Food budget

[Cream Soda]

Subway is expensive. But eating alone generally doesn't cut too much from costs especially if you've got a busy life.

Avoid tap water if you are not sure of the infrastructure of your house/region. You wouldn't want to deal with infections that'd annoy you (and your balls) + doctor costs, etc. I only drank tap water a week in my life (and that was for tea, lol) and bam, urinary tract infection, painful balls, getting my balls handled by urologist guy, wasted Spring Break and...uh, medicine, etc. costs.

I spend around 600/month as well.

lol just unlucky, I guess.

I drink tap water by the gallon.

Between 1 and 2 gallons a day actually, which I fill in my bathtub cause my jug doesn't fit under the sink.

Been doing this for 7 years, never had any sort of infection

[Meresgi]

omg someone else who drinks tap water.
I thought the world was going puss. All the "omg if it's not bottled water get it away from me"
Fuck bottled water, if i was going to pay for a beverage, I'd get something that had some taste to it.

Fucking truth, not even to go into how shit bottled water is, but yeah tap water for the win...as long as your city has decent water. I've lived in a few spots where the tap water was pretty shitty, still drank it, just had to boil it and cool it.

@OP. Fuck Subway, get some cold cuts and you're made. Not sure if you have a Price Chopper, but it's our 24hr store for food and all that. They usually run deals with the days bread out for cheap. Usually snag a deal on donuts as well for breakfast's. Snag some fliers for your stores, see what's on sale and plan out your weeks food from it. Get some coupons as well.

[Cream Soda]

I don't eat subway anymore. I spend 11 buks there and walk out hungry

(Footlong turkey/bacon w/ double meat + pepperoni) and have to go to mcdonalds and get Two things off the Dollar menu to be full. If I go to mcdonalds on its own, i can get 4 things off the dollar menu and be full.

[Kerberoz]

They don't cost much because they're tap water run through a fish tank filter.

...and how do you figure that drinking water gave you a UTI? The bacteria passed through your digestive system, blood, and kidneys without infecting you? 'K lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdvJOF-2mm0

[noblemountain]

They don't cost much because they're tap water run through a fish tank filter.

...and how do you figure that drinking water gave you a UTI? The bacteria passed through your digestive system, blood, and kidneys without infecting you? 'K lol.

Seriously. Getting a UTI from tap water is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I have a well and drink straight out of the tap with no filter. I have drank out of the Ganges river and bathed several times in rivers/watering holes in Iraq/Afghanistan. My well water tastes amazing, 250 ft well = cold, clean water...like our ancestors drank before all the pansies took over the world and decided that they wanted "special" water.

[sephir]

Last month I spent $480 on food just for myself. I rarely eat out, I just eat a lot. My local gym has a nutritionist and my average daily intake of food is 4500-5500 calories (varies based on activity level) - just to maintain my body weight (140lbs).


For breakfast this morning I had:

3 bowls of cereal (I got through a jumbo cereal box and 4 litres of milk every 2 days)
2 large cups of OJ
1 PB & J
4 eggs with salt + pepper


Within 90 minutes I was back in the kitchen preparing lunch.

[Hyan]

breakfast - porridge or rye bread. About 1€/day.

lunch - eat @ uni restaurant. 3-4€/meal w/ student discount.

dinner - fried asparagus and cauliflower in buttercheese (yum), sometimes pasta, noodles or rice. Tuna and ketchup to make it taste better + rye bread.. Eggs are cheap so occasionally I make an omelette. Costs maybe 3-4€ a meal.

supper - tuna & cottage cheese. 1,60€.

Obviously tap water for drinking (cleanest water in the world, fuck yeah). If I'm feeling rich I buy some milk.

Comes to around 10€ a day Max. I'm not that poor though so sometimes I go all out and buy some MEAT (once per two weeks maybe).

[Vigilia]

We spend around £30-70 per week between two adults and a one-year old. I just buy all basic materials and in large quantities so they can be frozen and then cook our own food mostly. The weeks the bill's more we splash out on some takeaway or eat out, usually once every two weeks or so.

Breakfast: Any variation of porridge/cereal/toast and some fruit. Sometimes pancakes if I can be bothered, usually ends up being less than £1 per person.
Lunch: My husband takes a sandwich to work or grabs something from work canteen. I usually whip up something simple pasta- or noodle-based for myself and kid. Again, around £1-3 per person.
Dinner: Whatever we can think of really. Spagbol, jacket potatoes, stir fries, mash and bangers, casseroles etc. £2-4 per person unless it's takeaway food.

