I’ve been keeping a grocery price book for 6 months now (see my current info).

I usually visit anywhere from two to three grocery store on my shopping day: Vitamin Cottage, Albertsons, King Soopers and/or Safeway. While my price book doesn’t keep track of what I buy at each store, I’ve started to get a feel for where I want to buy what. My observations below are only relevant for Longmont, CO. I don’t know how much this varies in other places.

• Vitamin Cottage – Best place to buy bulk food items such as oats and nuts. The produce section is organic and, depending on the season, can sometimes beat the prices of non-organic produce at the other stores. If one is specifically looking for organic produce, Vitamin Cottage often (but not always) has the cheapest prices). They also have the best prices for the type of eggs I like buying and organic yogurt. Somewhat surprisingly, King Soopers usually sells Silk Soy Milk cheaper.
• Albertsons – The non-organic produce they sell tends to be the cheapest of all the grocery stores. Unfortunately, it’s also often not in very good shape. Usually has the best prices on non-specialty grocery items such as canned beans and vegetables. I also usually buy my whole wheat pasta there because they seem to be the only ones that carry my favorite brand, Bella Terra.
• King Soopers – This is my favorite general purpose grocery store. The prices are usually reasonable and even their specialty organic products are sometimes affordable (Muir Glen tomatoes are ofter twice as expensive at Albertsons as they are in King Soopers). Also, dairy products, specifically milk, are often the cheapest here. The only big downside is their French Bread contains two items that I’ve been trying to avoid: hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup.
• Safeway – I usually don’t buy much at Safeway. While their produce and other grocery products are usually the best quality, they also cost more. Safeway has organic equivalents of almost every product they sell but you pay for it. I usually don’t buy anything at Safeway unless they have a good sale on items I need that week or I’m buying French Bread. Of the three major grocery stores, their French Bread is the only one that contains neither hydrogenated oil or high fructose corn syrup.

I’ve worked on Sundays ever since starting work at the library. While in the reference department, I worked Sundays to compensate for never working Saturdays. However, I grew to like the schedule. While I liked working Sundays, it was difficult finding a good weekday to take off. Originally, I tried taking Fridays off. This had the advantage of my two days off being side by side. Unfortunately, the library district likes having meetings on Friday since we open later that day. So, I was showing up on about 1/3 of my days off anyway.

Initially when I moved to IT, I had a normal Monday through Friday work week. However, I had gotten use to having a weekday off. Also, there are certain maintenance tasks I have to do on a routine basis that take the system down for several hours. My normal practice was to do this Friday morning. However, we have one library that opens at 7 AM on Fridays. So, I decided to change back to working on Sundays. The library doesn’t open till 1 PM on Sundays so I have 5 hours in which to tinker with the system before everything has to be working again. This time, I decided to try to take Monday as my day off. While I no longer have two days off in a row, meetings are rarely scheduled for Monday (too tired from the weekend?).

I’ve had this schedule for several years now and have been quite happy with it. However, working on Sundays means that Jaeger and I have only 1 common day off. To rectify this deficiency, I have decided to start taking the second Sunday of every month off (and work the following Monday instead). I considered celebrating this change of schedule by Jaeger and I going out and eating brunch on Sunday (I try to avoid commerce on Saturday so we very rarely eat brunch together). However, it just occurred to me that this Sunday is Mother’s Day so the restaurants will probably be mobbed. Hm, maybe next month . . .

I’m very unimaginative when it comes to food I eat for a normal breakfast/lunch. Unless it’s my day off, I don’t spend nearly enough time enjoying the meal to care about it deeply. Thus, for breakfast I eat oatmeal combined with various fruits and nuts and for lunch I alternate between a Toasted Peanut Butter and Jam Sandwich or Yogurt (depending on the fat content of the rest of my meals) followed by a Luna bar.

Today I got a little more creative than usual with my yogurt and concocted a Chocolate and Raspberry Yogurt combination. It turned out a bit better than I expected. I think I’m going to add it to my normal lunch rotation.

It’s almost time for another Fest. Since food somehow ended up being a critical component of Festing, I’ve started thinking about what dishes I might make. I mentioned to Jaeger that I might try being a bit healthier than usual and he suggested we have vegetarian sushi. This seemed like a good idea to me but while sushi can be served by itself, it seems more like an appetizer than a main meal.

After pondering this for a while, either Jaeger or I came up with the idea of recreating Tokyo Joes’ Boulder Veggie Bowl. I was a little dubious about recreating the sauces but Jaeger informed me that we could buy these separate from Tokyo Joes.

