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Food for Thought – Day 13
For breakfast, my friend and host for the night cooked us breakfast – lucky for my wallet! (Thanks, Davey!)
For lunch, Ummmm…. I didn’t have time to stop for lunch today. Again, lucky for my wallet, but poor for my health.
For a roadtrip bevvy, my friend and passenger for the drive home, Meaghan, purchased one of those London fogs that I’ve been raving about. (Thanks, Meg!)
For dinner, a pot luck dinner party for a combined birthday/going away party. Pizzas, bruscettas, cupcakes, salads, veggies (maybe 2 servings of 5to10), dips and hummus at a cost of about $4 per person.
TOTAL for Day 13 = $4
Regrettably unhealthy, but under-budget!
R
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Food for Thought – Day 12
For breakfast, I enjoyed my traditional cup of tea, banana (1st of 5to10), cup of yogurt, and bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar. 94 cents.
For lunch, an omelette with red peppers, spinach, onion and garlic + an orange (2nd, 3rd, 4th). Of course, all were fresh purchases from the market this morning for a cost of about $1.50.
This weekend, Richard, my best mate from Australia came to town for a visit. It was an ultra busy week for everyone, so we took a time out to celebrate life and Richo’s arrival to Canada. We enjoyed the sunshine at a patio bistro, then went for sushi (5th of 5to10 and about $20 for the very necessary, very stress-free evening).
TOTAL for Day 12 = $22.44
WELL over-budget, but relatively necessary,
Rach
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Food For Thought: Day 13
Today was day two of our conference, and everything is coming along nicely. The good thing about today? All my meals are free! To be fair, though, I think I’ll subtract $7.50 from my total expenditures for the week, just because it does seem fairly unreasonable to think that most students would have this sort of opportunity on as frequent a basis as I have.
It’s been a really busy day, and a really long day, so I’m going to keep it short and simple. Since everything is being prepared for me today, it’s really hard to get a gauge on exactly how much I’m getting of the food groups, because I don’t always know what’s in everything. So, for simplicity, I’m not blogging that today or tomorrow, and I skipped it yesterday as well.
Andrew
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Food For Thought: Day 12
I’m pretty sure we need some sort of law against 9:30am classes on a Friday. After sleeping in the last few days due to being so sick, getting up at 8:00am was a bit of a shock to the system. Unfortunately, even though I’m still really not feeling well, I had to head to campus today because I had a paper/seminar combo in my morning class. I made a quick breakfast of some raisin toast and a banana with some orange juice to drink, and headed to campus. I normally fast on Fridays as I mentioned in a previous blog, but I know it’s not particularly healthy to do so while sick, so I decided I’d eat a small breakfast and lunch today. Lunch was in fact an apple, so small was no understatement.
The OUSA General Assembly started this afternoon, and as a delegate I’ll be extremely busy over the next couple of days, so these may be a bit shorter than usual. It was a great time on a number of fronts, though the best part may have been all the free food. Going to dinner at a restaurant is always a bit of a treat, but when you’re living primarily off of bread and pasta, going to a nice place for food is above and beyond the norm, that’s for sure. Dinner was great, and I sure am counting my blessings, as it were, that I got to be a delegate.
Well, until tomorrow.
Andrew
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Blog 14:
Well, I am REALLY tired right now. I think the only reason I am functioning at the moment is because my teams won both the ice hockey and ball hockey playoff games! I actually felt pretty good during the first bit of the hockey game in terms of energy, which is very surprisingly considering my diet for the day (which I will get to). However, the energy reserves quickly diminished by the mid-way point of the game and were not well replenished for the ball hockey game. Here is my diet for the day: cereal and a side of vanilla yogourt, lunch was paid for by my guest for an event I was running (totally unexpected–I was very thankful), and although I didnt eat an actual dinner, I did eat desserts and fingers foods in three locations (at the event I ran, at a meeting, and at a banquet). Those finger foods don’t exactly prepare you well for a go-go day like today (although Im glad I was able to munch on at least a few veggies). And by the way, the banquet was all crackers/cheese, desserts and chips (not healthy)–but hard to complain when it was free! However, upon thinking about that a bit, therein lies a problem; if you are ‘stocking up’ on unhealthy food like I was out of necessity (in other words, with an attitude of ‘this is free I better take advantage of it because I won’t be eating, or won’t be eating much otherwise’), you are not going to be making healthy food choices. Eating desserts and chips is not a bad thing in moderation, but when forced to eat more to simply stave-off hunger and save money, you are NOT doing your body any favours to say the least! Tomorrow I am going to a blood donor clinic so, unlike the last time I did this in high school, I better make sure I have a good breakfast and lunch beforehand so that I don’t faint…haha. Although, that will mean that dinner will suffer…c’est la vie I guess!
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Blog 13:
Wow what a day! Late night on Friday night, early morning today, 2 shows, massive clean-up, and celebrations afterwards. Long day and tiring day–that is for sure! My diet consisted of cereal, pizza for lunch and pizza for dinner (both slices from the Pizza Pizza on campus) which works out to about $7.40 (the pizza slice is not exactly cheap). Given the fact that I live farther away from campus, I did not have a chance to go home and make anything today and I figured that I would just get a slice on campus, and do some work in the little bit of down time we had between shows. Unfortunately (in terms of cost and the diet), I had to get a slice of pizza again simply because I was starving after the show and clean-up and realized that I had just enough money to buy a slice of pizza (greasy pepperoni) rather than a pita (grill chicken is what I usually get) which in and of itself costs more than $7.50! I was also lucky today to get a chance to talk to two of my fellow performers to get their perspectives on the campaign and the difficulties of trying to, not only live a healthy diet on $7.50/day, but to also do that while also being very involved in extra-curricular activities. I will post these as soon as I can! Stay tuned! Tomorrow should be an interesting day because I already know that I will be lacking sleep because I am writing this at 3am and I need to be awake by 8:30am (and I won’t be going to bed for a bit yet). I have a few meetings, an event to run, a banquet (hopefully there is good food! although Im not confident), and an ice hockey game and ball hockey game to play…wish me luck!
