bbq pork sliders, raw veggies with dip (they were cut and I ate them but I skipped the "ranch"...I hate "ranch" so that was an easy miss). We also had some coleslaw and another salad. No pastries or cookies which was a choice by someone else, though I validate it in general. The sliders were good!
I definitely appreciated the meals I didn't cook and clean up from more than usual.
It was easy. I just needed to think through the next day at some point of an evening. If I had a field day coming up, I made sure I had a "grab n go" option ready for the morning. Mostly this was nuts and whole fruit or clean whole veg. A few times it was boiled eggs and salad in one of my thrifted tiffins (those metal multi-tiered lunch carriers popular in India). It gets lots of use and even more this month! One person traveling with me was so impressed he kept asking about the tiffin. I had a spare, also thrifted, that I use very little so I gave it to him the next day.
Salad in a mason jar with nuts and chia seeds for protein is another good option.
I've been doing my own salad dressings for years so that's easy. Just throw vinegar and oil and whatever herbs/spices are handy, bit of fresh ground pepper. A dollop of my homemade mustard if I'm feeling fancy. I'm not much on sweetening them. All about the savory salads.
Once the serviceberries were coming on, a handful of those went in pretty much everything.
I am growing greens so actually went the whole month just eating my own greens. The bugs destroyed all but one kind this week so greens options are getting a bit thin.
For meat/eggs....lots of my friend's free range eggs that she lets me "u-pick" without washing or refrigerating. I ran out late last week and got a bit creative over the weekend. At work we had canned a goat and no one seemed to want it so I've been eating up the goat meat to free up the jars. We also got free salmon at work and I took one, cleaned it and am keeping it in the work freezer (a tiny one). I took a piece home now and then to thaw and cook.
I have a fishing license and could have made more use of that or any use, if things got thin. I also have good sources of frozen, local free range meat at a couple of farmers markets.
On days I was home, or going to be home in the late afternoon rather than not until late evening, I set up my simple solar cooker so lunch or dinner would be ready. Even used it for late morning coffee sometimes but that's normal. A new favorite meal is solar cooked quinoa and lentils with dried tomato and some herbs and a handful of service berries. When it is done cooking, I thrown on vinegar, oil, pepper and a bit of salt.
Normally I don't add salt because any food not prepped at home is incredibly SALTY which bloats me up like a tic, My sodium intake was consistently low to the point that on hot sweaty days, I actually included some salt to compensate.
Another result: I saved a boatload of money! Came in at about half my usual food spend, which is groceries and all meals out and coffee out. So that helps. I've cut back on meals out, coffee out is rare now, but I do buy pre-made bread at farmers markets and etc.
One factor in the low food bill is that my serviceberry bushes were bonkers so I ate a TON and have 7 or 8 quarts in kombucha vinegar to keep for the off season. Critters were eating the free potatoes I planted so I harvested those and ate them. Then all the canning at work resulted in quite a bit of free protein. I have had coffee in stock and got a gift of another pound of coffee so didn't need to even buy coffee beans.
Still...what I did buy is clearly cheaper than prepared food. For example, today I restocked with some ingredients, keep the habits going, and spent: 20$ for 4doz eggs and 8.50$ for a weeks worth of veggies.
I expect another 30$ this week to stock up my coffee, grains, and dry beans/lentils because those are all pretty tapped out.
I learned that having nuts on hand keeps me from running to the store for fieldwork lunches when I have low supplies of grab-n-go food. Nuts or seeds and an apple or orange can get me through a day.
There is likely more but I'm supposed to be focused on a webinar...
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