So, tonight I made my first attempt at creating the Boulder Veggie Bowl. It turned out pretty decent except I included about twice as many vegetables as I should have. Based on Jaeger’s feedback I refined the recipe and you can now see it’s current incarnation here. I think the trickiest part is steaming the vegetables so they’re cooked but not limp.

Jaeger and I are contemplating tackling the sushi experiment Sunday. However, I suspect that Jaeger is first going to insist we pick up a genuine sushi mat.

I have recently become addicted to the Nutz Over Chocolate Luna protein bars. They taste pretty good, are just under 200 calories and have 10 grams of protein in them. However, I have a hard time justifying paying $1/bar.

I’ve found many recipes for energy/protein bars. However, almost all of them have more than 200 calories a bar or the serving size is minuscule. Today I tried making my own protein bars. The results were not pretty. Part of the problem is I used organic puffed brown rice. I was thinking it would be a “purer” substitute for Rice Krispies. However, the puffed rice gets downright soggy when combined with my chocolate mixture. Maybe I should just stick to my expensive Luna bars.

Well, I messed up yesterday. As normal, I had planned my meals ahead of time. I had a smoothie for breakfast with 2 vegan muffins (based on the Lemon Raspberry Muffins). For lunch I had Red Lentil Dal with Rice and then Butter Pecan ice cream. So far, so good. However, I diverged from my supper plans.

Jaeger and I went for a short hike later in the afternoon. On the way back to the car, I got the urge to make cookies (it just seems like a traditional way to end Sabbath ). In my head, I calculated it out and decided I probably had enough calories left to have a supper consisting of two cookies and a cup of hot chocolate (no, not healthy but within my calorie tolerances).

Unfortunately, I can’t make cookies without snagging raw cookie dough. I hadn’t counted on this when figuring out if I could afford to eat cookies or not. I estimate that I probably ate the equivalent of two cookies in dough before they even got baked. I knew I should probably just quit and call those my two cookies (especially since these are Jaeger’s favorite cookies, not mine) but that felt like deprivation.

Just as the cookies were coming out of the oven, some friends of ours called and invited us over to their house. They had apple pie. Long story short, for supper I had 2 raw cookies, 3 baked cookies and a slice of apple pie. I estimate that this exceeded by daily calorie goal by around 630 calories.

While the calorie part bothers me, what bothers me worst about the whole experience is toward the end I wasn’t hungry. I was just eating. I got home and was planning to go to bed but my stomach was extremely unhappy at the abuse I had put it through. I got back out of bed and exercised for about 30 minutes. It was a little happier by the time I went to bed but I still didn’t sleep well. I really need to work on remembering how sick I feel when I eat too much.

Oh well, another day, another calorie goal

While on the USDA site looking at their food plans, I ran across a publication called Expenditures on Children by Families. It’s very interesting. I’ve been starting to try to calculate the financial cost of children on our lifestyle but without any real life experience, it’s been difficult. While I realize these numbers aren’t refined enough for true budgeting, they provide a nice starting place

I have a problem spending more money on groceries than we allocate for in our budget. We budget $425/month for groceries which to me seems excessive for two people. This is just grocery money, we have a completely different account for eating out (though we rarely eat out). In spite of a generous food budget, I’m negative by about a month. Overall, our other budget items have enough surplus to carry the negative food balance but it’s still distressing.

Part of this negative balance is due to me trying an experiment. I decided to buy a half summer produce share from Monroe Organic Farms. A librarian I use to work with highly recommended them. I had saved up a little bit but not enough to cover the entire costs. If we’re very lucky, I’m hoping that the half share might save us money during the summer months. However, never participating in a program like this before, I don’t want to bet on a summer food budget surplus.

A couple of weeks ago, I looked at the budget and decided that I really needed to start being more frugal. So, I’ve drawn up a “get out of food debt” plan. If I reduce my spending to $75 a week, I’ll be out of grocery debt by the end of August.

The first week, I went over by about ten dollars but last week I met my goal! I’m not sure how sustainable this amount is for our lifestyle but it’ll be an interesting challenge.

I love bread. However, I’m not very good at making it. I don’t know if it’s the recipes or my technique but my breads never seem to turn out quite right.

A couple of weeks ago I decided that it was time to learn how to make good bread. Using a combination of the library’s catalog and Amazon, I determined that there were two books most people agreed were excellent bread books:

1. The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart and
2. Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman.

Happily, Weld Library District owned one and Longmont Public Library owned the other. Unfortunately, they were both checked out. I put holds on both of them but impatience got the better of me so I also checked out from Weld The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

Last Thursday night, I read Beranbaum’s first chapter, “The Ten Essential Steps of Making Bread,” and then flipped through the rest of the book looking for a recipe that wanted to be made. A hearth bread, the “Tyrolean Ten-Grain Torpedo,” caught my attention. I decided that I’d make the bread and serve it Monday night with a Artichoke and Cheese Sandwich topping.