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Blog 12:
“You don’t know what you got until its gone…” …that is something very applicable to my Day 12 experience. You see, water is a very key component of what I do to get by on $7.50 per day or less. I need it for pasta, frozen veggies, KD, other food, and of course I drink lots of it! However, yesterday was rather difficult because the water at my townhouse was turned off due to repairs being done on some pipes. I could not do any of those things (along with not being able to do dishes or have a shower…). Luckily, I worked out today and just showered at the gym (which I like to avoid because the showers at the gym are really bad and freezing cold). However, I was not able to compensate very well for the lack of water while at home. I did buy some cheese and tomatoes on sale today (a break down of my grocery shop will come soon!) and I had some bread left so I made a grill cheese sandwich with tomato slices–quite good for you actually (minus the high fat cheese, but cheese is good for you though, just not in high quantities–not to mention it is expensive). The tomato is great too because you get a serving of veggies with your grill cheese and it make it taste better too (add some ketchup in there and that helps a bit BUT one must remember the high sugar and sodium content in ketchup!). So here is how the diet broke down today: cereal (whats the over/under bet going on right now for amount of days in a row eating cereal? haha), grill cheese, and pizza (back in the swing of things). The pizza slice was bought, but i was also lucky that a buddy of mine gave me an extra free slice and another buddy gave me some blueberry yogourt (great for you–not often cheap though); people have been very accomodating and helpful throughout this campaign to help me out when they could. I try to politely decline their offers as much as possible but when you are very hungry and/or someone offers you something healthy like yogourt, I feel positively inclined to take them up on the offer! Tonight’s performance went well! The crowd was very good and us performers had a great time as well! Tomorrow should be interesting! Two performances in one day with only a couple hours of free time in between–I ll let you know how it goes!
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Sunday, March 21, 2010
So this morning we woke up late again and I managed to eat two slices of toast with peanut butter and jam with a glass of milk before we went to Denny’s and I had a cup of tea that my boyfriend got me. Just as a side note, my friends thought it was ridiculous that I didn’t eat with them when we went out. My boyfriend and one of my friends had to leave right after brunch so they could get back in time to work but the rest of my friends stuck around for the rest of the afternoon before leaving. While they were there I had another peanut butter and jam sandwich with a glass of V8 juice. For an afternoon snack I had 2 servings of carrots. After they left I did myself up a box of KD and used some of the sauce from the BBQ Wieners that was still in the fridge. Then I had some peaches for dessert. The peaches cost $1.37. So my spending came to $6.94. I had 7 servings of vegetables, 5 servings of grains, 1 serving of milk and 2 servings of protein. My total spending for the week was $47.96 out of the possible $52.50. I had 3 free meals and I was sick 2 days.
Sarah Baker
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Saturday, March 20, 2010
So today my friends and I all slept in until my parents showed up. So to explain why my parents were here is a bit of a story. Essentially, after long debate, they decided that renting a moving truck to bring all my stuff home at the end of the semester was not a good idea and that they were going to start bring my stuff home a van full at a time. So this weekend was their first trip up to get furniture and boxes that I’d packed. They picked this weekend because all my friends would be around to help. So to start off they brought us donuts for breakfast. This was my first donut since about two weeks before the campaign began so I devoured it. (It was a walnut crunch.) Then after moving everything Mom and Dad took all of my friends and I and treated us to lunch for moving all the stuff. We went to Denny’s and I had blueberry pancake puppies with sausage and cheese hash browns and a cup of tea. Also, my Mom brought a chocolate cake to celebrate my birthday which is next weekend (the 27th.) Because all of this was free (thanks to my parents) and we were celebrating my birthday, I decided to go out to dinner with my friends. We went out to Legendz and I had a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce for $5.95 plus tax and I had water with it. Plus tax it was $6.85. When I got home I had a banana and some carrots. So my total for the day was $7.82. I had 3 servings of vegetables, 6 servings of grains, 1 serving of dairy and 2 servings of meat. I also spent the majority of my money on one meal.
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Friday, March 19, 2010
So this morning I got up and had my last bowl of miniwheats in this box, a glass of milk and a banana. Then at class I had a peanut butter and jam sandwich. Then in the afternoon all my friends from back home showed up. Now this is the hard part because they all wanted to go out for dinner…at Boston Pizza. So what I did was I made myself up a pasta with some mushrooms I got at the farmer’s marker this week before we went. It was plain macaroni with a tomato cream sauce. The macaroni cost $0.43 and the mushrooms cost $1.00. Then when we all went out I had a water and I treated myself by splitting one of the appetizers with my boyfriend, who also came up this weekend. The Bandera Pizza Bread cost me $3.00. So my total for the day was $8.55. I was a bit over and I probably should not have had the appetizer but it was good and I didn’t just want to sit there watching my friends eat. I had 4 servings of vegetables and fruit, 5 servings of grains, 1 serving of milk and 1 serving of protein.
Sarah Baker