And there's random snacks (mostly fresh/dried fruits and crispbread) and lot of milk in there as well (especially for the toddler). Tap water for adults as it is or with some squash or just fruit juices. Aside from cooking our food I tend to bake a lot too, homemade muffins and cinnamon buns and whatnot. Big packet of flour is about £1 and you can get a lot ouf of it with a bit of milk and sugar and eggs. Trick is to buy dry goods in as big a packets as you can conveniently store and eat before they go off. There are large asian communities around us so I get rice and flour in huge sacks for example. It's pretty silly, big 10kg sack of lovely basmati rice lasts us a year and it's about £8. 500g packet of Uncle Ben's rice off a supermarket shelf is £2. Flour, cereals, oatmeal, pasta, sugar etc, I don't buy in anything less than 1+kg family size packets. I was already doing this when I was living alone, they're all the kind of stuff that keeps well for a year or more as long as you keep it in an airtight container and you don't get ripped off by the shop so much. Meat's the same, big packets of meat (and fish) are much cheaper than smaller ones, as long as you have a good freezer you're sorted. Bread can be frozen as well.

[Takedown3]

I didn't, that figures why I got sick I guess! The house here doesn't have filteration system (rental, won't be here for long) but I guess I could've used one of those smaller ones.

I drink from those large Aquafina/Deer Park bottles. They don't really cost much at all and...ease of mind I guess.

isn't there an app for that?

[Guyverarmor]

isn't there an app for that?

I see wut you did thar.

[Byrthnoth]

Breakfast: A piece of fruit, maybe I steal a spoonful of my girlfriend's cereal while she's not looking.
Lunch: Sandwich. One piece of meat, 1.5 pieces of cheese, I make my own bread in a bread maker, which is probably more expensive than Wonderbread but lets me add spices. Generally there's also something extra for a snack (peach bread today).
Dinner: Very random. Last night I took a crappy fail-loaf of bread and diced it, sliced up some sausage from the fridge, and cooked them together with olive oil until the bread was brown and the meat was cooked. Served it with a salad (tomato wedges, crushed almonds, balsamic vinaigrette, lettuce.) Previous night was shrimp and broccoli curry on rice. Generally I aim for some kind of protein, something green, and then enough other stuff and flavor that I'm satisfied after the meal. Our meat/meal is fairly low, though still probably well above the FDA's recommendations. If we don't need to be particularly productive that night, we'll have some wine. Otherwise it's milk or water.
Dessert: Root beer float, cookies, pie, cake, whatever baked goods we happen to have. This is generally around 9PM.

We eat about $250 worth of food a month between the two of us and drink about $70 worth of wine. We rarely eat out and always pack our lunches unless we're going out with our labs or something. When we do eat out, we generally hit a more expensive restaurant so it hurts the wallet a little. Still, we eat well enough at home that we don't want to pay more for worse food.

My money-saving tip:
* When you go to buy spices in your supermarket, do yourself a favor and look in the ethnic aisle first instead of the baking aisle. It's really really dramatically cheaper.
* Becoming a good cook is definitely worth doing. Nothing about cooking is hard. Buy an used edition of the Joy of Cooking and don't afraid of anything. I'm not "good" yet, but I get better every time I do it. Start with the basics. Don't make some fancy Chicken dish your first time out. Roast it using only butter, salt, and pepper. Simple recipes can taste really good if done well.
* If something looks unappetizing (but perhaps health), then it probably is. Don't lie to yourself about what you want to eat. If you want mashed potatoes, make some goddamned mashed potatoes because they're going to taste amazing and you won't have to eat as much to get full.
* If you're trying to lose weight, portion control is more important than ingredient control. Eat slower, eat less, eat until you're not hungry anymore, use butter. Get smaller cups, use smaller plates, leftovers are a friend and not an enemy.

Oh yeah, we also keep some kind of juice in the house in case we're thirsty for something flavored. The local supermarket has a pretty good selection of orange/other fruit combo juices, so we get one of those.

[Rhyis.]

Avoid tap water if you are not sure of the infrastructure of your house/region. You wouldn't want to deal with infections that'd annoy you (and your balls) + doctor costs, etc. I only drank tap water a week in my life (and that was for tea, lol) and bam, urinary tract infection, painful balls, getting my balls handled by urologist guy, wasted Spring Break and...uh, medicine, etc. costs.

http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/3br..._uIQopG9R0Syew

20 bucks.

[Intense]

Last month I spent $480 on food just for myself. I rarely eat out, I just eat a lot. My local gym has a nutritionist and my average daily intake of food is 4500-5500 calories (varies based on activity level) - just to maintain my body weight (140lbs).


For breakfast this morning I had:

3 bowls of cereal (I got through a jumbo cereal box and 4 litres of milk every 2 days)
2 large cups of OJ
1 PB & J
4 eggs with salt + pepper


Within 90 minutes I was back in the kitchen preparing lunch.