It seems like most of the breads in The Bread Bible require quite a bit of work. The Tyrolean bread is no exception First, you must start the sponge the night before. The next day you finish making the dough and let it rise two times. After the second rising, you shape the dough into the “torpedo” loaf shape and let it rise for a final time while you preheat the oven (Beranbaum suggests preheating the oven an hour ahead of putting the bread in).

Late morning Monday everything was going according to plan. The bread was almost ready to be put in the oven. It looked perfect. I was putting an 8 X 8 glass pan away when it slipped out of my hands and crashed, spraying shattered glass all over my kitchen and onto my beautiful bread dough.

For a couple of insane minutes I contemplated picking the glass out and pretending nothing had happened. Fortunately, my common sense asserted itself and I came to the conclusion that bread dough and glass shards don’t combine to make healthy eating Unfortunately, that ruined my supper plans. I didn’t have enough time to make another bread loaf. I could have run to the store and grabbed some french bread. However, I was too depressed by the whole incident (hours wasted!) and so convinced Jaeger we should eat out instead.

However, I still really wanted to make the bread. So, Tuesday night I started the process again. Wednesday night there was a “Friends of the Longmont Public Library” meeting that I wanted to attend. I hadn’t been to one before and I thought it would be a good chance to meet other people. I dashed home Wednesday night to start the second part of the bread process, whipped up dinner and scarfed it down in time for bread preparation part three. Then I set it up to raise and dashed off to the library getting there just a couple of minutes late.

The flyer had mentioned that there would be a book sale afterwards and as a result the meeting would be brief. However, I didn’t realize how brief the meeting would be. It lasted a total of 15 minutes. It was obvious that everyone suffered through the meeting just to be first to the book sale. Ever time the masses thought the meeting was over, they leapt to their feet. This happened several times before the meeting actually ended. It was most amusing to watch.

Finally, the meeting was over and there was a stampede to the books. I continued sitting in my chair for a couple of minutes bemused by the enthusiastic crowd. It was almost like store sales the day after Thanksgiving. Eventually, since I was already there, I decided to look and see what was available. Nothing in Fiction looked terribly interesting but I did find three cookbooks and one sex book that looked interesting.

I made it back home 2 minutes before the timer started beeping indicating that my bread was finished with its first rising. The bread making process continued until I finally took the bread out of the oven at 10:30 (for once Jaeger actually made it to bed before me).

This evening is hacking society so Jaeger wasn’t around. However, I made my Artichoke & Cheese sandwhich on the 10 grain bread for supper. It was very good. I’m impressed by how well the bread recipe turned out (especially considering a couple minor mishaps that occurred along the way).

I’m definitely going to make this bread again. However, I’ll probably start trying to replace the bread flour with whole wheat flour. I realize that this will be a complicated process but Jaeger has rubbed off on me enough so now I always feel slightly guilty when eating white bread

My next epic bread undertaking? Either pizza dough or bagels.

This week I made my very first cheesecake. It was somewhat successful. I’ve been interested in making cheesecake for a while but never think about it enough ahead of time. Also, the calories per serving for many cheesecake recipes is staggering. However, as I was looking through Chocolate and the Art of Low-Fat Desserts I saw that there was a recipe for cheesecake that had only 200 calories/serving. I was excited and decided to make it. However, it was just a plain cheesecake recipe. There weren’t any suggestions on what to serve with it. I was browsing allrecipes.com when I came across a recipe for Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake. Unable to avoid changing recipes, I immediately stuck the two cheesecake recipes together with a couple of other modifications .

I made the batter for the traditional cheesecake and then added 1/2 cup melted chocolate chips and 2 tbs unsweetened cocoa powder. It turned out very good. To add the caramel part of the Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake, I used 1/2 of my mother’s caramel recipe instead of melting caramel candy and poured it into the springform pan. I then put the nut on top of the caramel and poured the cheesecake batter on top of everything.

I had read that I should bake the cheesecake in a water bath. However, I didn’t have many pans that were big enough to fit around my 9″ spring form pan. Finally, I decided that the cheap roasting pans I use for granola would have to work. I put the roasting pan in the oven, placed my spring form pan in the middle and then filled the space in between up with boiling water. I then gently shut the oven door and thought good thoughts.

