First update

I told you it would probably be awhile before I got back :P Okay, so where am I at with my "Clean Eating" plan. Well, I'm not going to lie. The first two weeks were easy because I still have a ton of processed food in my fridge and freezer. But lets look at what I bought:

 From the farmers market on campus: total $6.65

 From Walmart. The thing in the back is my new compost bucket. I'm very excited about it :) This is my first experience with Greek yogurt, it's not bad. I have to sweeten my smoothies with honey but it's okay. In the front, bread from a new German bakery in town. So yummy! Total: $18.56 (for food only)

Last Sunday I went to the Cambridge Farmers Market and picked up a few items. Local honey for $5, mushrooms-$3, bananas-$1.27 and the items wrapped in brown paper: honey ham lunch meat-$.98, feta-$3, havarti-$2.50. The other items were from Vincenzos, a local high quality grocery store. Beans-$1.64, roma tomatoes-$.70, basil and rosemary-$1.39 each. Total: $20.87

Not pictured is the $12.76 I spent at Longo's on salad fixings. In some ways this doesn't count because I did it so I wouldn't have to go out to eat which would have been a lot more than that. I'll count it though because I still have some of that food.

I also spent $4 this last week at the campus farmers market. That's a total of $62.84 in two weeks. Not horrible but I think I can make do with less. I've been eating well though :)

April will be different because I'm not in class. Being home means I'll have more time to prepare food which should be good. It may also mean that I eat more though. We'll see :)

Real food, whole food, slow food, clean eating, etc.

I know I haven't used this blog in over two years, and in that time my life circumstances have changed a lot. I quit my well paying job, moved across the country and took on the life of a student along with a part time job. Unfortunately my spending habits (which weren't great to begin with) didn't quite follow suite and now I am finding myself scrambling on the financial side.

This combined with my recent discovery of this blog: 100 Days of Real Food has prompted me to revisit this abandoned blog. The first series of posts that I read on the Real Food blog was "100 Days on a Budget". If she can afford to feed her family of four on $125/week WITHOUT buying processed food, then I'm pretty sure I can live on a lot less, and still eat "real food". I haven't decided what "less" will be. Definitely not $7.13 a day although that is only $50 a week. The other key to this is that I need to eat what is is in my cupboard. I have a really bad habit of stock piling food and I need to break that. Case in point. In the last four weeks or so, I have spent the following:

Walmart: $22.99 (assorted grocery items)
Farmers Market: $11 (fresh veggies and bagels)
Milk: $4.47

$38.46 in just short of four weeks and my cupboards are still full. Granted I am out of eggs and I'm running low on veggies but as far as dry/frozen foods, I'm gold. So, my challenge for this summer is to eat through what is in my cupboards (again) and ONLY buy "real food". That means that I'll eat the processed food/white rice/pasta/etc that I have on hand, but my goal is to substantially increase my "real food" consumption over the next few months. Plus, I'm planning on moving to Georgia in January 2013 for one semester of school so I want to get my food stock down to just perishables by then. From past experience (ie, when I moved from BC) it takes at least that long.

So call it real food, whole food, slow food, clean eating, low/no sugar/flour, student budget, whatever you want - this is what I am aiming for. I'm not going to commit to posting regularly either. For all I know it could be May before I get back here, or it could be tomorrow. I don't know that anyone follows this blog anyway, but if you do, wish me luck! And welcome to my journey.