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The Ghost of Christmas Past visited me this past yuletide season...
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HOW TO EAT FOR SIX WEEKS ON $50
A WHOLE FOODS EXTRAVAGANZA
THE BACKGROUND
January 28, 2007 - My friends Gen and Corey sent me a Christmas package that included an ominous three pound Hickory Farms beef stick. It was gruesome and brought back nightmares from my youth. As a child, I was horrified by the scariest corner of Schenectady's Mohawk Mall. On one side was an organ store -
complete with a man in a bluish tight, polyester suit and bad comb over, and opposite that was Hickory Farms.
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| Hickory Farms was always chock full of sausages and cheeses. The decor reminded me of Hee-Haw, the TV show that haunted me most as a child as well - red barn countrified construction with barrels and hay displaying their beefy products.
I was always bewildered as to why neither were ever refrigerated - and always wondered what type of people bought and ate food like that from the mall. After talking to Gen on Christmas Day, we commented how the sausage was too big to put in a microwave, and exactly how much I was horrified by its presence. Of course, this was only the first part of the Christmas gift - the 'meat' of the present was a $50 gift certificate to Whole Foods. I have a desperate
love-hate relationship with Whole Foods. Clearly, it's geared towards a richer, whiter, and 'progressive' crowd than my current status provides. Perhaps someone like this could afford to shop there regularly, but I can't. I do however, enjoy the scene - people watching is priceless there, the food is good, and the cooked meal section is pretty hot and not that expensive.
THE MISSION
I knew it'd be better off to wait as long as I could before using the gift card. So I laid off a month of urges to splurge in beer alley and as my finances closed in one me, I finally made plans to see if I could eat for six weeks on the $50. I spent a couple days going over some ideas in my head about what to buy - spaghetti and Ramen noodles has been a staple of my diet for well over a decade - and I kept getting input from friends - buy bulk, get protein, just buy beer. |
The real gift on Christmas
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SHOPPING
I finally took a bus across town on a beautifully warm, sunny day, and headed into Whole Foods. Quickly, i was confronted with my first decision of the day - pick up a smaller double basket-cart or take a carriage? My optimism won over and I grabbed the larger carriage. I skimmed through the fruits and vegetables looking for fresh samples, but soon found myself disoriented by the whole experience. Usually, I saunter through, people watching, taking in the smells from the BBQ, casually glance at
products, but now while pushing the carriage, I had no attention span nor any sense of direction. I also quickly realized in all my visits I have never actually walked up and down every aisle in the store.
I quickly found the Ramen aisle, but the higher grade Whole Food Ramen was slightly higher than my usual tastes - they ranged from 99 cents to an astounding $1.99. Skipping through the noodles, the next aisle was Italian - always a good choice for cheap food that can hold you over. After locating the Whole Foods brands and skipping all the other pasta and sauces, I settled on linguine - which was the same weight (16oz) as spaghetti, but thicker (more to my taste) and actually 20 cents cheaper as well. I grabbed six
pounds, and figured I may have some leftover cash for sauce.
As I exited the Italian aisle, I glanced over and cringed at the $50 gallons of olive oil and perused the next few aisles. I toyed with the idea of loading up on beans and rice - the olde time cheap eats favorite of Chris Chappell's past life - but just couldn't bring myself to cooking and eating beans for six weeks. Blame it on my Yankee blood. Also featured in the aisle were instant cup a soups, starting at a lofty, convenience store price of $1.19 and going
up from there, along with organic macaroni and cheese, which was crazily priced. I started getting worried and glanced in my cart at the linguine staring back at me. I started getting depressed as I only had a good six days of food picked out so far.
| I circled around the aisles, and came across the peanut butter aisle. While scouting around for the biggest jar with the cheapest price tag, I made a mistake that will haunt me at some unspecified time in the future. It certainly wasn't today, it won't be tomorrow, but someday in the future, however near or far that will be, I will spend big bucks on the one addiction I have in
my life: Nutella. Whole Foods has a selection of organic, imported and expensive (up to 68 cents an ounce!, Nutella is usually around 26 cents). I dropped in five pounds of peanut butter and decided it was time to splurge with a necessary pick up: toothpaste. I'm a fan of Tom's, but it breaks the bank every time I buy more. I decided since this was officially a Christmas present, I'd splurge an extra buck for the Apricot anti plaque tartar control plus whitening. The $4.89 would be among the pricier items I'd buy, but its worth
it. I then went back to the spaghetti aisle and grabbed six more pounds of linguine.
After passing the table with the organic popcorn sample, I decided to buy some pancake mix. It was outrageously priced, organic, gluten free and probably should've cured cancer as well. I had to exclude any mix that required eggs - 1) I hate eggs, and 2) eggs are another purchase. I retreated, shot through the salad dressing aisle (nothing tops off hot linguine better than some Italian dressing) and decided to hit the canned food aisle. I ended up with some beans and corn, and had to make a snap decision on
adding tuna fish to my cart. As I was contemplating the 99 cent cans, a sharp dressed man in his fifties casually picked up a four dollar can of mayo and threw it in his basket. He then grabbed a $6.99 can of tuna and continued on his impulsive shopping ways.
The next few minutes were a whirlwind - I started on the cereal aisle, one of my all time favorite pleasures, then got swept up in the protein packed packages of granola, before the oatmeal caught my eye and my thoughts turned to finding corn meal and making some delicious oatmeal like bowls of corn meal cooked over the stove just like Mom used to make. I bounced around between the oatmeal aisle and the baking aisle, and found a bag of cheap organic corn meal. I also splurged a bit and bought a bag of scone mix. To
quote a KCAI professor, "scones are like drugs. Once you start, you can't stop." Of course, this man's, um, 'addictive' personality leant a level of credence to that statement that scarred all of us in attendance that morning.
I made some last minute spins before I threw in another six pounds of linguine into the carriage, and spent some time looking at the meat - not much time mind you, one pound of natural, uncured hot dogs was $5.99, which was actually a buck less than the half pound of ostrich meat patties sitting next to it in the freezer.
I looked down at the groceries I picked out, I was careful not to go over the $50, and made the following estimates in my mind:
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food |
days of eating | |
18 lbs of linguine |
20 days | | 5 lbs of peanut butter | 8 days | | 2 lbs of cornmeal | 4 days | | 2 lbs of pancake mix | 12 days | | total: |
44 days |
As I was checking out, I packed my groceries into two evenly weighted bags, received a bulk discount on the linguine, and walked out of Whole Foods a winner - enough food to eat for roughly six weeks, and still with eight dollars left to spend. |
The bounty... all $41.70 of it.
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