About a half hour later, Jaeger comes into the kitchen and asks, “why is there water dripping from the oven?” Turns out my granola roasting pans had holes in them. After panicking for a couple of minutes, I discovered that my large frying pan would also fit around the spring form pan (it’s oven safe up to 350 degrees). I wasn’t sure if the cheesecake would survive the trauma but it didn’t appear to have suffered any lasting harm.

Finally the cheesecake was ready to take out of the oven. I let it cool and then stuck it in the fridge for the mandatory 12 hour cool down.

The next night, I got the cheesecake out and attempted to cut it. Unfortunately, the caramel had become brick hard. A war ensued between the caramel and I. I won but chocolate cheesecake ended up smeared all over my kitchen counters.

While the cheesecake was very good, I think it would be better not to include the caramel next time. Next time, I plan to use the main Chocolate Cheesecake recipe and then maybe top it with a raspberry whip cream topping of some sort.

My mom came to us this weekend. She’s tends to eat vegan so I thought it would be fun to try making a couple of vegan recipes. Friday night, I made Beet & 3 Bean Soup. This soup was very nutrient filled but was strange and didn’t taste terribly good. On the upside, I had concocted a vegan Lemon and Raspberry Muffin recipe that turned out remarkably good for just throwing ingredients together

Saturday I tried another experiment, a apple-pear pie in a low fat crust. The filling part turned out okay (though I had fewer pears in it than I originally planned) but the low fat crust was not good.

Sunday, I made Hummus with Roasted Vegetables. I originally got the idea from a meal we had in London at Hummus Bros. It’s pretty good but I think I should add some more vegetables (maybe onions and tomatoes?) next time.

As some of you may know, I’ve been working on losing weight. Last summer I finally noticed that I was officially in the “overweight” category according to the height/weight charts. This surprised me since I didn’t feel overweight. However, while I know that numbers lie, if the height and weight charts claimed I was overweight I figured it was probably right. I probably should also have noticed that my clothing was starting to be a little snug

I love food so I initially started trying to lose weight by just exercising and keeping my eating habits the same. Unfortunately, this didn’t really help much. Eventually, I decided that I really needed to start paying attention to how many calories I was eating each day. It was really shocking. I eat fairly balanced meals (though I do make a fair amount of dessert from scratch). Using various diet websites I learned that it wasn’t what I was eating that was the problem. It was how much I was eating. What I considered a “serving size” was actually closer to two or three serving sizes.

It was hard making my body relearn how much food was reasonable to eat. Fortunately, I was able to extend my obsession with spreadsheets to an obsession with recording everything I ate. This helped me stay on track. My main calorie counter website for the first couple of months was SparkPeople. It’s a really nice website. However, it isn’t designed for people that cook a lot. You can create “recipes” but once created you couldn’t change them. If you decided to modify a recipe, you had to reenter the entire recipe with the added modifications (they’ve recently changed this so it works much better now).

Eventually, I decided that to get all the features I wanted in a nutrition program, I would probably need to use a desktop application. I don’t like desktop applications since they tie me to using one computer. However, none of the free nutrition websites had the features I needed. I downloaded trial versions of several different nutrition programs. My favorite, and the one I decided to buy, is called Nutribase Personal Plus.

Nutribase is really an amazing program. It has all the normal features that most nutrition software has and also some added features. For instance, it lets me add a recipe to a recipe. I have a basic Cuban Black Bean recipe that sometimes I use as a burrito filling and sometimes I serve over rice. This program allows me to create the basic Black Bean recipe and then add that recipe to my “Burrito” or “Rice” recipe. It’s really wonderful. Nutribase also comes with meal plans for Vegetarians and Vegans for a variety of calorie needs (1000 to 2800). I think the meal plan feature is a nice idea but I’m too independent to want to use premade meal ideas The program also allows me to create my own monthly meal plans so someday I’ll probably get ambitious and try that feature out.

Since around September I’ve lost about 15 lbs. I’m now within an acceptable weight range for my height. I’m planning to lose 5 more lbs. Why? Jaeger and I plan to have children within the next 3-4 years. I want to get on the lower side of my healthy weight range before becoming pregnant because I suspect I’m the ballooning type It’s not that I’m afraid of gaining weight when I’m pregnant, that’s obviously a natural process. However, I am concerned that I’ll have trouble losing it once the baby comes. I’m hoping that by starting with a healthy weight and good eating habits my pregnancy and weight loss afterwards will not be as challenging.

My family has a history of obesity. As a result, I suspect that I’ll need to continue counting calories in some form my whole life. Once I meet my last 5 lb goal, I’m going to start ratcheting up the number of calories I eat each day until I appear to have hit my calorie equilibrium. This is the part I’m least certain about. Of course, I don’t need to worry about this for at least a couple more months