Your breakfast is way more than I eat in a day

[Quixon]

You guys are going to love the water I drink rofl....


This is the filter I use for my drinking water:

http://www.spectrapure.com/jpgs/MC_RODI.jpg


It's a RODI (Reverse Osmosis De-Ionization) Filter that strips virtually EVERYTHING out of the water aside from Hydrogen and Oxygen. The filter is connected to a pressure tank, which leads to a little drinking water spigot next to the sink.


I didn't buy this thing for drinking water though, it's actually for my fish tank. They have a little kit that you can attach to it for drinking water... so I figured why the hell not.

I did a little experiment and tested the TDS (total dissolved solids) of my tap water, my water out of the rodi, and some common bottled water sold around here. Here's what I got...


Tap TDS (Source water is from a well, not town water) --> 850

TDS After RODI Filtration - 0-5 depending on when I change the filters (twice a year for the most part, which costs like $40-$60 for the filter set).


Dasani TDS - 207
Poland Spring TDS - 380
Deer Park - 199
Sams Club Brand -560
Fiji - 478



Total Dissolved Solids aren't always bad for humans. Certain things in the water can be very bad for saltwater fishtanks though.... which is why we need to filter it hardcore. The solids can be anything from Iron, Aluminum, Phosphates, Nitrates, Ammonia, other heavy metals (copper).... etc. Then you also will almost always have chlorine/chloramine as well if you are on municipal water.



The coolest thing about the 0 TDS water. If you make ice cubes with it.... you don't get that fuzz ball looking thing in the middle of the ice cube! :-p

[Valisk]

For breakfast this morning I had:

3 bowls of cereal (I got through a jumbo cereal box and 4 litres of milk every 2 days)
2 large cups of OJ
1 PB & J
4 eggs with salt + pepper


Within 90 minutes I was back in the kitchen preparing lunch.

I don't believe for 1 second that this what your daily breakfast consists of and you're only 140. You must have smoked a pound this morning. Within 90 minutes you were preparing lunch... Are you bulimic?

[Byrthnoth]

Biggest thing that's going to remove the taste from your water is just making it cold.

I use a Brita Filter for my water. I'm convinced it puts in about as much crap as it takes out, but it makes my girlfriend happy. Recently I took the Brita filtered water out of the fridge, let it warm up to room temperature, and did a blind taste test between it and tap water. Could not tell the difference between them to save my life.

[Jefe]

I have this bad boy:

http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/9172/filtervc.jpg

I just don't trust oldass pipes.

[Quixon]

Biggest thing that's going to remove the taste from your water is just making it cold.

I use a Brita Filter for my water. I'm convinced it puts in about as much crap as it takes out, but it makes my girlfriend happy. Recently I took the Brita filtered water out of the fridge, let it warm up to room temperature, and did a blind taste test between it and tap water. Could not tell the difference between them to save my life.

Brita, Pur, Etc are junk really. They use horrible grade carbon, and the carbon is basically useless after you make 3 or so gallons of water. The life of the carbon depends on how much tds is in the tap water to begin with but max you are looking at 3 gallons from that paltry amount of carbon in those filters.

You can take a clean white sock, put carbon in it, and pour your tap water through that and get the same damn effect lol. You can buy a 1/2 gallon of carbon for like $10 online.

[Byrthnoth]

Brita, Pur, Etc are junk really. They use horrible grade carbon, and the carbon is basically useless after you make 3 or so gallons of water. The life of the carbon depends on how much tds is in the tap water to begin with but max you are looking at 3 gallons from that paltry amount of carbon in those filters.

You can take a clean white sock, put carbon in it, and pour your tap water through that and get the same damn effect lol. You can buy a 1/2 gallon of carbon for like $10 online.

I don't doubt that at all. I basically use it now because it's a hard plastic container that's a nice shape for my fridge. We leave the filter in there until it starts dropping black dust into the water, then we swap it out.

Oh, also my girlfriend and I get a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box because otherwise we'd be bad about getting some vegetable variety. On one hand, often we get a lot of crap that I wouldn't pay for and what we do get is generally pretty overpriced. On the other hand, we do get a lot of variety out of it and the rush to eat things before they go bad probably positively impacts our diets. It's just kind of a fun thing to do.

[Drex]

Something about the tap water I get in my apartment is really fucked up because it has the most awful aftertaste I have ever gotten out of water. When I use the Brita it goes away, and that lasts for a month or so before I have to switch filters. I dunno what it is that makes it taste that way or why the filter is so good at removing it, but that's the reason I run it.

Thanks at whoever mentioned those ensure things for breakfast. I've been meaning to try them; this thread reminded me so I picked some up. Not too bad tasting for all the stuff they have in them, and they're great for when I wake up late and have to rush to class lol.