Got the book - now to prepare

The new book was delivered today.  Funny, I looked online at my Amazon order status to see if it arrived rather than walking upstairs to look at the front door!  Do you ever do that?

The book is much thinner than I expected.  Only 146 pages.

 I skimmed through the first few pages right to the menu plans that the author has developed.  My first impression is that it won't be enough food for me.  Three small meals plus one snack.  And if it's not enough for me, it won't be enough for Dave.    I tend to eat breakfast, second breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner and then final snack.

I have a visitor from Israel coming into work for three days next week, so I will have to decide whether Dave and I start this plan over the weekend, or if we wait until the visitor is gone.  I want to be a good host for my coworker and take him out to lunch a few times while he is here, especially since he has never been to Colorado before.  But then, if the company is paying for lunch, it doesn't come out of the $4 day budget, does it? 

Also, looking through the book, I see she uses a lot of beans.  There are two problems with beans.  The first is that they take so long to cook!  She gives a timetable that shows cooking times for each type of bean if cooked on the stove, or cooked in a pressure cooker. The pressure cooker is much more efficient, for example, it takes 5-8 minutes to cook black beans in a pressure cooker vs 1 hour on top of the stove.  I don't have a pressure cooker right now.  Well, I do, but it's so old I'd be afraid to use it.  It always made me nervous, anyway.  I think the newer ones are safer. 

The second problem with beans is their sometimes painful and annoying side-effects.  I have learned in the past that if you completely rinse the beans after soaking,  cook the beans thoroughly until they are really soft and add a thumb-sized piece of kombu to the pot while cooking, it can eliminate much of that.

I'll probably wait and do a bit of planning before we begin.    There are 7 days of menu plans included in the book.  I think I'll go through the plans, calculate the caloric and nutritional profile for the week and devise a shopping list.  Based on the nutritional profile of the plan, I'll decide whether to try the author's plan for two weeks, or use her plan for the first week and devise my own improved plan for the second week.  It will depend on whether or not I think the author's  plan is sufficient to meet the recommended caloric an nutritional needs for us.

I'll begin the experiment next Friday.

Vegan on a Budget

Today I was reading my facebook feed and an old high school friend of my posted the following:

"6 dollars and 83 cents for mcDonalds tonight.  Getting expensive".

It got me thinking....

The $6.83 price tag for that meal is probably nothing compared to the long term costs of managing the chronic diseases (high blood pressure, heart disease, type 2 diabetes) that can be prevented with a plant based diet.   I don't think most people really think about those costs when they are hungry and want a fast, cheap meal though.

One day I hope to help seniors decrease the number of medications they require through  proper nutrition.  I know that many seniors in our country really struggle to put food on the table due to budget restrictions.  Many rely on government programs, such as SNAP to supplement their weekly grocery budget.  Looking at the SNAP program in Colorado, the maximum monthly benefit amount for a household of 2 people is $367 per month.  That amounts to a mere $5.91 per person per day.  You could not even have my friend's meal at McDonalds for that.

I have been following the posts and blogs of an author in Florida - Ellen Jaffe Jones - for a few years now.  She has written a book called "Eat Vegan on $4 a Day".  I've decided to give this a shot.  So I ordered the book this morning.  It was really reasonably priced at $10.38 through Amazon.  Hopefully it will be here this week so we can begin an experiment next week.  I'm going to try to feed Dave and I a balanced, plant-based diet with a weekly budget of $56 per week.  For me, this might be a challenge.  Not the vegan part - we've been following a plant based diet for nearly 4 years.  But I'm definitely not a budget-minded shopper when I enter the grocery store.  If it I want it, it usually just makes its way into our cart.  But if I ever plan to really help people improve their diet, I need to experiment with various methods and eating plans to make sure they provide adequate nutrition and satiety within the limits of a very strict budget.  Plus, we'll save a bit of money in the process!  I think our normal food bill, including dinners out, has been averaging about $150-$200 per week.

Stay tuned as I use Ellen's book to come up with a weekly plan within the $56 per week budget, analyze the nutritional profile of the plan, and report back here our reactions to the plan.